In Defense

As I've noted, I write and comment from time to time on Blog Critics Magazine.
The following is a response to an article and comments to same posted there concerning Obama's State of the Union address and his presidency in general. While the article avidly supports Obama nearly to the point of mindless adoration, most of the comments are negative in the extreme. Another commenter, who remains in support of Obama wrote that she thought all the negativity came from greed and fear. I wrote what follows - with just a few tweaks here and there for this venue:

"No, I don't think it's either greed or fear. Well, I suppose we all are subject to fear at some level. There is much we don't understand.

I think much of their rhetoric is, as I suggested above [in a prior comment], born of cynicism. I think we should be cynical to a point. Many people lie behind a smile and a handshake.

I don't, nor did I ever believe that Barack Obama was or is our deliverance. However, I look upon him as a source of some change. Not wholesale change. Not dramatic change, but change nonetheless, and for the better. It is likely to be incremental.

The nihilists who spread their messages of gloom and doom amongst the pages at Blog Critics and elsewhere feel - honestly, I presume - that pretty much all is lost - that this country of ours is, in a word, doomed. That the only means of saving it is to bring it down.

It is they who are naive. They believe their cynicism renders them superior and makes them wise. They are naive to believe that great changes can come somehow peacefully, or even relatively so. Or if not naive, then they are romantics who have watched far too many doomsday movies and/or played too many such video games, and who fancy themselves as the invincible hero in some dark soul blasting hell war.

In this, naivete once again rears its garish head, as they believe that such a purge would have the effect of some magical cleansing that would perhaps, if justice prevails, leave the world at the mercy of their wisened hands that will bring about peace and prosperity for all in a capitalist utopia.

Well, that's a load of crap. Wake up and smell the manure that emanates from your minds, down through your fingers and on to cyber world. You are the very soul of the worst of the conspiracy theorists who see bogeymen around every corner, behind every piller and post, and you are the source of mass negative energy that serves no useful purpose other than to massage your own egos. Enough!"

Now, I suppose my comments are a bit overblown and perhaps qualify as purple prose to some extent, but sometimes you must say what you feel. It's good for the soul. No?

TLS