A Global Perspective on an Urban Community: Ocala gets serious about politics and I get serious about pretentious sounding blog titles

 Warning: the content of this post has zero mention of horses (or bayonets) but you can read on about the use of glitter and the better parts of World History as I delve into the dirty world of Ocala Politics.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across some, I suppose the nicest thing to call them would be… drawing a blank here, okay let’s call them humans, standing on the corner with some really incredible, get out there and be an activist, You got this, Standupforfreedomofpostingonyourposter, posters. My initial reaction is not appropriate for posting on this blog but I sure told those folks how I really felt, by rolling down my windows and giving them a piece of my mind. At least that's how it went down in my head, unfortunately the many positive qualities of my car do not include working windows so I had to settle for silent seething as I drove by twice so I could give them...a hand signal the second time around when I was lucky enough to get a red light and really give them the stare down. 
 

In case its hard to read this do it yourself poster says "Obama Socialist Fascism Radical"

 I've seen a lot of posters in my day, I mean anyone who graduated middle school and went heavy on the borders and glitter and light on the writing has seen a poster maybe just like this one. In fact, I bet he picked up the board from Walgreens, or maybe Michaels or Joann's Fabric if he's really crafty and at first I thought, Oh wow it's poster day! You just pick someone you don't like and write their name on a poster and then put some words about them (they don't have to be related or accurate just use a word that sounds intellectual but also kind of sinister) and stand in the center of a bustling downtown.  But to begin with I was troubled by a little grammatical error, in my personal experience, a person cannot be “Fascism” a person can only be fascist, which the writer apparently understood perfectly when he was writing "socialist" but then started getting off track. It’s okay because I understand, I once wrote GOVERMENT on a latin poster. (Can someone get this girl a letter N?! That's what my class was thinking. Awkward...) Maybe he was excited to make the next poster "Honk for the USA" followed by "There are Muslims in the white house" and my personal favorite "Stop the EPA"* but in doing, he had awakened the slumbering giant, the angry English major who occasionally delves into the world of politics even though her blog isn’t really about that. And here's the important difference between my poster and his: I didn't take my latin poster out in public and make outrageous claims about our president in the process, all I did was write an awesome description of the Honorum system and make crisp borders and yes, one tinsy mistake.

 So onto the content of this poster. Before addressing whether or not Obama is a "Socialist Fascism" yeah that sounds pretty bad doesn't it? I'm going to go ahead and argue this radical idea:  no one can be a Socialist Fascist. And I wouldn't bore you with why, I would go on blithley assuming people out there were thoughtful and reasonable, except for the fact that drivers were honking all over the place, as in Honk for the USA, as in if you love your country you love democracy you therefore don't love fascist socialist and you therefore definitely don't love Obama.  I'm studying for the lsats so I know that that is an "if then" statement resulting in a necessary condition, but it doesn't take a logic book for me to figure out that the if and the therefore aren't adding up. So back to high school, (no definitely not Latin because, yeah, the poster ordeal was pretty embarrassing) World History with Mrs. Huffstader (I can't remember the exact spelling, but she was one of my favorite teachers) where we learned about the great ‘ism's’ of history.  Starting with Fascism: a political ideology generally supported by the far right or extreme right with an authoritarian government, think Mussolini, totalitarian government, (check out my correct spelling) and state control. Socialism on the other hand, is characterized by "social ownership of the means of production" (Wikipedia), redistributing wealth, nationalizing the economy, etc (That etc is an easy way out of explaining what in practice is a complicated economic and political ideology, but as a personal blog I'm hoping to inspire the reader to do some research themselves, which I wish I could have said in AP History. Just kidding Mrs. H I love research.... kind of). Anyhow, In my high school history class we had a nifty diagram called a line with Fascism on the far right and Socialism on the far left.  They weren't next to each other, they didn't talk, weren't friends and definitely didn't show up on a poster as neighbors.   

            But I understand that for the intended purposes of this poster, the viewer is not meant to think about 20^th century history, the take home message is that Obama is stifling our economy by overregulation, heavy taxes and burdensome government involvement and this “government take control” idea is something Fascism and Socialism have in common. However, I think that argument is unmerited and untrue.  Luckily I live in a world where people often courteously stop each other to say, “Excuse me but I think perhaps the message of your poster, or the way you cut me off on the highway, or the fact that you cut in front of me in the grocery line was really unmerited and it would do us all a lot of good if we could all hold hands and do things in a more merited way from now on.” And then the other person says “You expect me to be both true and merited? That’s exactly what I was thinking!” Then everyone holds hands (after, obviously, they have gotten their flu shot and Purell-ed and used soap and water especially if they are an employee) and agrees with each other and the use of Prozac decreases dramatically, along with the cost of health care because happiness is the best form of preventative medicine!

Remember in your history text they would sometimes have a totally random page, like Careers in History! Or, soap making in colonial times! This is kind of like that... it's a little cultural glimpse into Ocala called ... Gossipping Ladies! Overheard at Starbucks while innocently minding my own business near some Gossiping Glendas nearby:  "Have you heard rumours? About Megan?" (Now I'm listening, I love hearing rumors especially when they're about people I don't know because then I don't feel bad sharing them, but I'm pretty much guessing on how to spell Megan) "It's been over a year now" Since WHAT?! what happened?? I want to yell across Starbucks. But unfortunately for my intense curiosity I continue to act like a normal person typing a blog post and keep quiet, and as gossiping Glenda number 1 lowers her voice conspiratorially I realize sadly that I will probably never know about Melissa.

* "Stop the EPA" You can't make this stuff up, there is actually an organization out there trying to protect the environment! Its called the Environmental Protection Agency. They don't even try to hide what they're doing. I know, I couldn't believe it either, but it's high time we expose the dark underbelly of the government and the only way to do it is to keep cutting down trees and throwing our recycling into the road in great heaps until things start to improve.