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I posted it again two years ago here on DU...
I just wanted to remind myself about how I felt five years ago...
I couldn't take it anymore, the constant beating of the war drums from every channel, from every station, from every stop along the dial. Everywhere I look I see people numbed by the sanitized violence, children sitting rapt in front of the TV watching model airplanes and simulated swoop downs of jets on strafing runs in cities with strange names like Basra and Um Qasr, cities where people are praying just to make it though another day, another day closer to liberation.
Then the troops jitty jolting by on video phones where reporters who believe with all their heart they are the modern day incarnation of Ernie Pyle talk about the sand, the wind, the loneliness but never about the death and carnage that is stretched out before them.
The troops. They truly believe they are on a righteous mission and in their minds I believe that they are. It's easy to fall prey to the steady drum beat of propaganda. It's happened before, it will happen again.
I am in my car with my wife driving to have dinner with my sister and her husband of three months, a Dr at the VA who treats the continued mental illness caused by a war now glorified in the minds of Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone. I wonder how many of these bright young men and women playing their scripted part in the newest reality show will fall prey to the demons that haunt after so many many years, after so many mornings in America.
The Clear Channel country station says they will still boycott the Dixie Chicks while our troops are in harm's way and Toby Keith Faux patriotism blares out and reminds me that scoundrels who exploit the people who truly love their country are the ones who will dance with Satin in the fifth ring of hell.
Last night a client told me his mailbox had been taken and stomped on three times this week by neighborhood kids. The reason, he had a Pray for Peace yard sign on a street dominated by plastic coated messages screaming in loudest red, white and blue that America Stands United.
I notice the traffic is lite, very lite. It is almost eight on the first Friday of Spring and yet the traffic rolls on under a solemn shroud tonight. One by one we tick off the restaurants and bars we pass on this glorious night when all should be overflowing with people about to burst forth from winters clutches.
And the parking lots are all, at best, half full.
We pull into the Custard shop, open for business on the first day of spring and the woman is glad to see us. You could tell her business is down, no one is sitting on the bench outside her stand on a night where it is still on the good side of 60. I ask her how business is and she says, you know, it comes it goes... I think it's the war.
I look around and everything is the same but I know it is all changed forever. The announcer on the local NPR station tells me they are suspending their fund raising drive during this time of national crisis and I look and see no sign of crisis, no sign of sacrifice, just a slowdown in life for a while, a little blip and then the markets will come alive, the tax cuts will trickle down and all will be well again in America.
It's over. The $ 738 billion dollar tax cut is going to pass this weekend only $100 billion lighter, the amount needed to cover the war carved out at the last minute by a few republicans who had a rare pang of guilt. Nothing of substance from the democrats. No one will take notice. The richest people in America are going to have another one up on you and me because we let it happen, we let ourselves be distracted by war.
We are now officially on our own for everything with only war acting to pull us together as a nation. Don't count on any kind of prescription drug relief because there will be no money to pay for it. Don't included Social Security in your retirement plans because it will not be there when it comes your time. Don't you dare loose a job or let any kind of crisis arise in your life. You will have nowhere to turn except a faith based charity that will dispense mandatory salvation along with your redemption soup. You must repent since being unlucky is now officially a moral defect.
But we will always have Baghdad and the glorious war of liberation.
This is the America we now live in. This is the America we bequeath to our children.
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