Something Worth Sharing

Apparently this little gem has been going around various progressive listservs. I myself spotted it on Virtual Pus and was fascinated. My summer job involves market research and polling, and I've always appreciated when numbers can paint an accurate picture of American society. Granted, statistics are malleable, but some of them can't be argued with.

I was most taken aback by the divorce number. That's one of the most important weapons in the conservative arsenal; the claim that red-state, moral-values voters are Pro-Family, dammit. Which is patently ridiculous, because they get divorced a hell of a lot more often than us effete, blue-state moral relativists. I understand that going after the Bible Belt divorce rate is a low blow, but if they're going to bash gays using The Family as a hammer, they deserve it.

The piece's author is anonymous, but I wish I could get his or her e-mail address to talk about where they got their facts. Not just for purposes of verification, but because it sounds like a gold mine of information that I'd like to dig into.

I made a few slight revisions (deleted a paragraph about Iraq that I didn't agree with) and added a few tidbits of information that I thought my particular audience would enjoy. Otherwise, it's pretty much verbatim as I found it.

Enough talk. I'll let you read it.



"Dear Red States,
We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and the Northeast.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma, the Southwest and all the slave states.
We get stem cell research and the best beaches.

We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole Miss.

We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs.
You get Alabama.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, and the University of Georgia.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent think Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals than we lefties.

Sincerely,
Author Unknown in Nueva California."

Supporting The Troops

I was taking a summer EMT course last year when I overheard an exchange between two of the students in the course. One was about as liberal as you could get. She was a tattooed art school graduate with profane, anti-Bush stickers plastered across her fuel-efficient car- she was almost cartoonish. The other one was an enlisted guy in the Air Force who'd overheard her talking about how she was against the war in Iraq.

He ambled over. "So you're one of the ones who spits on our guys when they get home from Iraq, huh?" he asked. He wasn't being sarcastic, either. He was legitimately curious.

She shook her head. "Oh, no, I don't have any problem with military personnel. I just don't support Bush or the war."

He nodded. "So you support the troops, though?"

"Yeah," she responded, "of course I do."

What does this mean? "Support the troops." The most common expression of this sentiment is to put one of those yellow ribbons on the back of your car, which don't exactly seem designed for longevity (they're all magnetic.) Even people who are against the war, support the troops. Huh?

In 2005, we take our all-volunteer military for granted. A lot of us don't see the military as a particularly attractive option, especially the more privileged among us. And everyone in the military has their own reason for joining; some needed college money, others wanted to see the world, some wanted better opportunities, and others just wanted to serve their country.

The fact is that, regardless of why they're doing it, military personnel are serving the country's best interests, even if they're doing something that a lot of us- including me- don't support. Having an established corps of professional, well-trained warriors is not something that a lot of other countries can pull off- most major European nations still have a draft between high school and college. We have enough courageous people who, for many different reasons, are willing to serve without being required to.

And they get ordered into some things- like Iraq- that many of us don't believe in. But nobody is disputing that the job they're doing is honorable, and they deserve to be supported by the people they serve. So it seems like a lot of anti-war folks say they "support the troops," but really just mean that they don't bear them any ill will.

I think it's fair to say that most military personnel would choose to be deployed to Iraq about as quickly as most liberals would choose to send them there. It's a miserable place, and 1,700 of them have gotten killed there, and counting. Not to mention all the servicemembers who lost limbs or eyesight or hearing in combat. We claim to support them, but many of us just don't pay them much attention.

And the body of evidence, from recent polls, shows that blue America believes in what the military is doing there now. There aren’t many liberals who would agree with the decision to go to war in the first place, but the majority would agree that since we did, we’re obligated to clean up the mess in Iraq before we head home. We broke it, so to say, and we bought it. Even if there is widespread dissatisfaction with how things are going, it’s safe to say that Americans believe in bringing peace to Iraq after we brought war.

So we all support the troops and the mission of rebuilding Iraq, but the liberal establishment hasn’t exactly been printing up “Hug A Soldier” bumper stickers. I’m not saying that MoveOn.org ought to start selling camo. I do think that, since blue America supports the troops, too, we ought to do something about it. If I had my way, the College Democrats would start sending care packages overseas.

That might be tough, so I decided to start doing it myself. There are a lot of Americans getting shot at, in the middle of a godforsaken desert, who are in need of stuff like air freshener and a couple DVDs. I don’t make a lot of specific appeals, but please check out www.anysoldier.com, browse through the profiles of the personnel deployed overseas, and do what you can. If you support the troops, do something about it.