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Comparing Politicians to Hitler Is Stupid

The debate over firearms is bringing out extreme levels of stupidity in people. Right-wingers who think gun control means taking away everyone’s right to bear arms are comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler. Left-wingers did the same to President Bush over his war policies.

It’s the lowest common denominator; the dumbest of the dumb.

Mood music:

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On the Drudge Report, Obama’s picture was lumped in with images of Hitler and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin next to a story about Vice President Biden’s suggestion that Obama will target guns through an executive order. The Hitler comparisons have actually been going on since Obama’s administration began four years ago:

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When George W. Bush was in the Oval Office and debate raged over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the left put out the same suggestions:

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So if you disagree with the president, Republican or Democrat, it’s OK to compare them to a man who sent millions of innocent people to the gas chamber. Wanting to put controls on the type of weapon American citizens can access is suddenly on par with genocide. The logic seems to be that if Obama “takes away” your guns, he is going to invade a bunch of countries next.

I can’t say that I haven’t used the same tactics. Back during the first Gulf War, I used a writing assignment in my college poetry class to compare the first President Bush to Hitler. My professor, who was a lot further to the left than I was at the time, suggested in red marker that I was taking things too far.

When we get angry with our leaders, this is what happens. We go to the extreme.

Frankly, I think both sides oversimplify things. In moments of anger, we turn off the part of the brain that controls reason.

I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life when my anger turned off that switch. I made a lot of extreme statements about our political leaders. But somewhere along the way, I made an effort to grow up and not let my fear and anger override my reason.

I suggest the folks comparing Obama to Hitler do the same.

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Traffic Jam Meditiation

When I was younger and more anxious, traffic jams used to push me to the point of madness. I’d let the f-bombs fly. I’d flip people off (I did that once with my future in-laws in the back seat). I’d punch the roof of the car so hard and so often I’d leave dents and tear the fabric.

Mood music:

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Flashback, 1989: 

It’s registration day at North Shore Community College, where I’m enrolled for the fall semester. I’m just out of high school and angry at the world for a variety of reasons. I’ve been working long hours in my father’s warehouse in Saugus, and I’m rubbed raw. I’m frustrated because a girl I like is getting cold feet about the idea of hooking up with a loose cannon like me. It doesn’t take much to trigger a temper tantrum.

That day I was rattled hard by the long lines of college registration. I wasn’t expecting it and was full of fear that I wouldn’t get the classes I needed. Not that it really mattered, since my major was liberal arts.

Two hours in, I realized I had to give them a check for the courses I was taking. I had no money and panicked. They allowed me to drive to Saugus to get a check from my father. I was in full road rage mode on the drive there and back, crawling up the bumpers in front of me, riding the horn and yelling out the window with tears running down my face. Clearly, the world was coming to an end at that moment.

By day’s end, I was breathing into a bag between the chain of cigarettes I was smoking.

I still get claustrophobic and somewhat anxious in traffic jams. Yesterday was a prime example. I-93 north was a parking lot and it took nearly two hours to get home. I was already tired and under the spell of winter-induced depression.

But I got through it without a tantrum. I’ve developed a nice meditation for moments like these.

I’ve been drinking tea on the ride home, turning the typically hour-long commute into a break time of sorts. I crank up the music and get comfortable. I do a little praying. In yesterday’s case, I prayed for the safety of anyone who might have gotten hurt in an accident up ahead. I did some breathing exercises I learned in a recent mindfulness class.

I was still pissed and cranky when I got home, especially since I had to get right back in the car a short time later to take one of my sons to his Cub Scouts meeting. But I wasn’t a freaked-out madman.

That’s progress I can be grateful for.

I’m also grateful for Erin. I always am, but yesterday, knowing I was thrown behind the eight ball, she did some of my chores for me. That took a load off my shoulders.

Thanks, honey.

Road Rage

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Stoned and Panicked on the Interstate

The memory was buried until yesterday, and frankly I’d have been happy had it stayed buried. Funny thing about suppressed memories — they spill out during the damndest moments, like a drive down I-95 in Maine.

We were returning from a family camping trip near Old Orchard Beach yesterday, and as I drove the camper south, my stare caught the north-bound lanes.

Sometime in the summer of 1991, Sean Marley, a couple others and I sped north into Maine around midnight. We were in my beat-up 1981 Mercury Marque, and Sean was driving. I was in the back, about to have a panic attack thanks to my decision to read a newspaper after smoking weed.

Mood music:

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I can’t remember if Sean was high, but I do remember him being in the midst of some fucked-up sleeping experiments. One phase of the experiment involved him sleeping in a different room of his house each night, the goal being to break himself of the comfort you get from going to the same familiar bed at the end of each day. Another part of the experiment involved not sleeping at all for multiple days.

He was pretty gone at that point and kept chanting “Jesuses penises” over and over. The more he did it, the more unhinged I became. My uneasiness was based on four things:

  • I was paranoid from the weed.
  • It was dark, lonely and scary on that highway — probably because I was stoned and paranoid.
  • Sean was driving my car like an asshole, which had already suffered a smash in the rear from a hit-and-run driver a month before.
  • There was a newspaper in the back seat.

News about scary world events used to trigger my anxiety back then, and this was just after the first Gulf War. A headline in the paper said something about Saddam Hussein having come closer to getting a nuclear bomb than anyone has previously thought. I spent the next week worrying that my corner of the world would go up in a mushroom cloud, courtesy of an evil dictator pissed off over all the bombs we dropped on his country a few months before.

It’s kind of amusing that the headline set me off, given that we would learn 12 years later there were no weapons of mass destruction.

But at that moment in the middle of the night, it seemed like an imminent threat. In reality, the more imminent threat was of the car sliding off the road and into a tree.

Three years later, the sleep and drug experiments caught up with Sean, and he had a breakdown. Two years after that, he died by his own hand, another victim of depression.

I would be done with marijuana within two years of that night, but I’d spend the following decade and a half living with a more muted but persistent depression and continuing bouts of anxiety and panic. I would occasionally lean on pills (prescribed for back pain) and alcohol to numb the fear. More often than not, I would simply shove a massive amount of food down my throat.

But I survived and eventually got well. Now I can travel at all hours and not freak out over it. I might get tired and annoyed, but I don’t get scared. In a way, you could say I’ve come full circle, traveling that same stretch of road clean and sober, hauling a camper with a Chevy Tahoe full of family.

But that old memory still bothers me a little, because it shows how unhinged two close friends were slowly becoming.

Bill and Sean