Getting on the bandwagon

We're suspending our regularly scheduled Thursday Thrashing letter to a US Senate Republican for a special posting on RoundSeventeen.

As you might have heard, today newspapers across the country are taking a pause to stand up for themselves. They're calling for an end to Precedent Shitgibbon's attack on the media and his calling them "the enemy of the people."

I'm jumping on that bandwagon.

Not because I have anything useful or helpful to add, I don't. But simply to express my wholehearted support for our First Amendment and the freedom of speech. Other than my friends, family and 2015 Audi S5 with the 335 horsepower supercharged engine, it's the most precious thing in my life.

It's simple really, I like being able to say what I think and think what I like. And having grown up exclusively in America I can't imagine life any other way.

Of course that's not true for all the inhabitants of the planet. Maybe that's why so many of them want to come here?

There's a lot of talk about American exceptionalism. Particularly from people who wear flag bikinis, keep multiple pocket constitutions, fetishize over guns, and look for every opportunity to shout U.S.A., U S.A..

But if you ask me the thing that makes America exceptional I'd tell you it's the thing that made America in the first place -- the love of liberty. And that starts with the unfettered, unrestricted, unbridled freedom of the press.

And now it's under attack. On a daily basis.

Last week I saw a poll that found more than 40% of our fellow countrymen -- I hesitate to call them American -- are fine with the notion of the president of somehow "handling" or "curtailing" the rights of the press. Funny how for these strict Constitutionalists, the First Amendment takes a broken back seat to the Second. Give those people some free swastika armbands.

Speaking of the Third Reich, in many European countries it is not only forbidden but illegal to deny the Holocaust, say you don't like Jews (though for many it simply doesn't need to be said) or to print or publish anything than can be deemed hateful or Nazi-like. You can be sure that stuff makes my blood boil with the heat of 1000 suns.

And while I may be a fan of the Europeans and their universal health care systems, their free college education, their abundant mass transit and the host of amenities they wisely offer to their people because they understand progress, I simply abhor their laws abridging freedom of speech. Don't have a stomach for it and can easily see how laws like that can put a country on a slippery slope.

In fact given a choice to live in a country with clearly superior standard of living or a country with clearly superior liberties to do and say as I please, I'll take the latter.

U S A!
U S A!
U S A!

Oh and one more thing, FUCK YOU Donald Trump!!!!!!!!!!!