Aslaug's Axe Shed

Well, not today, but yesterday, as it were.

Yesterday morning was a stunning revelation for me. I got out of bed … rolled out more like it, muttering about breakfast to no one in particular since I wasn’t listening to myself … and plodded into my living room where I plopped down in my chair in front of my computer. So far this is a normal morning.

The next part was normal too. I checked the news from aroudn the world. I mean … I’ve slept for six-seven hours … lots of things could have happened in that time. Usually, a lot of things HAVE happened.

Yesterday morning, what had happened rocked my world in a fairly major way however. I watch Rachel Maddow’s clips from her MSNBC show every morning (or at least, almost every morning) before going to work. I find it rather humorous and I get a good giggle out of it, plus occasionally she’s interviewing someone interesting. Yesterday morning, she interviewed Meghan McCain, daughter of Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain. I admit I would have thought the combination of the daughter of a republican presidential candidate and Rachel Maddow to be explosive in the extreme, but as it turned out, Meghan McCain presented herself extremely well. Her points were highly poignant and, while I admit I found her American Teenage-language a bit tiresome (she is, as she pointed out repeatedly, 24 years old and the word ‘like’ doesn’t have to preface every second sentence) she explained her points well.

Meghan McCain represents the next generation of Republicans and frankly, if THAT is what the future of the GOP looks like I have a huge amount of hope for the future. She was getting interviewed because she spoke up against Ann Coulter and her ilk … the old-guard extremo-conservative Republicans. The type who feels that there is no such thing as ‘too conservative’, and in the specific case of Ann Coulter, no such thing as ‘good manners’ when speaking to people of other religions.

For those who don’t know who Ann Coulter is or what she did, she’s an American Republican, who stands for all the most right wing views found in that party. She is frequeneltly in the media, making statements about this, that or the other … no topic is apparently too small for her to focus on if it allows her to spread her litany of intolerance, prejudice and outright hate … and she is a best-selling author (scary thought but there goes). One of her more recent and more criticized stunts was going on a television debate program with a jewish host, and then stubbornly claiming that she was not being anti-semitic when she told the man … to his face … that he needed to be ‘perfected’ because then he’d be Christian. And that all Christians did, in fact, consider themselves ‘perfected jews’, herself included. It’s the only time I’ve seen a serious American television host turn around to the audience and lambast his guest on air, and then break off the transmission. That’s how insulted he was.

Sadly, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and others like them represent a significant part of the Republican party and they are the ones scaring the living daylights out of me. Fortunately, that segment is dying out … little by little.

Meghan McCain represents the future of the GOP (and she did point out on air that the party wouldn’t really HAVE a future if it didn’t start to realize that extreme viewpoints didn’t win many young voters). She’s pro-gay rights. Pro-stemcell research. Pro-human rights. She’s also pro-military as one might expect from most republicans (and indeed from many democrats) but that’s not a problem in my book. I’m not anti-military. I’m anti-militarism. I’m not against having armed forces. I’m against using them as the first means of solving any given crisis.

I’ll never agree politically with her on the vast majority of issues, but at least she doesn’t frighten me. Much like John McCain never frightened me. I said so, during the election. I actually thought he’d make a pretty good president … but his VP-candidate literally kept me up at night, from sheer terror. 

There are a lot of good republicans out there, with humane views on the world they live in. I’m rooting for them, in this internal struggle that their party is going through … while hoping that people like Rush Limbaugh … Ann Coulter … Bill O’Rilley and other types of the same sort … will not only lose but fade into oblivion over the next decade or so.

Preferably faster.