You so complicated

I try to keep up with current events fairly regularly. I don't have as much time to sift through the news as I would like, but who does? Whenever I get hot and heavy over a particular controversial topic, it doesn't take long before I am staggered by the sheer weight of information available. It's as if I had access to some virtual realm where I could draw in material from the comfort of my own home... but such things are fanciful and will never be realized. The more I dig, the more convoluted and intricate the issue becomes - that's when I tend to get overwhelmed if I'm in sad mode. But more often than not, I feel a sense of awe over the amazing complexity of our world.

For example, I get ornery when I listen to fervent patriotism.

There's something about fervent patriotism that brings out poor grammar and sloppy reasoning. Such people tend to misuse language. They throw around words such as liberty and tyranny as buzzwords, doing a great disservice to the true depth of those concepts. It is as if it's sufficient to parrot stock phrases simply because the Founding Fathers wrote them down. That is intellectually lazy at best; sinisterly propagandist at worst.

When I hear those words, a myriad of things come to mind: The world at the time of the late 1700's and early 1800's when those words emerged as powerful tools of change, technological developments that changed the status of those tools over the years, routinely challenging previous sentiments, McCarthyism, various "Fatherland" movements that crop up throughout history, political exploitation, and lots more. And then I think about my reaction to those words and the people who wield them. Following that, I ponder my relation to their worldview in society, my place in civilization, and civilization in general. Then I eat a bowl of Lucky Charms and wonder where my afternoon went.

Such thoughts leave me bewildered and, as I said before, awed by the all-pervasive march of human endeavors. We're all just winging it in life. And we can't know everything. But were I to be a policy-maker, by gum, I would make it a priority to be a lover of knowledge. How on Earth would I be able to weigh in on issues that affect hundreds to millions of lives without a burning passion to know the facts that could improve the lot of the many? I would feel obligated to plunge the depths of scientific discovery, history, sociology, philosophy, economics, religion and more. How disheartening it is that so many politicians seem to revel in ignorance.

Perhaps I should just give up and paint an American flag on my face and hump an eagle.