Not to be confused with...

I was bored last night.

Here I am, waiting for my last airplane to arrive, and I thought I would Google stuff. Not bad stuff, you naughty doggies, just random things that pop into my mind.

So I googled the term "wingnut". The first entry was from Urban Dictionary, which is a repository of slang terms and their definitions. You can vote up or down on each entry, and it displays them in ranked order from best to worst. Kinda neat, but don't enter just any word. Some of the stuff there is really gross.



Okay, most of the definitions are really gross.



Okay, don't even go to the site, just take my word for it. And I know because of someone at work.



Anyway, according to the top four definitions of "wingnut", the term means someone of ridiculously conservative political or religious views, usually outspoken, and always annoying. Apparently, it's a shortened form of the phrase "Right-wing nut job".

There was also a blog that was hit on my Google search that was talking about his estranged family's crazy views, and this person bemoaned the fact that he was from a "wingnut family".

Nowhere did anyone mention aviation. This saddens me.

I certainly do not want people to make assumptions about my political or religious views because of what my online moniker is.

Today at lunch, I told my wife these distressing findings. After about five minutes of hysterical laughter, she told me that I shouldn't care what people think about me.

She did, however, think it was strangely coincidental, since we were talking about that the other day. A few weeks ago, actually. She likes to point out the fact that she thinks I'm more Republican than I think I am. It's a source of endless debate, that usually ends in me insisting, to the point of raising my voice, that I am NOT like those politicians or those people on TV.

She just giggles and continues to insist that I am. At least more than I think.

I continue to insist that no-one in the government has my blind approval.

I admit, I used to think along those lines. I also admit that my views do trend towards the conservative side of the aisle.

But I don't really like anyone in Washington. My stance in both 2000 and 2004 was that I was reluctantly forced to choose the lesser of two evils. At the time, I tended to agree more with Bush than either of his opponents, and I guess I still do, but I am becoming increasingly more disillusioned with the administration, for a variety of reasons.

I really don't want to get into details, I hate keeping track of politics like that, never been very good at it anyway. Suffice it to say that the foreign policy is not as effective as it should be, nor as flexible as it needs to be. Domestic policy is not even there, really. No-one is working on fixing Social Security, and the immigrant debate is so polarized that it's paralyzing everyone. I don't mean to suggest that these are easy fixes, if that were the case, they wouldn't be problems anymore. But for crying out loud, do something, not just talk.

Don't even get me started on how everyone in the media is cramming the next election down our throats, and it's still over a freakin' year away!

It's no wonder that only about 30% of the population votes anymore. And if you deconstruct it a bit, we know that only the really outspoken people, the ones who are really passionate about their views are in that 30%. And usually, the more passionate you are about your ideas, the more radical you tend to be. I mean, who's ever heard of a passionate moderate?

Only 30% of the population votes because only 30% of the population can really get behind a candidate anymore. That leaves the rest of the nation to follow along, not really liking any of their choices enough to be passionate about them.

I have a hunch. It's a long shot, and a long way away, but I think this is the beginning of decentralizing government in the US. If things in Washington continue the current trend, state legislatures will begin to assert more control, simply because federally, the government is increasingly out of touch with reality. A better way to say it is probably that the diversity of opinion in the United States no longer lends itself well to centralized control. Or maybe the diversity of opinion in Washington DC (or at least the major parties) does not anymore mirror the opinion of the vast majority of citizens.

I'm not a very good "Wingnut", am I?

wingnut