Ab Irato

As I’ve been out on the road for a week, I’ve noticed things…

Between Mason and Galveston, there has been a proliferation of Evangelical-Style Churches…But, leaving at 7 am Sunday morning, I saw empty church parking lots, of all types, the whole 350 miles. Perhaps there was a ball game…

One has to pay extra to get so called “Liberal” news coverage…MSNBC is not on ANY Basic Package, that I’ve found…but Fox, and CNN(fox-lite), sure are…Fox is on every public television I encountered….and every Radio station, save one 90.1 KPFT, that I listened to.

There will soon be ample available retail space along my route.

Every third house is for sale.

Every fourth business is closing, or looking run down…Corporate Outlets (franchises, and the like, are the exception)

That last, the everywhere one looks Corporate homoginisation of America, is all the evidence one needs that this isn’t Papaw’s America.

When I looked around , at an intersection on 61^st street, looking for the coup de grace for an argument I had been making, I saw not one non-chain, non-franchise, non- corporate business…save for the numerous nail and hair salons and a mechanic’s shop.

I hear “Conservative” memes and themes and word constructions from even obvious Liberals…we habitually encounter the world, using “their” filters and frames.

Polls show that the US is at least Half Non “Conservative”…and that at best the ‘Religious Right” make up a mere 15%. One would never know this from direct observation.

Too, hardly anybody, “conservative”, Liberal or “Independent” actually Votes….only 91 million, out of 218 million eligible voters, voted in the 2010 elections. This was the so-called- Tea Party “Revolution”…leading to their “Mandate”…and obstructionism, etc 42%, give or take.

2008,out of 213 million eligible, 132 million voted…this was Obama’s “Mandate”….a little more believable, imo. 61%

Both of these were anomalous, given recent history…turnouts were much lower before the Bush “Administration”….

Tea People talk as though the whole country were theirs and theirs alone…as if all the rest of us are interlopers, insufficiently American to bother counting, let alone paying attention to. Mainstream Media encourages and promotes this delusion, and foists it on our collective mind(that twisted and starved thing…)Everything lurches rightward…and what Liberals there are, or even non Right Wingers, hide…and avoid eye-contact.

Sigh.