June 23, 2006
-
Sometimes, I don’t have time to edit.
Normally, I try and edit my posts to be less blunt or offensive. This morning, I responded to a post in a hurry and didn’t take my normal time. My apologies to the person who got the initial blast, but it occurs to me that its been a while since I told exactly where I stand, so here it is for all of you to “enjoy”.
A web log I read had expressed concern that so many countries seem angry with us and war-like posturing seems to be on the increase. They were feeling better about things after speaking with someone who told them that while there is a lot to fear, we’re a good country and we know how to fight back.
Here’s my response:
I’m afraid that I must disagree. We are not in a good country. We are in a country that is founded on some good principals but that has seriously been losing its way for a long time. [Since we decided to have slavery and wipe out the indigenous population...]
One, of many, examples: We talk in fear about other countries obtaining or even using nuclear weapons. We are the only country that has ever used one on a civilian population. We have been developing battlefield nukes and are seriously proposing the use of them (bunker busters). We use nuclear waste based ammunition which leads to sickness in our own soldiers and horrific mutations in the children born there for years.
We are a country who when faced with the possibility that our actions caused the death of half a million children in one country in one decade responded to the effect of “That’s a tough price to pay, but we think it was worth it.”
Is it any surprise that on a global level we are more and more seen as a rabid dog that needs to be put down? We are a big scary rabid dog that is so caught up on our own self image that we don’t seem to realize that we are no longer loved.
And our citizenship for the most part is ignorant and apathetic. The most they can be bothered to get involved with the direction our nation is going is to get to the voting booth for a few minutes every couple of years. Over half of us can’t even manage that. The rest of the time we are managed by a small cabal that shifts a bit every election but never substantially changes and are more beholden to those who put $$ in their pockets than to those who pay $$ in taxes.
These who run this country are, with a few exceptions, kept men and women, and what our country does is determined by the corporations who run them. We are a shambles for a first world country. We jail a higher percentage of our own population than China. We execute more of our own citizens than pretty much any other “first world” nation. We have a higher disparity of wealth. Of the richest 30 industrialized nations, we have the second highest infant mortality rate.
The list goes on.
We are not what we think we are. It is scary out there and it is going to get scarier because we have willed it to be so, and while we are not as good as we think we are, we are certainly as strong.
Sorry, but what the next generation inherits will be a hell, and we, our parents, and their parents are responsible for creating it.
And there it is. Sooner or later, the definition of “the enemy” will expand enough that I will be encompassed by it. My only hope is that by then our armed forces have decided that their loyalty to their oaths mean more than their loyalty to those currently running the show. There are three boxes for change. The soap box, the ballot box, and the cartridge box. I don’t have much hope for the first two anymore.
Comments (4)
I foresee the second one still being our best option. I agree that there have been times where a violent solution would change the things that need changing, but it would also open up a number of alternatives that are far less appealing than an apathetic, ignorant country. I can see a general or warlord rising up to lead the military against our government for “the good of all,” but I cannot see them installing a better government.
Violence begets violence.
Wow. Well I must see I felt enlightened yesterday and now i’m back down to fearing that we’re all going to be locked up into concentration camps by the Iraqis. All Grampa said was that if one were to really want to shut America down, hitting our power source was the way to do it and if we wanted to fight back he said there are more guns in America than there are people and no one would sue us for shooting as many dead as we could to keep ourselves alive. YES, that is violent and hateful but at least with that statement I didn’t feel like I was going to die tomorrow. *LOL* I do agree with what you see in some respect though. I believe the world is getting to be much more violent and I am quite scared to live in it but I as a small little person have not much say in it. For cripes sake at the ballot box last year I had to play eenie meenie miney moe to figure out who our next president was going to be as no one was a real good choice. I don’t foresee any great leaders rising up to get us out of the mess we’re in and all I know is when my brother calls from overseas to tell us he was back in Iraq it takes 15 years of my life. He said he doesn’t believe in what he’s fighting for and he doesn’t believe morally that what they are being put through and told to do is morally or ethically correct and he stated he was feeling very drained from it all. So even all those armed forces, however many there are of them, are going to fall someday as well as the world can only take so much trauma and so can it’s people. I’ve gotten enough of the traumatic stories and I dont want more. I just want the gun my grampa prosmised I could kill with should I ever need it so that I don’t have to worry about getting my butt chopped in 50 by some insane warlords from overseas who someday might want to take over the world and my life. I think moreso, in his defense, he was just trying to bring me more comfort than honesty. I like the thought that he would use his M16 to save my life.
It was the Northtown Bakers’ Square, I should have prefaced the whole thing by saying this was in the earlie to mid-90′s. And that I boycott all of their stores and have for many years because of it. Lack of comman human decency.
And as Sparky(my Dad) likes to put it, we got to keep trying to fight the establishment, or they are just going to run us over.
Keep up the great post, and hopefully we’ll see you soon.
Jo
Fairlass,
If you’re worried about the Iraqi’s coming over and locking us in concentrations camps, you needn’t, they won’t. China’s about the only country with the ability to mount a serious military threat against us on our own soil without a major international coalition and we’d have a long time to see that coming.
If we get hit here, it will be as we’ve been hit, and those hits will be where they are visible – major population concentrations, so you don’t have to worry about your personal situation too much.
The people I’m afraid are going to lock me up are those who speak english. Our own government. We’ve done it before, and we’ve had contingency plans to do it again if we enter any periods of major civil unrest.