Some more Tea, Jeeves!

The past week was full of very powerful, um... very meaningful protests, yeah. The "Tea Parties", held across the country were a gathering of Americans protesting the increase of taxes placed on them, and the ideal of hefty government spending as a whole. In these meetings, members of young republican clubs and other concerned citizens showed their solidarity against wasteful spending by, as John Stewart criticized, "buying one million tea bags and dumping them into the sea." I thought that was an interesting way to express their position. 

This whole event made me recall what they were really protesting, higher taxes. If you are holding up a sign calling for lower taxes, then it is almost assured that you make over $200,000 a year. That is if you're not into hardcore politics and strict political alining. The reason that one would be considered "wealthy" when participating in a Tea Party, is because President Obama has created one of the largest tax cuts for average Americans making under $200,000. In the end, I think the American public is seeing the reflex action by the wealthier segment of America as they now feel the burden of proportional earning taxation and a small bite out of their pocket. In the end, the visual argument was a rather weak one. 

Visual Arguments need a foundation of sound sense and purpose, and the Tea Parties certainly did not have that, and even worse, they needed the help of Fox News to convey their message. In a Think Progress analysis, one can see how much air-time and attention was paid to the Tea Parties, which seemed much less significant and powerful than the Anti-War and Stop the Hate protests that frequent the streets of American cities. If we could get big news corporations to film the issues that really matter, then perhaps our country could begin to progress, rather than regress to the possessive nature of toddlers.

War, huh, yeah. This should tell us to stop.

I was quite excited to hear about the opening of a Holocaust Museum in Skokie Illinois. The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to open on April 19th. Among the speakers at the opening of the 45 million dollar museum will be former president Bill Clinton and Nobel Prize winning author Elie Wiesel. I was very proud of the North Shore having a new and interesting museum so close, and cannot wait to go there. But with the excitement that goes along with the opening comes the sadness and remembrance that the museum will present to its visitors.

Hopefully this museum will instill a spirit into all that visit it to avoid war and to learn unconditional care for all people. And tere is a tone of bitter sweetness as the museum is opening in a the town where Nazi activists marched in the late 70's. If this opening instigates anger and movement in the radical fronts across the world, I think it is an act of war worth taking. 

Modern Modernism?

I was astounded when I saw a preview for a MSNBC show titled "Future Earth, Journey to the End of the World." 

This series will detail how our world will end, and how we will change our climate into a formidable foe. 

Shows like this have been popping up on many networks, and it got me thinking if there is any 

connection to the rise in apocalyptic fervor during the literary modernist era and Great Depression, and

the fact that we are in the second largest economic downturn since the country hit rock bottom

in the 30's.

Now, the apocalypse is a hot topic and has been so in the last few years. Movies like "The Day after Tomorrow" and "The Core", tickled the viewers curiosity in how our world will react when we are close to the end. But now, MSNBC is giving us a play-by-play on how we are going to go off this planet, instead of giving us wholesome programming like "To Catch A Predator", yeah. Anyway, this county needs not shows that scare us and ponder on our apocalypse, but rather informative shows on how we can make the biggest positive impacts on our world now. Perhaps it is the despair that coincides with economic woes that makes us turn to apocalyptic subject-matter. For me, I will stick to the  one and true gospel for how to act, "The Simspons". 

The show will premiere on April 26th. I will be watching it in my bomb shelter.