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apocalypsosI was at work yesterday when the Senate passed the DADT repeal, which meant I had to quietly do the dance of joy at my desk. Woohoo!
That said, my favorite part of the whole thing was reading about John McCain's Grumpy-Pants "The army is going to collapse under the weight of all the gay!" response to the whole thing. Because, really, I think even he knows that's a great big festering pile of crap, and yet he still doesn't mind being on the wrong side of history.
See, my thing is that I think that a large portion of the people who are for things like DADT and a Constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage are partly for it because it strengthens their arguments. I mean, sure, they're for things like that because they're homophobic dickbags, but the bonus is that they can complain about how the GLBT community is full of free-wheeling liars who can't commit. Don't believe them? Gay people have to lie to join the military, don't they? They can't get married, can they?
I spotted people on ONTD_P reading the comments on Fox News for pure schadenfreude, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I've already had a depressing enough week, thank you very much. Also, I posted a DADT TRASHED, YAY! post on my Facebook - a Facebook friended by a number of high school friends and former co-workers who are either in the military or related to military members - and only three people "liked" it. Which I wouldn't give a shit about, except these are the same sorts of people who responded to that numbers meme with the glurgy response about how many servicemen died in Iraq and Afghanistan "to protect our way of life." To which I responded by pointing out the number of innocent civilians who died in a war to protect the way of life in a country they've most likely never been to and have no influence over.
You'd think I'd just delete my Facebook already, honestly. That thing's like a personal disappointment generator.
EDIT: And you know, I was thinking about this yesterday and I think it's a good thing that Obama let it go through Congress rather than writing off DADT his own self. For the far-right folks for whom nothing he does is right -- and God knows there are a lot of them -- the value in anything in which Obama can be pointed to as the main source is given far less credence. (See: The woman who told me on the phones the other day that she'd rip up the $250 rebate check she'd be getting this year for going into the coverage gap because it was coming from his administration.)
As much as I wish he would have wiped it off the map the first day he was in office, I suspect it might have made things worse in the short run than this will, especially considering the repeal passed AFTER the Republicans took back so many seats in the last election. (I think either way it went down, in the long run it would have turned out just fine.)
Basically, it's harder for folks like the woman who shredded $250 of her own tax dollars to argue against the repeal's legitimacy due to Obama's involvement when Obama's pretty much stepped back with his hands in the air and left the dirty work to Congress.
That said, my favorite part of the whole thing was reading about John McCain's Grumpy-Pants "The army is going to collapse under the weight of all the gay!" response to the whole thing. Because, really, I think even he knows that's a great big festering pile of crap, and yet he still doesn't mind being on the wrong side of history.
See, my thing is that I think that a large portion of the people who are for things like DADT and a Constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage are partly for it because it strengthens their arguments. I mean, sure, they're for things like that because they're homophobic dickbags, but the bonus is that they can complain about how the GLBT community is full of free-wheeling liars who can't commit. Don't believe them? Gay people have to lie to join the military, don't they? They can't get married, can they?
I spotted people on ONTD_P reading the comments on Fox News for pure schadenfreude, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I've already had a depressing enough week, thank you very much. Also, I posted a DADT TRASHED, YAY! post on my Facebook - a Facebook friended by a number of high school friends and former co-workers who are either in the military or related to military members - and only three people "liked" it. Which I wouldn't give a shit about, except these are the same sorts of people who responded to that numbers meme with the glurgy response about how many servicemen died in Iraq and Afghanistan "to protect our way of life." To which I responded by pointing out the number of innocent civilians who died in a war to protect the way of life in a country they've most likely never been to and have no influence over.
You'd think I'd just delete my Facebook already, honestly. That thing's like a personal disappointment generator.
EDIT: And you know, I was thinking about this yesterday and I think it's a good thing that Obama let it go through Congress rather than writing off DADT his own self. For the far-right folks for whom nothing he does is right -- and God knows there are a lot of them -- the value in anything in which Obama can be pointed to as the main source is given far less credence. (See: The woman who told me on the phones the other day that she'd rip up the $250 rebate check she'd be getting this year for going into the coverage gap because it was coming from his administration.)
As much as I wish he would have wiped it off the map the first day he was in office, I suspect it might have made things worse in the short run than this will, especially considering the repeal passed AFTER the Republicans took back so many seats in the last election. (I think either way it went down, in the long run it would have turned out just fine.)
Basically, it's harder for folks like the woman who shredded $250 of her own tax dollars to argue against the repeal's legitimacy due to Obama's involvement when Obama's pretty much stepped back with his hands in the air and left the dirty work to Congress.
