Somehow This Madness Must End

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

I was born at the tail end of 1951.  My father was a soldier who served in WWII and Korea.  His brother came back from Korea so psychologically devastated that he never recovered.  He lived nearly fifty of his seventy years haunted by the horror of what he witnessed in the Korean War.  He was not alone.  Every war produces more casualties than are accounted for in the body counts.  My uncle died just a few years ago but it was the Korean War that killed him.  

A Time to Break Silence – Martin Luther King Jr.

I mean no disrespect to our veterans, but I have come to lament our having turned militarism into a national fetish.  Let’s face it, getting one’s self killed in a rich man’s war to improve said rich man’s balance sheet is not truly a noble sacrifice.  It is a mistake, a propaganda-driven error that does nothing for this country other than to perpetuate that gravest of crimes against humanity – unnecessary war.  Though I love our veterans, I have come to see them not as heroes so much as victims.  (I acknowledge that there are many exceptions, and that many of our veterans are heroes – but would argue that those individuals are victims as well.)

CAUTION!  This video is beautiful to me but parts of it are disturbing.  The most troubling part is that it shows the JFK assassination…though only briefly.

As a child I was taught the golden rule – to treat others as you would have them treat you – to treat others well in other words.  In church I was taught the values of compassion, charity, kindness and love for all humanity.  But in becoming a young man I began to learn about war.  The government said war was noble and that the dead died for our freedom and to protect our civil rights and ‘the American way of life’.  I had to learn for myself that ‘the American way of life’ is code for a rich man’s right to be a rich man even at the brutal expense of others.

I was taught that the enemy longed to dominate us, enslave us and subject us to the kinds of conditions we presently enjoy.  A nightmarish picture was painted for us all of what life under Soviet domination would be like: neighbors spying on neighbors; jack-booted thugs kicking in your doors in the middle of the night; big brother government spying on citizens and keeping dossiers on them; a system of oppression without checks and balances, restraint or the rule of law.  Sound familiar?

I find it so interesting that the following comes from Popular Mechanics (I guess Rupert didn’t buy that one).

Echelon satellites can eavesdrop on your telephone calls, faxes and e-mail. Tempest looks through walls to see what is on your TV and PC.

The secret is out. Two powerful intelligence gathering tools that the United States created to eavesdrop on Soviet leaders and to track KGB spies are now being used to monitor Americans. One system, known as Echelon, intercepts and analyzes telephone calls, faxes and e-mail sent to and from the United States. The other system, Tempest, can secretly read the displays on personal computers, cash registers and automatic teller machines, from as far as a half mile away. Although the inner workings of both systems remain classified, fueling exaggerated claims about their capabilities on Internet sites, credible detail has at last begun to emerge. It comes chiefly from foreign governments that began investigating American surveillance activities after discovering that the Echelon system had been used to spy on their defense contractors. From those documents it is possible to obtain the first accurate view of the threats high-tech spying poses to our right to privacy. We think you will agree it also creates a real and present threat to our freedom.

Popular Mechanics (WTF?)

And our government does everything they can to make us afraid.  A frightened people are easily controlled.  They constantly bang the drum about how great is the threat from (fill in the name of your favorite boogeyman here – it’s the commies, or socialists, or tree-hugging libruls, or dirty fucking hippies, or Islamo-Fascists, or terrorists).

I work with a fairly typical conservative.  He is a big churchgoer and wears his religion on his sleeve, but angrily made the remark in reference to Muslims that we should kill them all and let God sort them out.  I asked him if he’d say that in just that way if his pal Jesus were present.  

He just looked at me like a deer in the headlights, momentarily stunned by his own hypocrisy.  These are frightened people, and when people are sufficiently afraid, they are beyond reason.  I think this is the GOP’s greatest secret.  They have learned how to turn the fear up and use it to manipulate people.  That coupled with their mastery of election theft makes them a formidable adversary even when spectacularly unpopular.

Watch them.  They will steal the Presidential election if we allow it.

So now many people have been frightened into accepting ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’…and virtually all of these people are churchgoers.  Why doesn’t the cognitive dissonance just make their heads explode?

Who would Jesus torture?

That things have gone this far in America should be unacceptable to every American.  We must hold those responsible to account, starting at the top.  

Keith Olberman on War Crimes and Yoo – The President ordered war crimes!

The first order of business in salvaging our nation is to re-establish the rule of law.  We start by arresting every war criminal in our government and arranging for their trials at The Hague – anything less than this is a laughable copout and will only prove our utter lack of seriousness.

And the second order of business (not that we can’t multitask) is to end all war and ratchet down our excessive military expenditures.

The people of the world deserve to see justice rendered in America, and so do the American people.  Here’s to justice…and to peace.

P.S.  There is a new 60 Minutes segment on the Don Siegelman case TONIGHT, on CBS 7pm ET/6pm CT/7pm PT.

The first 60 Minutes episode on Don’s case can be found here.