Kasey Everly's Open Salon Blog

MO: The 'Show Me' (Yer Bewbs!) State is Safe Haven for Scum

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:07:05 -0400

Are you an aspiring rapist? Or do you just occasionally like to fap fap fap to non-consensual-ish videos of women being sexually assaulted? Maybe none of these describe you, but you just like the fact that we live in a society of patriarchal values that consistently undervalues women as sexual commodity. High five, bra!

If you fit any one of these descriptors, son, have I got some great news for you! But before you read any further, rapists, et. al. quickly pack all your belongings from that hole in your mother's basement wherever you live and arrange bus fare to St. Louis. Go ahead, I'll wait...

All set? Ok good. Here's the big news (and laydeez you should really listen up too because this craze is sure to start sweepin' the nation!)

It's called "implied consent," and we have a St. Louis jury to thank for setting it as a new precedent for dudes cravin' themselves a little sexual commodity ever now and then, with a 'lil profit exploitation on the side. Yes indeed, the rape culture enthusiasts of St. Louis have had a very vindicating week, which they enthusiastically celebrated with a Slut-Shame-A-Thon in online forums and the Riverfront Times blog section. Stay classy, Chad Garrison and friends!

Implied Consent is this new court-sanctioned sexual assault thingy that resulted from a recent court decision in which a St. Louis jury ruled against 'Jane Doe', a woman who sued the "Girls Gone Wild" video franchise after, in 2004, they put her in one of their videos despite the fact that she never actually consented to be in the videos. Oh, and there was this one other thing: she actually was sexually assaulted on camera by another woman who lifted up her shirt while the tape was rolling, despite Jane's verbal protestations and saying"no" when they were all "Show us yer bewbs!" But assault, schmault -- she was in the club, okay? And the GGW guys were there! And women who go to clubs where there are dudes filming like to be raped and assaulted on camera for monies. This is common knowledge in St. Louis. Ergo, implied consent.

STL.com breaks down the "completely not mysogynistic, no" rationale of the jury in this news article:

"But Patrick O'Brien, the jury foreman, told a reporter later that an 11-member majority decided that Doe had in effect consented by being in the bar and dancing for the photographer. In a trial such as this one, agreement by nine of 12 jurors is enough for a verdict."

"Through her actions, she gave implied consent," O'Brien said. "She was really playing to the camera. She knew what she was doing."

Now, sisters, you might be wondering at this point: How might I be seen implying my consent, when the words coming out of my mouth might be "No, no" like Jane Doe said? This is a very good and important question. According to the official logic of the Missouri court system (state motto: "Salus populi suprema lex esto" or "The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law" lolz) you may be seen implying your consent doing one or any combination of these things at any time, so be on alert (note: this list is by no means exhaustive):

dancing
standing
chewing gum
walking down the street
eating out in public
having a drink in a bar
hoola-hooping
grocery shopping
walking your dog
walking your hamster
checking your mail
going for a jog
breathing passively in an open space

Here's the clincher: Your 'no, no, no' does not mean jack shit. As long as you're doing these things in a way that might defy typical societal norms on female sexuality (like wearing a scandalous spaghetti tank top like the one Jane Doe was wearing that night -- stay away from those!) then your consent could run the risk of being implied. Also, the Missouri court system is intuitively aware of whenever we set out to act like sluts doing these things, so take caution! Slut-acting is a crime punishable by random rape and/or assault in the state of Missouri apparently.

Haha! Silly ladies! And you thought you were the ones who defined where and when it might be appropriate to expose or not expose your body! I bet you never guessed in a million years that it was actually the state. Ruh-row! Joke's on us, I guess.

On the other hand, this is great news for any number of dudes out there who blame their incessant, inappropriate female harassment and/or serial rapist problem on what women wear, where they go, who they go with, and how they are standing/dancing/breathing at the time. Yes indeed, St. Louis has got the back of classy forum trolling man-types like "Firefighter 627" who reminded us laydeez of this classic fallback mansplain metaphor of male superiority and why "everyday" we are basically all just cows in miniskirts on our merry way to the fap market:

"I wouldn't walk around dressed like a cop or paramedic and then complain when someone asked on the street asked for my help because their car was being broken into or their dad was having a heart attack, yet everyday girls dress and act like hookers but get mad when someone treats them like a hooker."

So, fap on, St. Louis, fap on, firm in the knowledge that you have done your part to make the world just a teensy bit safer for the promotion of our precious rape culture.

My Grandpa the Soldier: Reflections on World War II

Mon, 31 May 2010 21:05:53 -0400

Staff Sgt. Raymond Wright was a decorated veteran of the U.S. Army during World War II. He was awarded the Presidential Citation and the Bronze Star for his service during the Battle of the Bulge.

To me he was always lovingly just "Grandpa."

I was his first grandchild and his only granddaughter, and he was the man who would carry me around in his arms in church on Sunday; who let me put a whole tin full of barrettes in his hair while he laid patiently on the floor with me; who gave the strongest hugs of any man; and who would butcher out loud, terrible, drawling versions of ' Way Down Upon the Suwannee River Far, Far Away' just to get my grandmother (my 'Sassy' as I called her) to give him a frown before saying, "The further the better, Raymond."

He passed away in November, 2007; I miss him everyday.

In 2002, my great aunt, Helen Morris, my grandfather's sister-in-law, interviewed him regarding his experiences in the war. She compiled them into a short narrative based on what he conveyed about his time in Europe serving in the Ninth Armored Division 16th Field Artillery; first at the treacherous Siege of Bastogne, and later as part of the first unit to cross over the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen.

She sent me a copy which I've held onto for the last eight years in a drawer. Although it's difficult to picture him as a young soldier, his spirit breathes through this entire work. I'm very grateful to my Aunt Helen for taking the time to compile this. I figured this Memorial Day would be a good time to share it -- both in honor of him as well as in honor of veterans and active servicemen and women everywhere and their stories.

War Stories: Compassion in Battle

As Told By Raymond A. Wright with Helen Morris

War is not like all the battles as written about or seen in movies. Since war correspondents weren't really in the battles like the soldiers, their accounts do not always show the reality of the courage and compassion even for the enemy sometimes that occurs on the battlefield. Eric Severeid was the only journalist who was there and wrote what really happened and how it happened.

Most soldiers in battle tried not to kill people. They killed to keep others and themselves from being killed. They were humane and would much preferred not to have killed.

Being in a war is an hour by hour, in-the-present thing that has to be done. It is kill or be killed. It is going without sleep or food -- especially sleep -- for sometimes days at a time. After two days without sleep, I found an empty house with a bed. I was ready to finally get some sleep when I was called out to fight one more time; that is what war feels like.

After a particularly terrible battle, when only four soldiers were left alive out of 36 (I was one who survived), we came back to our command post and the colonel in charge, on seeing how few were left, sat down and cried. Officers and men often cared very much about each other.

They sometimes care about what happened to the enemy soldier. When a bridge was taken by Americans, a straggler enemy soldier swam, perhaps mistakenly, to the American side and the officer in charge sent him safely across in the first vehicle to cross over. He may have been taken prisoner later, but he was not killed.

In a farmyard one day, I rounded up a dozen Germans, herded them into a corn crib and padlocked it shut with a chain. Later, after fighting battles all night and into the day, I remembered they were still there with nothing to eat, so I took enough K-rations to feed them. They were so scared that I was going to kill them that their hands were shaking, and they could hardly open the packages.

We would sometimes hear a baby cry, or a woman scream, or some other sounds of distress coming from buildings in the town we were fighting over. We would get them and put them together in one building where we could see that they were fed and were safe until the battles were over. We would have 40 or 50 at a time. We often gave away as much food as we ate.

The Germans used young women, dressed in white in order to be very visible, as guides to show them which direction to fire their mortars and other weapons. Of course, it put these women in great danger. They were shot all the time in cross-fire, so when we saw them, we ordered them to come into safe areas. It kept them from doing their directing job, but it also kept them alive. One girl refused and gave me a really rough time. She would not come off the street, so I hit her face (the only time I have ever hit a woman), her head hit a wall, and she bled all over. She came inside injured but alive. She was saved from being shot by our soldiers, even against her will.

There are a couple times I am sure an angel helped us; I have no doubt about it. Once, a house was suspected of being an enemy hideout, with guns aimed at us. I wasn't certain is was, so we held our fire. A soldier came up to me and said "That house might be full of enemy soldiers and guns." Then he walked to the house, looked in the window, saw it was a hideout, and then walked back to me. No one fired at him! I called for a strike and the house full of armed Germans was taken out.

Another instance when I know an angel helped me and my men was when we came upon a group of Germans obviously ready to fire on us. They outnumbered us, but our officer just boldly walked direcly into the enemy guns. They surrendered without any shots being fired! This was more than a show of bravery. I was sure we had divine protection that day. I am always reluctant to relate these two stories to many people, but I feel as sure today as I did then that angels saved us.

Not all soldiers acted in brave or even rational ways. One day, one of our men was firing a rifle inside the house we occupied. Investigating, I found him firing on innocent German civilians on the street. I yelled at him, and I cocked my pistol. I told him if he shot one more person, I would kill him. He didn't fire another shot, and I didn't have to kill him, but I would have done as I said without hesitation.

I was in a foxhole when I looked and saw a German soldier. In a split second I realized he was going to shoot me, and that he was a young boy of 15 or 16 years old. I fired and killed the young soldier. I had no choice, but I would have preferred over almost anything not to have had to kill that boy -- one of the few times I encountered the Nazi Youth.

Stories I have read and hear over the years about the Battle of the Bulge being fought against old men and young kids are totally untrue. I was there and those storm troopers we fought were the toughest and strongest and smartest Hitler had to use as a last-ditch effort to turn the European battlefront around against the Americans and Russians. A lot of close-range, almost hand-to-hand fighting took place and they were not young boys. In some instances, men of both sides shared foxholes after negotiating their own private "truces" perhaps with a bottle of wine, then each returning to their own side. I witnessed this.

Once, a buddy and I were observing an area when we jumped into a foxhole and straight onto a German. We took his gun and emptied it of bullets. The German jumped out to run, and was hit in the knee by airplane strafing. We grabbed him and told him in broken German that we would get him to an American hospital. Then, he said he wouldn't be in prison, whipped out a pistol, and killed himself. We really wanted to take him alive but couldn't.

Even the soldiers fighting the Battle of the Bulge knew about the jealousy and rivalry among the commanding generals -- Eisenhower, Patton, England's Montgomery, and others. Each wanted to be the hero of the European Operations. Such rivalry was probably responsible for needless battles to be fought and lives to be lost.

The Germans, in the Battle of the Bulge, took U.S. weapons and uniforms off prisoners and dead G.I.'s and wore them to deceive and destroy the U.S. soldiers. So, at times there was a great confusion as to soldiers' identities because these Germans also spoke good English and knew American slang. Passwords were used extensively as a safeguard. I was in a place once where I didn't know the password and feared I would be shot by the guard -- even though he knew me! It took a lot of talking and getting someone else of higher rank to identify me before I could pass through. The guard was ordered to shoot anyone who didn't know the password, and he meant to follow orders. He would have carried them out if his superior officer hadn't known me, too.

One day, we were driving a jeep loaded with ammunition and weapons to a point behind the lines, and along the road we saw a U.S. soldier in the snow with no shoes, feet bleeding. We picked him up (he had to ride on the roof of the jeep because it was so loaded) and when we got to the base camp, the commanding officer couldn't take the crippled soldier in. He had to have all able-bodied, battle-ready men. I ordered the jeep driver, after dropping off the material, to take the soldier to the hospital. I had wrapped him in blankets and just hoped he would be all right.

I heard screaming one day and saw it was a German woman on the street who had crushed her hand with the tongue of a cart. She was in great pain, so I ordered a medic to go down and treat her wounds. This was during a battle, but she needed help and we could give it to her, so we did.

We had some close calls. Germans had covered a crossroad where Americans needed to go through with supplies by using a crossfire method. They fired across one side and then across the other. We needed to go through to get the crossroad cleared by a strike force. My partner and I timed the firing and noticed a short lull between firings which occurred at regular intervals. We went through the intersection in a pause between shots and weren't hit.

Another close call was when I needed to go up a road held by the enemy that was being used to move heavy trucks and equipment. That night, timing is what saved us. We waited and observed that the vehicles were kept evenly spaced, so we went close beside one and our jeep was never stopped or fired on. We did take chances.

After the war was over, I had to stay on for awhile and help process prisoners of war. We had a record of the crimes they had been charged with. Some of them had been hardened criminals even before the war and had committed terrible crimes against civilians during the war. One prisoner in particular had been charged with hundreds of deaths. I was curious to see what such a man actually looked like, so I went down to his solitary confinement cell and looked in through a small window. Our eyes met and I swear I was thrown backwards by his glare. He was pure evil!

Some prisoner's names were on the military criminals list by mistake when they had the same name as a real criminal. We worked to weed out those names and make sure we notified their families that they would be treated well and returned sometime in the future when prisoner exchanges took place. We didn't have to do this -- it was the humane thing to do. It was what we would want done if we were prisoners of war.

We had captured a village and had everything under control when we discovered one building emptying out. Several Nazi officers came out on the street, surrendering very quietly. We shamelessly help ourselves to their shiny pistols. I wore one through the rest of the war.

The political and military minds directing the wars don't have any idea of the feelings and emotions a combat soldier has experienced. War is not really as it is grandly and excitedly depicted in movies and books. It is fought in day-by-day decisions of life or death made by ordinary people like me. Its images stay with you forever.

My Life in Three Sentences: Still Thirsty

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:04:43 -0400

In the past I lived on milk and soda-pop.

Now I live on coffee and wine.

The future will require Metamucil, but there's always the coffee and the wine.

A Sad Day for Boobs and Taiwan

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 01:04:27 -0400

Tonight, I sit here in awe of my boobs; I can't stop staring at them.

Oh fear not, my friends. They are securely holstered at this present moment in their over-the-shoulder-earthquake-prevention holder. However, this week I'm going on a cruise, and there is no telling what might happen once I and the rest of my vacationing sisterhood tie on the 'ol bikini tops. Any form of natural disaster may befall the innocents: a tsunami, maybe a hurricane, a deathly vortex 'o' death, perhaps? It could happen. Us womenfolk fucked up the Garden of Eden just because we loved us some tasty knowledge fruit. You don't want to know what we're capable of loaded up on a few strawberry daiquiris with second rate calypso band on deck. Seriously, you don't even want to know.

So now, I find myself questioning the choice of a bikini top. Perhaps a tank-ini would help mitigate the damage somewhat. At any rate, it seriously got me thinking about the superpowers I never knew secretly resided in my super tits. Here I thought they were just mammaries, and it was a peaceful co-existence, truth be told -- until I realized they were capable of destroying Earth.

The stacked and not-so-much among us owe this new discovery to self-professed liberalgeeknerdfeministathiest pervert Jen McCreight and science. When news first broke that some dumbfuck cleric from Dumbfuckistan or wherever voiced his dubious theorem that female immodesty actually CAUSED FRIGGIN' EARTHQUAKES, YO (paraphrasing) the rest of the world was like, "Whatever, man, boobs still rule, Muslim clerics drool."

But McCreight wasn't satisfied with that reckless response. She is a scientist and is all about "the science" behind things like boobs and earthquakes when she's not scrambling to watch House apparently. She demanded hard evidence. Having none presented to her by said cleric, she did as any decent scientist would do and conducted her own damned boob experiment, you know, for science -- and jokes. The whole thing started as a joke, or so she says, because there's a serious shortage of boob jokes in this world to be certain.

Anyway, McCreight didn't even need beakers, or Bunsen burners, or goggles (well maybe goggles would have been a good idea least one lose an eye or two), or lab coats, or any of that shit. All she needed was a really tight cami and Facebook, so she could rally every pair of boobies she could find and start jiggling/experimenting, and from coast to coast women by the thousands were all "Yay this feminism thing is fun!" and awkwardboners.com suddenly got a year's worth of posts in one day probably.

Of course, because it was all about the boobies, she got her six minutes of fame along with it. Not since Stephen Hawking has the press given this much attention to a scientist's body issues. Ok, so maybe right now Hawking is a bit more famous and slightly more genius, but McCreight is a scientist who has one thing Hawking doesn't have, besides the ability to walk and talk sans synthesizer voice and chew. She has giant boobs and a whole giant boob army, so suck it, Hawking.

Bring it, CNN:

Haha "stack up" -- get it?

So today all the thousands of born-again feminists who previously thought feminism was for lesbians or straight women who can't get dates were suddenly all of one voice that said something like "Hey, Patriarchy -- we're jiggling our tits in your face whether you like it or not because we're feminists now," and Patriarchy was all, "Okay. Lemme get my camera."

And then the most amazing, awful thing happened:

Taiwan had a 6.9ish magnitude earthquake. On Boobquake Day.

Way to go, feminists, for nearly destroying Taiwan.

McCreight, who you would think would feel like total shit right now for causing mass destruction in her pursuit of science and pissing off a Muslim cleric, just said to keep it going. Who really cares about Taiwain anyway when feminism is at stake? She had this to say on her Twitter account, according to yesterday's New York Post:

"On avg, 134 magnitude 6-6.9 earthquakes occur annually. If we get many of a similar magnitude in the next 24 hours, we might start worshipping the power of immodesty."

Well, while McCreight and her dangerous band of boob slapping born-again feminazis decide whether or not they want to stop leveling major world cities, I'm going to go out first thing tomorrow to purchase one of these for every woman on board my cruise because I'm not taking any chances:

RIP, Civility: The Tea Is Toxic

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:04:42 -0400

Why have I been doing so much writing about the Tea Party lately?

It's a question I've been asking myself all week.

Is it so I can be mean? Not really. Sure, it's great material; satire is completely my thing and Lord knows there's an endless mine of stuff that comes out of a Tea Party rally -- any Tea Party rally. Besides, I don't like being mean. Ok, maybe I do sometimes. Just a little, for freedom.

Plus, the Tea Party is everywhere in the news right now. There is barely a Republican Party to speak of anymore it seems like. This "grass-roots" movement -- the origins of which began as a political protest against both party establishments and their support of taxation -- has swallowed the GOP whole. Or is it the other way around? Either way, they are now one in the same. When I think of the Tea Party and Republicans now, in the wake of health care reform passage, the only appropriate image that seems to come to mind is one of that dragon swallowing its own tail -- where does one end and the other begin?

Speaking of taxes and the Tea Party, it turns out in this latest poll that tea-partiers aren't even really all that upset at the taxes they pay anymore. They think their taxes are mostly fair. Imagine that. So, what exactly are they mad about again?

There are debates as to how exactly the whole Tea Party thing got started, but any assertion that they are still non-partisan, or even exclusively grass-roots anymore, is patent absurdity. Whatever "patriot" anger might have existed in the beginning toward conservatives, it's apparent now that it has been quelled by the sheer star power of visible conservative celebrities like Sarah Palin -- whom the tea-partiers practically worship in her coifed bespectacled perfection -- and more behind-the-scenes figures like former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Army of FreedomWorks, whose group basically serves as a hub for Tea Party organizing across the country, according to a recent article in the Atlantic. Well, sort of behind-the-scenes. I guess Army is going to be key-note speaking at a big rally in Atlanta, or so this article says. He's no rock-star like Palin, but still. Has anyone heard of a liberal Democrat speaking at any of these events anywhere? If so, kindly correct me.

Still, none of that answers my original question. After some pondering, I believe the reason why I've taken such an interest in the Tea Party is way more personal than political.

I moved back home with my family this summer after living in Washtenaw County on my own for several years. I'm in school full time, trying to finish my degree at Eastern Michigan, and it just made no sense to go deeper into debt than I already am just to live solo. Expecting to find a somewhat quiet existence back in Howell, instead I found I moved back to some sort of a nasty political war zone where my relatively harmonious town where I grew up used to be. I read articles about state and national politics online in the local paper and the comments section is just riddled angry pockmarks. The Democrats have their health care reform victory parties on one side of town, and the Tea Party folks have their rallies, which they are so kind as to invite the Republican leadership to attend, on the other. What sits in between is a wide open field of aversion, paranoia, and genuine mistrust.

Here's an example:

Howell Public School Board Trustee and well-known Tea Party leader Wendy Day is probably going to completely lock up her Facebook page now after reading this, but I really don't care what she does. It's open now and I'm using it, and besides, she's a public official and I consider it worthwhile for people to know. In her status message from last Monday she quotes Gandhi, of all people: "Regarding the Tea Party crashers: 'First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.'"

Now, setting aside for a minute her unintentionally ironic use of a disputed Gandhi quote -- this from a woman who just three weeks ago evoked such battle rhetoric in the name of fighting health care reform that she almost straight-up channeled Gen. Eisenhower on D-Day -- take a look at what one of her Facebook friends wrote when the thread became this written back-and-forth on whether or not conservatives can or should be friends with liberals. One guy, who I'm not going to embarrass any more than he has already embarrassed himself by naming him, writes:

"I have great hope ... in knowing that if it comes [sic] a civil war to win back the Republic and sound Constitutional principles it will likely be the Conservatives vs the Liberals or Gun owners vs the anti gunners... I have a number of friends that have a different background than mine but I have no friends that are out to destroy my country."

Day has shrewdly kept silent during this mini-forum, which did include self-professed "liberals" who were puzzled by some of the responses. I see it as an excellent example of how deep the level of -- what word is even appropriate to use here -- malevolence -- certain Americans have for each other in what has become an utterly toxic political wasteland.

This goes way beyond healthy dissent. This is one neighbor speaking about another neighbor. Seriously. We are not each other's enemies -- not like that; we must never become like that. Personally, I was rather disappointed, but not at all surprised, that Day made no public admonishment of such an insurrectionist style statement on her page, but whatever. It's her page, I guess.

Another Tea Party leader who I know personally is Glenda Brown of the 912 Liberty Tea Party of Western Livingston County. Before I thought of making this into a blog piece, I intended to write Brown personally, but I couldn't locate her email and her Facebook is on complete lock-down -- no messages, period. I know Brown from the many years I attended Howell Church of the Nazarene as a kid. She has a daughter the same age as me, and another one slightly younger. We all grew up together and our parents were friends.

When I covered her Tea Party rally at the Howell Freshman Campus and turned it into a satire of sorts, I did it in part because some of it was just funny, but also because there was something inside of me that made me sad from seeing Brown and all those Howell Naz people there, with me on one side, and them on the other. Humor is always how I've dealt with sad. Thankfully, I guess, God has sent me enough sad on which to sharpen my humor skills to the angle of a samurai sword.

What I find sad is that good Christian people, like my parents, now have to be very choosy about where they attend church on Easter Sunday because they know they will feel a sense of displacement in the churches where they used to go because, although they are not that much involved in politics beyond voting, they are no longer firmly ensconced in the hand of the conservative right (Eight years of Bush was enough to cure that for them).

There is some real isolation to be felt for evangelicals who are not political conservatives, let me tell you. During the last presidential election my parents attended one local service where the minister devoted the entire sermon to politics and strongly inferred that voting for Obama was an unchristian act. As a believer, how on Earth do you respond to this? As if all these previous bonds shared over Christ's love have somehow magically been erased in the name of declaring oneself "on the right side" of the politics war. Seriously? We can't even sit in a pew together now? How shameful and sad -- for everyone. Somehow, I don't think this is at all what Jesus had in mind.

There is nothing immoral in choosing to separate one's political beliefs with one's spiritual life, but you wouldn't know that with the kind of example Brown sets, who disallows any "liberals" from joining her organization's website. If she won't even welcome them in so-called cyberspace, what reasonable hope would a liberal have of feeling welcome in her church? I find it all so hypocritical, to be perfectly honest. It's no wonder church attendance is down everywhere from decades past.

What makes me more angry than anything is there are people in the upper echelon, mostly in media, who are getting downright rich off being irresponsible minions of misinformation as our little towns burn to the ground in angry rhetoric. People like that assclown Glenn Beck, who made a reported $32 million last year pimping out hate as a means of empowerment for any intellectually lazy slob who will listen. If you really want an inside bio on what an obnoxious creep Glenn "Miscarriages Make Hilarious Punchlines" Beck is, read this three part article from a guy who wrote his recent biography.

Palin has earned over $12 million since she quit her job as Alaska governor last July.

I'm not even going to talk about Rush and his momentous earnings because it's a practical cliche anymore and I might very well end up giving myself a coronary.

Look, I'm all for making money. What I'm not for are celebrity ideologues who sweep down from atop Mount Moneybags and claim to know what it's like to live in the trenches, all the while making more money off that very message. It makes us all look like fools.

People, we are all Americans, period. First and foremost. My grandfather's grandfather fought for the Confederate Army in the Battle of Shiloh and walked home to Alabama a miserable couple hundred miles in abject defeat. Decades later, my grandfather was there in 1945 pushing back Nazis on the Rhine River during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. My father was in the US Navy on an aircraft carrier in the Philippines during Vietnam.

Granted, my grandfather was drafted into the Army, but I'm sure he also had personal reasons for why he fought. I can't say for sure what the exact reason was, and he's gone now so I can't ask, but I'm pretty damn sure it wasn't so he could see his country devolve into the kinds of Civil War style divisions you see the right wing dangerously flirting with today in its strategic rhetoric.

After decades of supporting the Republican establishment, my father now supports Obama and the health care bill -- he also works an every day job just like everyone else and pays his taxes. Does this make him one of those "liberals" out to destroy his own country? What about my high school friend who is also in the military now and spent years fighting over in Iraq, but who also sees the hope (yeah, I said it) in Obama's change? Is he just some socialist enemy of the state? Obama won the election by a popular majority vote of the electorate -- are we all just flat out socialist, Marxist country haters?

Oh I get it. We just don't know what you know. You have access to special damning evidence. That's what gives you the right to label me and everyone else. If you think it's that simple for those who disagree with you -- for anyone in my family or anyone else, for that matter -- you may still call yourself an American as is your birth right, but you certainly don't deserve the honor.

Authors Note: This article originally appeared in LivingstonTalk.com.