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 |  Opinions are like Blogs, everybody's got one |
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Every so often I have a thought or two, I might as well write them here...they may be political thoughts (I hate war, polluters and thieves), or thoughts about American culture (which I wished we really had) or even religious thoughts (I don't play favorites)...but you're invited to see these thoughts of mine right here. Comments are welcome... |
| Corrupt politicians are not a new phenomena for Americans to deal with, in fact it perhaps comes with the territory. When a political party gains entrenched power sooner or later corruption emerges, it’s happened with the Democrats, most recently during LBJ’s heyday, and now it’s happening to the Republicans. The only thing we Americans can do is to change the government from time to time, because it’s obvious the government officials themselves will do little to police their own kind, preferring to keep power they repeatedly will sweep indiscretion under the carpet, hoping the stink won’t stick to them and will go away after awhile. For the last twelve years Republicans have portrayed their elected leaders as being strong on moral values, this was made easier for them to do when Bill Clinton dallied with Monica Lewinsky. Republicans claimed Clinton’s actions showed a weakness of character, and it probably did from some kind of Christian standpoint. Republicans wouldn’t be like Bill Clinton they promised their base of voters, Christians with Christian sensibilities, who suitably responded by electing these stalwarts. But power will corrupt and now we’ve the likes of Mark Foley, Tom Delay, Ney of Ohio, McCluskey of California and the list will probably go further the longer Republicans wield power. It is to be expected, it is no surprise, and it underscores the need we have for a good two-party system so we can get rid of corruption regularly. I expect in November we’ll see a change. As a lifelong Democrat I’ve always wanted to see a Democratic majority in Congress and a Democrat in the White House. I was raised a Christian and I’ve always believed the Democrats have done a better job than Republicans when it comes to helping the poor and disadvantaged, something Christ was always big on. After twelve years of Republican majorities, we have a degraded environment, pitiful education of our children, a wasting protracted war, a crisis in health care, and a tax burden larger than anything in our nation’s history. We also have a weakened middle class, lower wages and a loss of American jobs to overseas locations where workers are paid a fraction of American wage levels. Rich people have gotten a lot richer and there are more and more poor people all the time. The Wal-Mart model of business efficiency is gaining in popularity, meaning the working class have no recourse but to be denied tenure, lose benefits and continue their downward spiral toward destitution. I think the Republicans like it this way, it represents a new plutocracy, the very rich like having a sizable pool of undereducated, poorly organized servant-classes. My feeling is American prosperity should benefit the majority of Americans, not the rich minority. I think a prosperous nation should do everything in its power to provide affordable health care to its citizens, that it should protect worker’s rights, protect the most vulnerable (our children and elderly citizens), and not turn a blind eye to the rest of the world just because we’ve no business interests to protect. Ronald Reagan was fond of saying America should be like a brightly lit city in the middle of darkness, but after all these years of Republican rule all we have now is a brightly lit gated community. The only freedom not under attack is the freedom to get obscenely rich off the backs of the increasingly poor, the freedom to rape and pillage the earth regardless of the degradation, and the freedom to incarcerate or kill anyone who disagrees with us. We are moving toward a totalitarian state, we’re not there yet but that’s the direction we’re heading. As Americans we need to change the course. I recognize Democrats can be just as bad as Republicans, but I think we need to vote Democrat this time, to save our country, our freedoms and our way of life. The current imbalance of power in our country is not doing us any good in the long run, I’d like to see a balance return, an America the Beautiful the rest of the world looks up to as a model for the way things should be instead of as an enemy. The Republicans are rightly accused of fostering a climate of corruption. Throw the bums out! |
| A lot of people think the Ten Commandments, given supposedly to Moses by God Himself, are old hat. But there are those who think these God-given laws should be tattooed on every child’s hand, posted on Government buildings, etc., so we don’t ever forget how God is prepared to kick our everlasting butts if we don’t toe his Divine line. In an attempt to placate both parties, those who no longer believe they are relevant and those who look forward to sinners burning in hell-fire while they play harps and frolic among the angels, I am taking it on myself to update the Ten Commandments. Because our ruling party are all stalwart Christian believers I have slanted it a bit in their favor. The New Ten Commandments: 1. The original first commandment among Christian Protestants (who I think do still protest overmuch) was “You shall have no other Gods before me.” I’ll change this one to read “You shall worship the same God as your President.” This will make it clear we don’t have to believe all those yahoo Jews and Muslims who claim their God is the same one as ours. If they want to go to church with our President then we maybe can believe they worship the same God, but if they persist in building their mosques and synagogues then it’s pretty clear we’re in the right if we choose to bomb the Hell out of them. 2. The second commandment was not to make any idols of God, but that’s ridiculous, just look at all the crucifixes of Jesus, the Pieta, the Sistine Chapel, etc., we’ve been making idols of Jesus and God for centuries. I think the new second commandment should read, “You shall not make any idols of any Gods not okayed by Congress.” In fact, the television program “The American Idol” should be judged by Congress, especially since they can’t seem to be able to get anything else done and must have plenty of time on their hands. 3. The third commandment involves blasphemous use of the Lord’s name (or names, since we’ve got several Gods, some even including the Virgin Mary in the list). I think this is a good commandment and should include cute attempts to sidestep the commandment such as: Dad blast it, doggone it, heckfire, Jiminy Crickets and jeeze Louise. The new Third Commandment should therefore read: You should wash out anyone’s mouth with soap if they blaspheme any of our Gods (see the first commandment), even if they don’t actually say it and are just thinking it, in fact to be on the safe side just wash out everyone’s mouth with soap at least three times a day and toothpaste doesn’t count as soap. 4. The fourth commandment advises us to observe the Sabbath and keep it holy. This one is definitely in need of overhaul, for crying out loud the original Sabbath God wanted us to observe was on a Saturday. The new fourth commandment should be: If you’re not in church on Sunday (no exceptions) you shall be horsewhipped, unless you’re at an official NFL tail-gating facility or watching Nascar. 5. Honor your father and mother is a good start to a modern commandment, but it doesn’t go far enough, the new one should state Congress’ and our President’s commitment to rich folks’ rights, how about: Honor your father and mothers investments, and do not tax them in any way so as to diminish the pile of their heirs one red cent. 6. “Thou shalt not kill,” while seeming to be fairly straightforward, needs to be clarified. Perhaps, Thou shalt not kill anyone other than the evil-doers designated by the President as our enemies, and then kill the hell out of them with the assurance this won’t effect your future as a harp-playing angel-frolicker. 7. The seventh commandment is about committing adultery, this is defined as having sex with anyone other than your spouse and it just doesn’t go far enough in these modern days. The new seventh commandment is as follows: If you didn’t marry your spouse in the President’s church you better not have sex with them, and that includes not having sex with animals, your or anyone else’s children, your paperboy (pages and interns fit in this category), people with the same sexual equipment as you, stumps, manhole covers and warm pumpkins. 8. “You shall not steal,” is the eighth commandment and is just too narrow a definition anymore. It might make more sense if this were to say “you shall not steal the stuff of people who are richer than you are,” this would let a lot of good people off the hook for influence peddling, pension raids and war profiteering. Jesus said “the poor will be with us always” and the President the Congress are seeing to it that it stays that way by taking more of the poor peoples’ money and lining the pockets of rich cronies who gave them big campaign contributions, under that old commandment this would be a sin, under the new commandment it’s a big thumbs-up and good for the economy. 9. The ninth commandment is for us not to bear false witness against our neighbor, which if you live in a gated community, safe from riff-raff, makes sense. But if you hope to win an election it should be plenty okay to lie through your teeth about the other candidate running against you. The new commandment uses some of the language of the old one with some added guidelines: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor unless he’s running against you on the Democratic ticket. 10. The tenth commandment, historically, was all about coveting things, like your neighbor’s house, his wife, his maidservant, etc., but when you think about it doesn’t this run counter to the American way? Of course it does, without good coveting we wouldn’t have Entertainment Tonight, or advertising, or Divorce Court. If you couldn’t covet your neighbor’s hot wife, you’d have little chance of exchanging your old tired wife with your neighbor’s much sexier and younger model. I’d say do away with the tenth commandment completely but then you’d only have nine commandments, which would never fly. So I guess the tenth commandment should be changed too, so far the only thing I’ve come up with is “You shall not covet your neighbor’s dog, or his doghouse,” which I’m prepared to leave it at unless I get some better suggestions. That about does it for the ten commandments. I was thinking about next taking on the Bill of Rights, but when I Googled it I noticed it was a really long list of things and I decided I’d wait and tackle it after the President is through shortening it. |
| I was depressed, you know, not really depressed, just kind of. See, I had a going problem, though my doctor told me it was a growing problem. See, I had an enlarged prostate. So I took Flonase, or Flomax, or one of them anyway and voila! I was cured. No longer did I have the problem of incomplete emptying (my biggest bugaboo), and I also got rid of weak stream, going several times at night, etc. Of course there was the diminished semen thing, and the fainting. I knew I’d faint some from taking those drugs, so I was ready for it. I wore a kind of armor of pillows, so when I fainted I would be cushioned. I could have fainted more, I’m sure, there are a good many men out there who’ve fainted a lot more than I did, I guess. But going to work swathed in pillows has a kind of limiting effect when it comes to new sales. My old customers were fine with me showing up like some Sumo wrestler wearing a couch, but the new ones may have been put off by it. They may also have been put off by my piss-cup, which I had to carry before I was medicated, but hey, I’m a boomer, these things happen. Besides I only fainted a couple of times, usually after closing, and my fainting didn’t change the outcome hardly at all. At least I hope so, I don’t remember, since I fainted. As far as the diminished sperm output, who’s to know? I mean who measures your sperm output? Sure I might have filled buckets before and now I’m just passing a teaspoon, but that’s kind of private info, isn’t it? I’ve never had a woman complain, “gee, I only got one earring out of that.” Besides, any woman who values pearls over honest South African diamonds or an Escalade is rare indeed. Anyways, I’m glad I got turned onto the Flonase thing. Runny noses is a small price to pay. Want a date? I’ll try not to faint before I’m through completely emptying. Besides you got your problems too, with the hot flashes and all, and face it, neither of us are candidates for the trophy case. Pardon me right now, I got to go pee, we’ll talk more later when I’m through emptying, hold that thought… |
| How wonderful an image it was for our President Bush (“Ah’m not a divider, Ah’m a uniter”) when he stood between Pakistan’s dictator Musharref and Afghanistan’s American puppet Karzai after a “working supper” to iron out their little differences. They’re no closer to any agreement, they dislike each other for good reasons. Pakistan’s leader is playing both sides of the deck, he supports the Taliban and seems to support America. Karzai has no choice in the matter, he wouldn’t even be a petty warlord in Afghanistan if is wasn’t for America. Pakistan protects Bin Laden while pretending to go after him, Karzai is afraid to go outside of Kabul, since he’d be killed and we can’t protect him. My point is we are losing the war in Afghanistan, even after we’ve declared victory there. One thing about the Taliban, as hidebound and Southern Baptist as they are, they didn’t allow the growing of poppies and the processing of heroin. Yet since our “victory” in Afghanistan they have had two of the very best years of poppy-growing and heroin-producing in history. You got to wonder if the CIA is filling their coffers with the bumper-crop’s profits, the Republicans have allowed that to happen before, the Iran-Contra debacle during Reagan’s regime is a good example of moral folks making big money and political hay from drugs. But that isn’t my point, we are now losing the war in Afghanistan, just like we are losing the war in Iraq. We can’t control any part of either country, we could throw any number of troops at the problem and we still would fail to control anything. Our president is fond of calling himself a “war President” but he’d be closer to the truth if he called himself a loser, regardless of the great power he has amassed over his own people, he’s losing wars to people who don’t care about the freedoms he takes from Americans. They are winning, Bush is losing, case closed, simple as that. I don’t care how much Bush’s efforts have interdicted the Al Qaeda’s infrastructure and leadership, he hasn’t been able to stop them doing what they want to do. When they want to kick our asses again in New York, or Los Angeles, or Baltimore, Seattle, or Galveston, they’ll do it, they’ll find a way. And the bonus for all those terrorists is the new training ground Bush set up for them in Iraq, as pointed out in the recently-leaked secret document. Those terrorists, a fuck of a lot more of them than we had to deal with on 9/11, will find a way to make Bush be glad he’s safe in Crawford. But he’s responsible for the death they’ll bring us and he’s powerless to stop any of it from happening. We will lose the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban will be back on top, and Iraq will dissolve into a horror we can’t get away from fast enough, with lasting results to our global standing and the safety of our people. A war-making President doesn’t have to have any sense, obviously, and don’t forget to support the poor troops he’s killing off since he’ll keep them there until he leaves office and someone with some sense takes his place. When the shit hits the fan here in America, I hope the cocksuckers who voted for Bush are satisfied by what they’ve done. What I hate is we’ll have deserved all of the ugliness to come because we were stupid and put our trust and our votes in someone whose only agenda was enriching his cronies. Think I’m wrong? Check out the bottom line for oil companies, not to mention Halliburton. Bush is both a uniter and a divider, he’s united all the Moslems in the world against us, while dividing his own country. The only bad part is we’ll all suffer for his mistakes, not just the fools who voted to keep him in power. |
| Pope Benedict has backed away from his statement about “spreading Islam by the sword,” he’s sorry he mentioned any of that sentiment, regardless of the truth, supplied by crazoid Muslims proving him right. This is a message to all nut-ball Muslims everywhere (and I guess from the leaked secret document there are more of you than ever before), the best thing you can do for your religion and the world in general is to blow the fuck out of yourself. It’s sad you’ll take out a bunch of kids, housewives, shop-keepers, etc., but go for it. The more of you people who blow themselves up, the less we’ll have to deal with in Duluth, so have at it! It’s not as easy for you to find good IED’s here in the continental US of A, lot’s easier for you to blow up your car and a bunch of Iraqi cops there in Baghdad, so I encourage you to push the button every chance you get. Every jack-an-ape of you who blow the car up is one less nut-ball we have to deal with here, or in Yemen, Kenya, Somalia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Iraq. While it’s true the folks in Terre Haute, Indiana, voted for Bush, there is no reason to try and blow the fuck out of those corn-loving Christians. It’s far better for you to take some Sunnis with you, or Shiites, or even Kurds there in Iraq. So get out there and vote with your immortal soul, I’d say vote often, but the way ya’ll vote you only get one chance. The more of you shit-heads blow yourselves up, the better it is for our Presdent, the better for oil, the better for Amuricans, so get after it!! I wish you had a nuke you could unleash, or some horrible biological plague, after all anything which could bring our troops home faster is a good thing. We don’t like this war, we like it even less that our boys from poor families are being killed there, but it could be worse…we could be losing boys from good families deserving of major new tax-breaks. You can’t kill yourselves fast enough, so try harder!! |
| Thursday I worked on my seventh covered bridge. Here in Oregon there are many old covered bridges and it’s been my privilege to work on seven up to now. Since we’ve a wet climate it’s amazing so many of the old structures survive. They are being protected now since they’re such a beautiful part of history. Many of the bridges are still used heavily, especially by log trucks. Being up on the roof of a covered bridge when a truck goes through emphasizes the ability of wood to flex and return to form. The roadbed is usually made of wood planks, the cross members over the water, too, are big timbers, usually from whole trees, hewed square on the site and placed across the river or stream. I’ve been on the roof of almost all of the bridges I’ve worked on. I have to admit I’m less and less comfortable being up there, even roped in. This time we were stripping off the old roof, down to the rafters. The old shingles were slippery, which made the work full of tension, especially in my 57 year old legs. Even roped in I don’t want to fall, I’m almost more comfortable not being roped in. OSHA, the occupational safety people, want me to be roped in, in a harness, a secure line attached. Being roped in my whole focus is on the roof and staying on the roof. I did well up to breaking for lunch, but after lunch my knees started getting wobbly, and when we’d finally got the roof stripped off I went down for a break. Wobbly legs are not a good thing to have up on a roof. The fall off the roof into the water below, or shoreline, etc., was about 35 feet down, but my focus had not been on the scenery, the beauty of the waterway, the vistas up and down stream of trees overhanging the stream. And yet when I went back up to secure metal clips to the rafters I decided to forego the safety line. Standing on the top cord, as they call it, the main beam running the length of the top of the wall, the thing the rafters are sitting on, I felt comfortable. And the odd thing was how much I enjoyed looking down at the water below, and the beautiful shoreline. It was kind of a discovery, a reinforcement to me personally about why these structures are so valuable, they are a wonderful part of the of a beautiful environment. I’m just sick of being on the roof all the time, even with the great view. I was invited back the next day to install the nailers. Nailers are attached to the rafters, and shingles are then nailed into them. I decided I’d had enough of the roof. As I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten more sensitive to heights for some reason, I have less and less tolerance to the tension, I guess. But I’m glad I got a chance to work on my seventh covered bridge, with any luck there’ll be an eighth and ninth, maybe they’ll need a ground-person, even a flagger, I’m sick of being on the roof. By the way, check out this contest!!
I am helping out as a judge for the contest. |
| When the cartoons showed up in the Belgian press, the Muslims went apeshit. When the Pope talks about Muhammed winning converts by the sword, the Muslims go apeshit. Face it, we have no clue what those folks are going to do, except go apeshit, again and again. The fact we have no clue is part and parcel for why the Bush Administration is over its head in Iraq. They thought they knew what would happen there, based on logic, hopefully, well, logic and bad intelligence. We thought after we’d knocked off kingpin Hussein the rest of the country would throw roses at us, ala France’s liberation in WWII. When that didn’t happen we were surprised, it didn’t follow the model. The point I’m making is we don’t have the model, the model isn’t something we understand. The Pope didn’t understand the radical Islamic model either, obviously. We folks in the West think we’ve got it figured out and we don’t. I don’t think we ever will, but I think we’ll suffer from this non-understanding. 9/11 is a good case in point about our suffering from non-understanding. We’ve been through Southern Baptist radical Christianity. Back in the day those folks ruled the South, and still do in many areas. They were against going to movies, which they proclaimed as sinful, dancing, too is sinful. We laugh now at how backward those throwback Puritans were, how modern times left them behind. Radical Islamics are cut from the same cloth, only they have a stranglehold on their cultures the Southern Baptists could only hope for. Western images on the internet are anathemic to the radical Islamics, women should only take off their masks for their families and husbands, yet in our country we worship women flaunting their sexuality. Glossy lips, cleavage barely concealing nipples, hips moving to dance like they’re engaged in sex, all these things are totally frightening to the new Southern Baptists radical Muslims. All of it represents the devil’s work, the destruction of society, the downfall of holiness. We’ve forgotten holiness, which I’m glad for, since I hate repression. The Muslims thrive on repression, for without it they’ve lost control of their world. This is the battle of civilizations we are up against. It is a battle we can’t win, a battle only the Muslims can lose, there’s nothing we can do to make them lose, they’ll have to lose it on their own. They are not keen on losing the battle, not keen on accepting the changes new technology foists off on them, they are clinging to their hidebound beliefs even if it means they’ll kill themselves for their cause. We’re not willing, nor have we ever been willing, to go that far. Suicide is a sin for Christians, a blessing for Muslim extremists. We’re trying to drag these people, kicking and screaming and blowing themselves up, into the modern era, they are resisting. We can’t make them do it, talk of freedom further infuriates them. We’re stuck. And yet we’ll continue to poke a stick in their eye because we’re addicted to their oil. The longer we keep poking them, the longer they’ll poke our eye out in return. As long as we need their oil we’re up against it. Like I said before we can’t make them change, they’ll have to do that for themselves, or not. Like any addict all we can do is suffer until we’ve cured ourselves of our addiction. |
| “Stay the course,” our President advises us, “support our troops fighting for our freedom,” etc. Yet the Republican congress votes to limit funding for the great majority of injuries sustained by those same troops fighting in Iraq. The Veteran’s Administration claims only 800 cases of Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) since the inception of the war, yet the truth is as many as 150,000 troops suffer from TBI as a result of our nation-building experiment. What does this mean? First of all it means our government is covering up a huge problem that would be adverse publicity. Secondarily and more important it means there will be many folks impacted for years, families will suffer and we taxpayers will be supporting those families. The facts behind TBI’s are pretty simple, explosives in the form of IED’s are mainly responsible. Even if a soldier doesn’t lose a limb when that car-bomb goes off, the brain sloshes around inside the skull, creating damage to many of the normal functions of the brain. Memory loss is one way it is manifested, cognitive dysfunction another, paralysis can also be a result. There are other causes, excessive speeds to avoid being targeted and having accidents, being close to concussive explosions like mortar fire. But it is clear the main injury, the “signature injury” of the war in Iraq is soldiers suffering from TBI’s. When I first heard about all these unreported injuries and the cover-up I had a hard time believing it. I’d heard maybe 25,000 soldiers were suffering from TBI, a huge number, sure, and even that seemed unreasonable to me. But even if there’s only 25,000 people impacted why does the VA only claim 800 cases? There’s where the cover-up is. The VA only lists folks who have been mustered out of the armed forces. In order to keep reported numbers low our government is keeping those suffering from TBI in the military, even when they are not able to perform their duties, and never will be able again, they are kept on the books. This would explain why there doesn’t seem to be enough troops to keep fighting wars on two battlefields, Iraq and Afghanistan. It would explain why no fresh troops are available to take over for soldiers who finished their tour of duty and why people on inactive reserve are being called up now. It’s simple mathematics. If we’ve got 750,000 volunteer forces and a fifth of them are not available for duty because they are crippled in the brain, then our fighting force is significantly impacted. The good news is the pea-brain in the white house and his incompetent Secretary of Defense would have to institute the draft in order to invade Iraq or North Korea. The bad news is we are losing good people and will have to take care of them the rest of their lives, not to mention the fact that by staying the course we will lose even more, those killed and those future TBI sufferers. But the most unconscionable fact to me is why our congress would cut the funding to try and rehabilitate even in a limited way the soldiers who bought the bullshit and joined the army to fight this stupid war. It seems to me the least our congress of Christian Republicans should do is attend the bedsides of those they put in harm’s way and instead they write them off. Perhaps this is another way to defer the cost of war. Someone down the line will have to pay these costs, just not the folks responsible for incurring them in the first place. Our nation’s leaders are suffering debilitating moral bankruptcy, and given the tax breaks they are giving to those least deserving, we’ll soon be experiencing the fiscal kind as well. I don’t know what the Democrats can do to change things, but it’s pretty clear by the “stay the course” message the Republicans don’t intend to change anything. Somebody, anybody, can do better than the President and his lapdog congress are doing right now. I submit we as a nation can no longer afford to “stay the course.” |
| We all remember when we first heard about the tragic happenings of 9/11/01, much like my parents’ generation remembered where they were when they first heard about Pearl Harbor. Today’s airwaves are splashed with retrospectives of that day, five years ago, and I kind of wonder why. Being as cynical as I am I believe the Republican administration is trying to make as much hay as they can from 9/11 in order to bolster their falling poll numbers. It’s been said again and again how 9/11 was President Bush’s defining moment, it’s where he grew up as a President and started exercising his power, a thing he hasn’t stopped doing yet, and with all his memorial sound-bytes a thing he is still trying to milk to his advantage even five years later. I don’t blame him for it, God knows he needs to do something to reverse the disastrous course he’s taken the country on during his power work-outs since 9/11. Although I don’t know how he felt about our nation’s course during Vietnam I suspect he had a mouthful of patriotism even if he didn’t actually want to put his life on the line there, I didn’t want to either. I was active in objecting to Vietnam, I doubt our Republican future President objected to any part of it except the part where he’d actually have to take part. But now he’s the Commander in Chief and he’s not afraid to send anybody over to Iraq to fight for freedom. It turns out he’s quite a brave man when it comes to sending other folks’ children to fight for the freedom he claims to love so much. One thing Bush is right about is we are stuck, for good and evil, in Iraq, a war of his choosing. And he’s also right about it being a war on terror, just ask any of the poor kids we’ve sent over there to fight, they are terrified. Bush has created generations of terrorists in Iraq, we’ll have to fight them long after he’s gone, as I’ve said before. If he wanted to help Bin Laden he couldn’t have done anything more helpful than to start the war in Iraq. But back to 9/11. I’ve never seen our nation more unified than just after the attack, the world opinion was on our side, we were totally and morally justified in going after the perpetrators of the offense to our homeland. By making so much hay from it five years later the President is justified in bringing it up ad nauseum in hopes he can once again forge some kind of American unity. It’s too little and it’s too late. The trail for Bin Laden has grown cold and even if we do get him now it won’t matter, the bread has been cast on the water and it ain’t good, wholesome, peaceful bread at all, it is the bread of ugliness and strife. Our good President has fucked us, we let him do it and we’ll suffer for it. If he’d done the right thing, moving hell and high water to get Bin Laden right away, things would be different, there was no sympathy in the world for the attack on 9/11. Things are different now, we’ve lost all the sympathy we garnered that fateful day when we cowardly attacked and occupied Iraq. And we’ll never get it back no matter how many times we show clips of the towers falling down. Ashes, ashes, all fall down. We took it in the shorts on 9/11. We were humiliated by a tiny group of fundamentalist followers of Islam who carried a grudge against our supposed profanation of their holy land and our support of Israel’s occupation of another holy site, Jerusalem. They kicked our butts and everything we’ve done to punish them has had the opposite effect. What are the true effects to our country from all this spreading of terror caused by our President? Pretty minimal unless you count the grieving American families who have lost loved ones in the wars since 9/11. Most of the cost of the war has been deferred, we’re not pressed to buy war bonds, or collect scrap metal for the war effort. We’re instead running up huge bills to be paid later, like an obscene credit card account without limits. It’s hard to stop a war we’re not having to pay for, we’re not suffering at all, we’re not called upon to sacrifice anything but our freedoms in this battle to spread freedom. When it is ultimately unsuccessful, and there really isn’t an alternative to our failure, regardless of our best hope, then we’ll have to start paying for the mistake. 9/11 is an historical moment, it marked the beginning of the end of our world domination. Call the twin towers falling the first couple of dominoes, Bin Laden couldn’t have picked a more fitting example to bring down. We may finally get him, but as I said it is too late, his clones will carry on the fight, a fight we can’t afford and a fight we’ll ultimately quit because it has bankrupted us. I wish we hadn’t kicked the Taliban out of Afghanistan so easily. If it had been more difficult the American people would never have been sold on how easy Iraq would be. The two fights together are going to be more than we can handle, we haven’t really won either yet and I doubt we will. Worse yet the hate we’ve engendered has a long half-life. I wonder if our President ever read W.B. Yeats poem “The Second Coming”? I doubt he did, and if, unlikely as it seems, he did read it he surely didn’t understand it. It is a chilling reminder of what our future will look like, it’s a picture of the Bush legacy come home to roost. |
| The other day I looked in on a sponsored work, a song, very sad, supposedly about a mother losing her daughter in war. The reason I say supposedly is because I’ve seen any number of works, supposedly true, which were blatant attempts to jerk tears. I’d like to believe this person’s poem about her daughter was real and for the sake of this article I will believe. I hope I’m not misled, since that’s the whole point of my article, to avoid being misled. If the person who wrote the song lyrics is telling the truth, she has been as misled as was her daughter who died. She writes that her daughter died defending our freedom. Our freedom is not at stake in Iraq, or in Afghanistan, even though the administration who started these wars wants us to believe it is. We are being misled and it’s been an easy task. My generation was similarly misled. We were fighting in Vietnam to stop the communists and if we didn’t stop them there it was only a matter of time before we’d be fighting them in San Francisco, in Seattle, in Chicago, etc. Well, we lost that war, we got out and gave South Vietnam to the godless commie North. Are we fighting communists in San Francisco? In Seattle? In Chicago? The government, several administrations, really, misled us. Fifty thousand of my brothers, of my generation, died because of a ruse, a falsity. If this woman who wrote this song really lost a daughter in Iraq or Afghanistan I empathize with her loss. But to further promulgate a lie that she was defending our freedom is to misuse her daughter’s generation, because I have no doubt future history books will back me up that these wars were a big mistake. We will not have won freedom for Iraqis or Afghanis, but instead we will have lost our children for no reason, much like what happened in Vietnam. For you who say I am cynical, well, you’re right. But if you think I’m cold-hearted you’re wrong. I saw very clearly what happened to my brothers who fought in Vietnam, it wasn’t pretty then and it is still tragic now. When our current adventure in freedom is over we as a culture are going to suffer because of the false pretenses under which these wars are advertised and fought. Families will suffer, people will commit suicide, lives will be ruined. The fight for freedom won’t have anything to do with the loss to our society. I haven’t believed for one minute the lies we’ve been told about why these current wars are being fought. History will show that going into Iraq let Bin Laden and Al Qaeda off the hook. No American has died to preserve our freedom, they have died instead to control oil reserves, to wreak vengeance for 9/11 and to paint the Bush administration as a war-presidency. And yet the only thing that has been accomplished, besides for our children dying, is for our civil liberties to be lost because of increased war-powers. The lie, as I see it, is to claim we’re killing and being killed to preserve our freedom, when in fact the government has been working overtime to deny us the very freedoms we are supposed to be saving. We are sending our children to be killed for no reason. To write songs celebrating this ruse is to further it. When people in my generation woke up to that same fact the war in Vietnam ended. Our present wars are bankrupting this nation, both monetarily and culturally, the sooner they are ended the sooner we’ll have to pay the consequences and the sooner we’ll start healing from the division it has created. The stupider we Americans are, the longer we allow ourselves to be misled, the longer it will take to pay off these consequences. To support the troops is to support lies and deception, I guess my question is how does that defend our freedom? |
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