Change? Where's the F-ing Change?

I think it's time I took a break from watching the news for a while. It's just raising my blood pressure to no good use.

I've been reading a fair amount lately about the things that are going on in Pakistan, and I'm realizing that very little has changed. Far from returning us to the sort of nation we could be proud to be citizens of, it sounds like the CIA assassination squads and the wanton drone attacks and even Blackwater (or whatever they're calling themselves today) are all proceeding apace in this nation which we're not ostensibly at war with.

And by the way, why do we continue to let anyone get away with calling the actions we're involved in in Iraq and Afghanistan "wars" anyway? I know to the soldiers they are, and I don't mean to belittle that, but isn't Congress supposed to have to declare war before we can fight one?

And so we've apparently got three wars going on, two overt and one shadow, none of which were declared by Congress, involving conduct that still makes me cringe to be recognized as an American when traveling abroad. A little less, maybe, because it seems like the people I meet are less inclined to tell me how much they disapprove of our current leadership than they were previously, but how long is that going to last, if we keep doing the things we were doing under the last guy?

Clearly, I can't do anything about it. And just as clearly, my votes don't solve anything, because I voted for the guy I thought would change things, and in many substantive, important ways, he hasn't, and my only other option was the guy I'm sure wouldn't have changed things even as much as this guy has.

On other fronts, we have huge problems with health care, but it appears our only real options are a choice between a watered down "reform" bill so tepid it's unclear whether it will make anything better at all or the other side, which wants nothing more than to shut reform down entirely, because while many of them will privately admit that some reform is necessary, they also recognize that it would strengthen the President, and heaven forbid anyone do ANYTHING in Washington that benefits the people over their own standing.

There is apparently a country in Africa which has proposed a new bill making it a capital offense to have gay sex if one is HIV positive, and a lifetime imprisonable offense for simply BEING gay. It appears that this is the direct descendent of "abstinence only" provisions slipped into President Bush's "African AIDS relief" program in 2003 or 2004, and now the people who were involved in that are distancing themselves as quickly as they can from the result... while never quite being willing to actually tell the African leaders with whom they have so much influence that such laws are intolerable breaches of human rights.

So it's time to take a break from news and try to get back to the fantasy that I live in the country we were all taught as children that the United States is. Better than it is. Nobler than it is.

There are days when I wish I could be one of the mindless patriotism sheep, absolutely convinced that this is the greatest country in the world, and that due to that innate betterness, anything we do is good and just and justified. But I'm not, and I can't be, and I can't unsee that there are multiple sides to any issue, and bad behavior is bad behavior no matter what ends we're trying to achieve.

So goodbye to Fox News and MSNBC and CNN. Goodbye to clicking on random story links on Facebook. Ignorance really is bliss, and right now, with a father recently moved into an assisted care facility and critical health problems in other family members I adore, I could use a little bliss.