What Does it Mean?

Brooklyn woman stabs
husband caught watching
pornographic movies.

I see quite a lot of bumper stickers now that say “Let’s Take Our Country Back,” sometimes, but not always, associated with Ron Paul. If you are unfortunate enough to stumble across videos of Tea Party rallies you will also see a number of such signs, often associated with virtually anything. I have been trying to decide what it means to say Let’s Take Our Country Back. Of course these signs can and do mean different things to different people if, in fact, they have any real meaning at all (I’m pretty much convinced that most of the people carrying these signs have no idea what they mean).

These signs can’t mean let’s take our country back from the British. We already did that a long time ago. And they can’t mean let’s take it back from the Indians because we actually just took it away from them. I have little doubt that for some this sign means let’s take it back from this Black, Kenyan-born interloper who should not have it in the first place (he’s Black, you know, but as they can’t just come out and say that they have to pretend he’s from Kenya or even another planet). Similarly, it can mean, let ‘s take it back from the Muslims (Obama being assumed to be a Muslim). No doubt for some it means let’s take it back from the terrible socialists, you know, the socialistic unions who forced management to give us the apparently now unappreciated 40 hour work week, the 8 hour day, and at least a few benefits. It might be the liberals who should give it back, you know, those guys that gave us Social Security and Medicare. Maybe it goes back even further to those obviously misguided fools who thought we should have a Postal Service, Police and Firemen, and other social services. There is little doubt that it also has to do with those that established the awful Income Tax, you know, that money they collect so they can keep participating in unnecessary “wars,” thus enabling them to transfer huge sums of money from ordinary working people to the military/industrial/political complex that now comprises most of our economy. Think how complicated and inconvenient this is when they could just keep all their money in the first place (of course it wouldn’t grow quite so fast but, you know, money breeds money once you have it, no matter how you came by it).

Currently it seems to be mostly Republicans who want their country back, back from those terrible Democrats who actually expect the filthy rich to pay their fair share of taxes and the corporations to give up their totally unnecessary tax breaks and subsidies, and who also think we should have such luxuries as health care and decent schools. A strange lot, Democrats, they seem to believe that taking a huge surplus and turning it almost overnight into a huge deficit was a bad thing, when we all know that Cheney the Great (quoting Saint Ronnie)said deficits don’t matter (and Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and torture was good). Some Republicans seem to think that civil rights legislation was improper and that private businesses should have the right to discriminate if they wish, and still others think we should go back to the gold standard (I wonder if there now is enough gold in all the world to cover all the paper money that now exists around the world). I guess some of these types want to take our country back from those stupid and misguided people who think we ought to have rules and regulations of various kinds. These often stand in the way of looting and robbing and stealing and cheating and make accumulating wealth more difficult than it ought to be.

It is obvious by now that most of those who want their country back want it back so they can continue doing what they were doing that brought about the mess we are in now. In brief, they want back their license to cheat and steal. Why don’t any of these signs say We Want Our Country Back to return it to the Greed, Thieving, Short-Sighted Warmongering Bastards that had it during the Nightmare Years of the early 21st century? At least the message would be closer to the truth and more precise than the abstract version currently making the rounds. I want my country back, too, and I want it back NOW!

LKBIQ:
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
Plato

TILT:
The black seeds of papaya can be ground up and used as a substitute for pepper.