What I suppose I want most of all this Christmas, Santa, is the end of the bullshit. The bullshit I'm talking about encompasses the phony "War on Christmas" diatribes in the media (Really, folks? You think "season's greetings" is something new? Have you no memory whatsoever?) as well as Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, saving Bush-era tax cuts that crippled the nation's economy (There are worse things than taxes, namely a government entirely incapable of doing anything for its citizens beyond staging elections every two years--how many more Katrina aftermaths do we need?--and elections that are more suggestive than substantive of democracy). The bullshit also includes the clamor on the left to let gays die in unjustifiable, preemptive wars in the Middle East and participate in a decadent institution like proprietary marriage, though, yes, I understand and heartily support the principle that people of all sexual orientations deserve the same rights and opportunities, especially when the scant services the government does provide its citizens are tied to the voluntary serfdoms of military service and monogamous matrimony.
I have little hope of getting what I want most this Christmas, so let me say what I'm happy about--friends whose generosity, intelligence, and kindness move me to tears sometimes, a job I love that is meaningful and important, another year with my dog Tom Ripley, and the Internet, by which I am still free to access all sorts of useful and scandalous information and imagery and sustain a workable illusion of influence, liberty, and power that counterchecks the dispiriting juggernaut of stupidity almost everywhere else in the American mass media, including a good 98% of the available web sites, which I can at least choose to ignore.
Thanks, Santa. You are trying, and that's what really matters, I guess.
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