I’m a great big monster liberal. I’m on a bunch of liberal mailing lists. Most of the time it’s rabble-rousing for stuff I can get on board with — the public option, reproductive rights, etc.
But today’s TrueMajority.org email is an example of how we liberals sometimes come across as poncy brats who need a punch in the neck.
Transcription:
Dear Victoria,
Obama wants to freeze spending on everything BUT war.
Tell Congress to show they disagree by not applauding the war in Afghanistan.
President Obama makes his first State of the Union address tomorrow night, and he’s going to call for us to cap spending on everything EXCEPT the military.1
Getting a grip on the deficit is fine. But spending on war and weapons is the FIRST place we should look to save money, not the LAST. Obama’s priorities are backwards, and there’s something you can do about it.
Congress gets the final vote on how to spend tax dollars. And their reaction to the State of the Union — whether they clap or shout ‘you lie!’ — is an important first barometer of opinion.2
So let’s tell Congress not to clap when Obama proposes spending $100 billion on the war in Afghanistan while freezing spending on everything else.
http://act.truemajorityaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=53
Once you’ve told your members of Congress to not applaud for war, make sure to tune in tomorrow night.
Asking members not to clap may seem like a very small action to stop a very big war. But the reaction to this speech is critical. How Congress reacts, and what they react to, will dominate the news after the speech.3
If we watch closely, this will show who’s with us on ending the war, and who’s still willing to spend more on Afghanistan than on educating our children, fixing health care or creating jobs.
Tell your members of Congress that you’ll be watching, and you’ll thank them not to applaud a war in Afghanistan.
-Matt
Two major malfunctions that make me want to gouge my eyes out:
1) If you have a war you better damn well pay for it. You can make a lot of things go away by not paying for them but war is not one of them.
I keep trying to write another sentence here but I start getting really angry and wanting to use the eff word so I’m just going to mention that there are 115,000 Americans in Iraq and soon will be 68,000 in Afghanistan, and I hate these wars so bad and I want our people to come home but by God our people are there and paying for what they need is the rock-bottom least we can do.
I bet a steak dinner you can poll any room and that opinion is the true majority.
2) If you are contacting your congressperson to tell them when to applaud, you are contacting them too much.
Now I gotta go punch something. Not a liberal. But something.
