America Went Shopping While Our Constitution Slowly Burned

[babylonsister]

America Went Shopping
Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2007-10-08 15:56. Media

While our Constitution Slowly Burned…
By Amy Branham

What will be said about Americans in the future when history looks back at our time? What will I tell my grandchildren and my great grandchildren when they ask what happened to America? It is not just this President and his administration that will be judged by them and by time. It will also be the American people.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Sound familiar? Okay, so Nero probably didn’t really play a fiddle while Rome was burning, but it is a great analogy for the behavior of the American public at large right now.

Right after the horrific tragedy of 9/11, Americans were glued to their television sets. We couldn’t believe we had been attacked on our own soil and we were outraged. We mourned and we cried. We learned that it was terrorists who attacked us, specifically, al Qaeda. Shortly thereafter, the President declared war on al Qaeda.

Good American citizens across the country wanted to know what they could do to help. Go shopping, the President told us. Travel, and do the things you have always done. Don’t change your lives. Don’t let the terrorists win.

So, we went shopping in droves. We bought up gas guzzling SUV’s and RV’s, went to Wal-Mart en masse to buy up cheap goods from China, and we traveled the country. We continued to take our kids to soccer and baseball practice, went to movies and football games and did what we in America do best. We spent money. We bought homes and got mortgages we couldn’t really afford and the housing industry went through the roof.

We shopped until we dropped. We did this for years. We ran up our credit card debt and spent every penny we had to pay our bills. Savings went down and spending went up. But, we were being good little patriotic citizens to win our war on terror. We couldn’t let the terrorists change our lives. And we didn’t.

The average American citizen did not go to war and did not see it. There was no draft. Our military men and women, America’s sons and daughters, were called upon time and time again to go to Iraq for longer and longer periods of time. And the government would not give them equal time at home with their families. Veteran’s benefits were cut and those who returned home with PTSD and other disabilities were not helped and cared for as they should have been. Our military was broken.

more...

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/27521

[Solly Mack]

1. Shop while they drop

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=J5JlW6I79-k

[Eagle_Eye]

2. Talk about shopping!

Bush's rich contractor buddies in the defense industry have been funneled close to a Trillion dollar$ to buy new equipment lost in this illegal war.

Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, and Halliburton are ringing the cash registers while little george goes shopping.

[pansypoo53219]

3. i watched those shoppers this weekend

so much for that unity.

WHOOHOO! macy's has a SALE!

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. That's correct. The typical American, just wants to live in their own

bubble island.

[Quantess]

5. I am reminded of a line in a Velvet Underground song

"there are problems in these times....but, whew! None of them are mine!"

Considering the artists' heroin habits at the time, I'm guessing it was part confession and part commentary on society as a whole.

[Tekla West]

6. So

Can't we just buy a new one? The old one is all yellow and stuff, it seems like a lot of people would like one that looks a lot better, and has a lot fewer words.