Don't worry (or I won't talk about this too often)

I, like the rest of the country last night, watched as President Obama addressed us, and told us that our nation's No. 1 Bad Guy was taken out by an elite Navy SEAL team. I sat with The Chef, my jaw slightly agape because of the shock. I figured that Osama bin Laden had died years ago, in a cave because his kidneys gave out.

Once the "WTF" moment had worn off, I looked at him and jokingly said, "bin Laden has been dead for months! Barry (because that is what I would like to call Obama around my house) drug him out to start the reelection campaign!"

I am one of those people who believe that just because you can't see them, it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.(I kid, I kid). But in all honesty, I wanted to keep my burn phone because "The Man" didn't know who I was (Yeah uh, I'm not kidding about that one).

But I never thought for a fraction of a second that other people out there ACTUALLY believed that Barry pulled a stunt like that. The theories I have seen plastered all over the Internet range from, "Oh that was perfect timing. /snark" to "I keep seeing Usama bin Laden on the news. They killed the wrong man." to "They are dumping his body in the ocean because Obama doesn't want us to see the body. I smell a cover up."

And there is lots of praise and relief talk going on too. Posts that I have read (granted this is just on Facebook and twitter) cover the spectrum from "I am at peace now. Thank you President Obama." to "Don't forget Bush started it." to "Bush may have started it, but Obama finished it." to my own status on Facebook this morning "Obama executed the order, the SEALs executed the man" to a personal favorite "All told, it is a victory. That being said, I would have liked Ducky to examine the body."

Yes, I have a point and I am getting there... give me a minute.

Which brings me to a lively little conversation I had on a friend's status with another one of her friends. (Confession: I love to talk politics, and I love it even more when the person I am having the conversation with doesn't necessarily agree with me. Anyway...) Her status message said something along the lines of,"Glad he's dead, now do something about the gas prices." Being in the somewhat snarky mood I am in this morning, I piped in with "He'll do something closer to election time." (Ok, I said something about pushing the green agenda too) which led us to "Bush kinda sort did this to us (the economy) to "Um... kinda sorta, but the bubble that bust and flung crap every where was actually started under the Clinton administration." which ultimately brought us around to how the 2 party system in this country is beyond broke. Then we all agreed though that third party candidates have souls, which is why the electoral college ignores them.

I'm almost there, give me another second.

We then started talking about how the majority of Americans in this country are sheep. We are too worried about upsetting the guy sitting next to us, so we just sit back and gobble all of the bull that we are handed. No one stands up anymore and and screams at the top of their lungs "Shenanigans!" We as citizens started down the slippery path into blind acceptance on 9/12/01. We were shocked. We were scared. We had just witnessed the unbelievable. Someone attacked us. And instead of holding the powers that be responsible for not blasting Afghanistan back into the Dark Ages (Electromagnetic Pulse anyone?), at the time when our leaders should have shown the world exactly how big the USA's testicles were, when we, as a society, should have DEMANDED IT, we just sat in our homes, wringing our hands together in worry, wondering when it was going to happen again.

And blindly swallowed everything our government handed us.

On October 26, 2001 The Patriot Act went into effect. The hive mind of this country accepted the stripping of some of the most basic civil liberties that made this country great, and they did it so readily. If you said, "Um... wait a second." You were questioned. "If you have nothing to hide, why does it bother you?" You were dismissed as an "uneducated quack" but worst of all you were called unpatriotic, and you remember, being called unpatriotic then was the equivalent to being a terrorist sympathizer and saying that we had it coming (Yeah, I have a first hand account of all of that).

We are failing ourselves. Even though we don't believe that politicians are honest, we still vote them into office time and time again. Even though we think it's over the line that a six year old is assaulted by searched by a TSA officer, what are we doing to take back our power as proud, strong, patriotic Americans?

We are just sitting on our couches, playing Farmville on Facebook, wondering about what can be cut out of our budgets just so we can put gas in our car to get to work, that is if you are one of the lucky ones to even have a job. We are swallowing our pride and standing in line at a food bank for a handout. We are wrapped up in our personal problems, that we aren't really paying attention to exactly what our elected officers are doing.

And that's just the way they like it.