Grown/Up '08

I'm watching this debate and just choking on it. I'm fatigued, and I can stay angry for days at a time, lurching forth to every debate finding new variations on the theme of Evil People Failing.

To you conservatives bemoaning "redistribution of wealth": Do you have any idea the actual planet you live on? The economy we're saddled with? If the next President doesn't raise taxes, we're well and truly fucked, and all that wealth the top percentile has accrued will dry up before it has a chance to never trickle down under the purview of your regimes.

Also, taxes are not inherently more "socialist" just because they're higher rather than lower. Taxes are taxes. They're your ticket to living in this country. Deal. There are legitimate class warfare concerns to be contended with when considering raising taxes on the super-rich, but the relative "wealth" of Joe the Plumber (those millionaire plumbers!) is redistributed into spending on tanks, or programs to encourage our kids to get successfully knocked up, that is, of course, under your regimes.

Again, any political or economic policy not considered in relief against the actual circumstances is bound to fail, just as any version of spirituality that doesn't teach you to find value in people isn't really spirituality at all.

Christ, Republicans. You may be right that government should be small, that taxes should be low, and that states should have the right to their own sovereignty, mostly undeterred by the Federal Government. Certainly, I don't believe in the latter, on some very specific issues. On social issues, on science, on education, on a whole horror-house of perpetually urgent issues, you are the party of Destruction, with a very big D.

Either way, if the above enumerated values are yours, you ought to be disgusted by W. and terrified of McCain/End Times.