They Are All Dead

I spent a week seeing how well military veterans are compensated for 4 years of staying-out-of-prison, if they know how to work the system. And for many members of the “voluntary Army” (Navy, Air Farce, and Marines) that is all their “service” amounted to at the time they “volunteered”: some judge told them “Go to jail or join the Army.” And they chose some branch of the military rather than jail. So much for the specialness of being “all you can be.” Currently, the US military employs more than two million “volunteers.” Obviously, some of those are actually volunteers and some of that number clearly holds the ideals of democracy and freedom very close to their hearts. And if Donald Trump and his owners and minions have their way, those few will either be executed as traitors or kicked out of the government for “disobedience.”

Whenever I hear the “thanks for your service” homily, I think of my Vietnam era friends who were sacrificed for the corporate interests that pulled the country into that war. I’m talking about the ones who fought and either died “in country” more than 50 years ago or lived disorderly lives, desperately trying to find some meaning for their survival when they were paroled from their term of “service.”

I also think of my father and his almost constant confusion about what he was doing, and why, as a very rural Kansas 23-year-old farm-boy pretending to be an Navy LST pilot in WWII. I think about the enlisted men who carried him across the Atlantic from Norfolk, Virginia to North Africa to Italy and to Normandy. When that series of catastrophes failed to kill him, but had decimated the majority of the men with whom he’d crossed the ocean, he was assigned to an assortment of aircraft carriers and battle ships, promising to return to the States, where instead he was swept into the Pacific war doing a variety of jobs for which he had no training or aptitude until that war ended. He never believed he was a “hero,” but I’ve read stories of those who fought in that Great War who definitely were heroes, by any standards; but who Donald Trump and his ilk believe were “suckers and losers.”

But today all of those heroes who fought for everything Americans pretend to represent (Truth, Justice, Freedom, and the American Way!) are dead or all but extinct. World War II ended in 1945, 79 years ago, and anyone who fought in that war is likely dead and the few centenarian vets left alive were more than likely US-bound support staff. The heroes are nearly all dead.

Since WWII, American military actions have been for fascist, imperialist-style purposes; protecting the interests of the rich and powerful and repressing democracy where ever it reared its head. I can not find a single moment in my lifetime (from 1948 up to now) when the US military was doing anything that “protected the freedoms” of the American citizen (other than the financial interests of the 0.1%). From Korea to Iraq and Afghanistan, our military has been guarding against and repressing the outbreak of democracy and human rights across the globe. And to keep military veterans from thinking about what they have done, their crimes against humanity, we thank them “for their service” and anoint those who are smart enough to think about what they’ve done with lavish privileges for the rest of their lives to keep them quiet.

And that works to the extreme, so that when a veteran from the Vietnam War, Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, or even “successful” invasions like Grenada and Panama, speaks out against the criminal behavior of our government their worst critics and, even, violent enemies are other vets. The “Volunteer Army” was likely the beginning of the end for both the idea of patriotism for our rarely-lived ideals and any hope that the United States might evolve into a democracy.

Eliminating the draft had nothing to do with creating a “more professional military,” it was driven primarily by the soldiers’ revolts during the Vietnam War. The corporate interests that are behind every military action, overt or covert, that the US government has taken since WWII require obedience, first, and excellence, rarely, to achieve their objectives. With enough firepower and corruption and the natural gullibility of at least half of every population, fascism gets what it wants with no sacrifice from those who reap the most benefits. So, what we should be remembering on Memorial Day is who was harmed, what innocents were murdered, and how much damage to human habitat has been done in the name of “patriotism.” In a rational world, anyone who willingly sent others into war would be an international criminal and an enemy of all humans. But we don’t live in that world.

My Vietnam War Memories

Yesterday was, as the US Army’s website reminds us, another dubious memorial day, “The Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017 was signed into law by President Trump, designating every March 29 as National Vietnam War Veterans Day.” President Bonespurs cynically pronounced a day of memorial for people he called “suckers” and “losers” A friend reminded me, via Facebook, that Friday was when we should all honor the sacrifice that was made for our freedom in that war. The ruling class, like Trump, believes we should celebrate the money they made from profiting on wars and the distraction those wars provided from the damage that they were doing to our nation and the world. From 1955-75, that twenty-year war caused 1.1 million Vietnamese war dead and Vietnamese civilian deaths was in excess of 2.0 million. There is no way to describe the Vietnam War as anything but an empirical invasion of a foreign nation with no national interests justification. The same goes for practically every war the US has entered into since the Revolutionary War, al 107 of them. The US South would argue that even our own Civil War was an empirical invasion. If there is a human history after the USA collapses under the usual internal battles that have destroyed every empire in history, I imagine our national sport will be recorded as “war, with football, baseball, jazz, and Hollywood as recreational distractions.”

“Praise the Lord, this is the Vest residence,” was how Don answered the phone in 1974, the last time I saw him. My little family was passing through Salina, on our way back to Nebraska from visiting my family in Dodge City for some warm-weather holiday, and I took a slightly longer route home to see my old friend,. Don had experienced some rough years since the last time I’d seen him. In early 1970, Don had been one of the most rock-steady drummers I’d ever had the pleasure of playing with. We met while still in high school, he was clinging to the tattered remains of a K.U. college basketball scholarship that was rescinded when his knee wouldn’t recover from a late season high school game injury. I never saw Don play basketball, but he was such a “natural” athlete I have no problem imaging him playing at a level far beyond average.

When we met, I was in the last semester of my dismal high school senior year. Don had been a standout star basketball player at Dodge’s Sacred Heart Cathedral Catholic School, but a knee injury had taken him out of the lineup and blown up his future. In 1965, Vietnam was growing into the threat it would become for all of my generation’s male victims and we were thrashing around a bit trying to figure out where that war would intersect our lives. For some of us, especially the non-white “us,” it was obvious there would be no escape from becoming cannon fodder. The draft loomed large at our 18th birthdays, like a huge black wall blocking every possible escape. Looking back now, I realize that my friends and I played music the way we did as a scream of desperation and protest. For most of us, our WWII fathers did their best to make military “service” seem like an honorable obligation. I know mine did.

From early spring in 1965 until just before I left Kansas for Dallas, Texas in 1968, I lived in a tiny trailer on the south side (“the poor side of the tracks”) of Dodge, with a band on the road or a shared trailer in Hays, Kansas, or in a lean-to on the Arkansas (pronounced are-can-sus in Kansas) River west of town a few miles. One of my fondest memories of Don was while I was on the river, he’d hiked out to spend an afternoon with me hunting. We both had single-shot .22’s, but his was much more of a gun than mine; because he was using it. There wasn’t much to shoot at that day. Usually, I lived on jack rabbits, pheasant, and eggs from the egg distributor who also ran the trailer court where I sometimes lived. We hiked along the river, heading west toward Cimarron, probably talking about whatever gig we’d recently had or one in the future. Don pointed west and said, “See that Blue Jay in the tree?” And I said, “What tree?” (There weren’t and aren’t a lot of trees in Kansas.) He aimed at something and shot. We hiked for a good while and, finally, came to a tree and there was a dead Blue Jay on the ground.

In 1967, I’d bombed out of my Navy physical because of asthma (that I didn’t know I had until the Navy doc flunked me), moved to Dallas for a Trump-style fraudulent “computer tech school,” met the love of my life and was at the tail-end of a brief stint as a folk singer and struggling to survive as sole-support for the two of us. Don and Ed, two ex-bandmates from Kansas, drove to Dallas to hang with me and Ms. Day before heading out to Army basic training. Those two, and Ms. Day, were my best, dearest friends and it felt like we were saying “goodbye” way too early in all of our lives. Ed would go on to specialize in the Army’s pitiful electronics technician program and spent his military time in Germany. Don would become an Army sniper in Vietnam.

My attitude toward the war shifted during the months that I was waiting to be inducted and the day I flunked my physical, thanks to the Hutchinson New’s syndication of David Halberstam’s New York Time’s Vietnam reporting. Aoso, thanks to my new Dallas hippie friends, I’d also read Halberstam’s The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam During the Kennedy Era and his second piece of “fiction, One Very Hot Day and my opinion of that war and my country’s values were shifted left for life. Don had to leave first and Ms. Day remembers the two of us playing basketball at an outdoor court somewhere before he headed off to basic training. Ed and I played at the Rubaiyat.with a jug band assortment of freaks and players before he also left for basic.

I tried to stay in touch with both of them from my “safe” life in Texas, but Ed was quickly offended by my anti-war attitude and cut off communications emphatically not long after he landed in Germany for the duration of his “service.” Don and I wrote often and I wish I’d saved his letters, but almost nothing from my pre-1983 life survived the move from Nebraska to California. Don went from being, like me, a Kansas yokel to a deadly assassin to the most courageous war protester I will ever know. After several “missions” of dubious morality he, somehow, managed a transfer from Vietnam to Germany in the laughable Criminal Investigation Division (CID). Don’s description of the several-floors-underground, ex-Nazi SS basement secret quarters, CID offices was surrealistic, at best, and indicative of the US military’s decent into decadence, at worst. By then, Don was convinced the entire US military and government needed a criminal investigation. My memory of 50-year-old events is sketchy, but I hope I always remember some of Don’s description of his deciding to take a blanket to an Army warehouse, in the dead of a German winter, strip off his uniform, and refuse to leave or obey orders until he was given his release from the Army.

As a result of his protest, Don received a “general discharge” and returned to Kansas where I ran into him, again, when Ms. Day and I attempted to escape Texas in 1969 for Oregon or Washington, but our ‘63 Ford Ranchero full of meager belongings and a cat and us died in northern Oklahoma and barely delivered us to Dodge City. Don was taking an electronics course at the sad excuse for a local tech school and suggested that I might also want to try that route. I found a job as a welder at a local manufacturer, enrolled in the tech school program, and six months later had to drop out and “get a real job” because Ms. Day was pregnant. During that six months, Don and I formed another band and played regularly as a 3-piece power rock band with another guy who fumbled along as our bass player.

Ms. Day’s pregnancy (and another one two years later) forced my career decisions for the next decade and I’ve written a good bit about those years. I mostly lost touch with Don, Ed, and my past life as a wannabe-rock-star. In late September, 1970, Don was convicted of marijuana possession and “intent to sell” and got a 6 month jail sentence for that ridiculous “crime.” That pretty much put a nail in his future and, according to Ed and other sources, Don had quite a few problems with drugs and the law afterwards.

In 1974, after the “praise the lord” telephone announcement, I spent a few hours with Don and his family in Salina (as I remember it). He was some kind of fundamentalist, unordained by anything other than his belief in his god, self-proclaimed “minister” and I was still the savage atheist I’d be my whole life. He made a living as a carpenter and his home was a beautiful demonstration of those skills. I don’t remember much about that visit, but Don was clearly struggling to find himself and it was the last time I would see him. Three years later, Don would be divorced and living in an even more dilapidated Kansas town. The stories I heard about him from the 80s until the early 2000s had him in and out of legal trouble and dying somewhere between those years.

When I sat down this morning to write this Google surprised me with the fact that Don died in 2021. His obituary indicates that he’d found some kind of peace and regained a good bit of who he was. I can not reconcile this picture of a ZZ Top-looking guy with the tall, blond, athletic boy-and-man I knew, but I love the fact that he, at last, seems happy with his life. I feel like I missed years of opportunity to reconnect with my old friend because I’d believed he died at least 20 years earlier.

A Gift to Remember

Back in the early 90s, a work friend and I split a Denver Nuggets’ season pass for the 1992-1995 seasons. The 1993-1994 season was a particular highlight as the team was actually decent for the first time in a lot of years. The Nuggets lineup was deep and included Dikembe Mutombo (center), LaPhonso Ellis (forward), Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (guard, aka Chris Jackson, prior to the season), Rodney Rogers (forward), Reggie Williams (forward), Bryant Stith (guard), Robert, Pack (guard), and Brian Williams (center). I’m sure most of those names are now lost to sports history, but at the time they were up-and-coming young players who set at least one record that year. They were exciting to watch and Denver’s McNichols Auditorium was a fun place to watch a basketball game.

The ‘93-‘94 Nuggets (42-40) were the youngest team in the league and the last seed in the Western Conference playoffs and the Seattle Sonics (63-19) were the first. After losing the first two games in Seattle, the Nuggets won both of their home games and went back to Seattle and beat the Sonics 98–94 in overtime. I had tickets for the first two home games. In the second round, they almost did the trick again, taking the Utah Jazz to a 7th game before losing that series.

Early in the next (‘94-‘95 season, Abdul-Rauf began to speak out against the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and the US positions in North Africa. He had converted to Islam and made a point of not standing for the anthem because he interpreted that act as worshiping idols and he called the US flag “a symbol of oppression.” He took a public opinion beating from both the fans and the local and national press. Denver, contrary to current fascist delusions, is not a particularly liberal or progressive city and sports fans in general are “conservative” in all of the worst ways. Abdul-Rauf went from being a fan favorite to being his sports generation’s version of Colin Kaepernick overnight and, like Kaepernick was eventually suspended from the NBA and spent the rest of his career in European basketball. Born Chris Jackson in Mississippi, Abdul-Rauf had plenty of experience with US repression and oppression from the start. He was also cursed with Tourette’s Syndrome and it could be “entertaining” to be near the court when he was bringing the ball up, spouting random curses and sound effects. Fans once appreciated his ability to work past that handicap, but they quickly turned into vicious grade school bullies when he demonstrated that he had a conscience.

Almost immediately, Brian Williams spoke out in support of his teammate’s convictions and in agreement with the fact that the US’s history in the Middle East is nothing to be proud of. Likewise, Brian quickly became a pariah to the city’s basketball fans and a fair number of his teammates. You might guess from reading this blog that I didn’t disagree with either Brian or Mahmoud and felt compelled to say so in a letter to the Rocky Mountain News’ editor, which was published in that paper’s Letters section.

A couple of days later, I was home, late in the day, and the phone rang. I answered and the deepest voice I have ever heard responded, “Is this Mr. Day? This is Brian Williams. I wanted to thank you for your letter of support.” I, of course, was convinced that some friends were pulling my leg and said so in particularly ungracious terms. Brian was patient, funny, and finally convinced me that he was who he said he was. He was extremely complementary about the things I’d written in my letter, which made me incredibly suspicious that I was still being pranked. We had a fairly long conversation, as much about basketball as politics or music. (Brian’s father, Eugene Williams of the Platters, had sung the national anthem at a game earlier and proved that there was nothing wrong with the McNichols sound system that decent mic technique wouldn’t cure.) As we were wrapping up the call, Brian mentioned that he’d left three floor seats for me at will-call for the next evening’s game.

The only time I have had floor seats for a big-boy’s basketball game was at the NJCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship in Hutchinson, Kansas. I have no idea what those Nuggets tickets cost, but it was way out of my league. The team was very popular, games sold out regularly, and the seats my friend and I shared were well into the nose-bleed sections. Still suspecting I was being pranked, I called some friends and asked if anyone wanted to go with me. I was probably a reluctant salesman because of my suspicion, but I couldn’t find any takers. I worked a long way down my list of friends and acquaintances without finding any interest. Without much to lose, other than minimal self-respect, I went to the game alone.

As I was standing in the will-call line, a young man with an adolescent daughter were trying to find scalped tickets, since the game was sold out. I collected my 3 tickets and offered two to him. Since I hadn’t paid anything for them, I thought it would be disrespectful to ask for money and I didn’t. I don’t think he had any idea that they were floor tickets until they found their seats. I’d also been given a coupon at the counter and wandered over to the concession are to see what the coupon was for. It was for this jacket and that was not a cheap item.

When I joined my guests on the floor, I wore the jacket through the game. I suspect, thinking that the two people sitting beside me were old friends, Brian made a point of swinging by our seats several times giving the girl high-fives as he passed. His hand was about the same size as her body, so they were very careful high-fives. Until you’ve watched professional play at close range, you have no idea how different their game is than what you’re used to. Those giant, ripped, fast young men would make Viking berserkers cower under their shields and they could run down wild game or beat down predators with their huge, bare hands. Even though he didn’t love basketball, when he played he played with passion, energy, and an astounding level of skill.

We stayed in touch, rarely, through email from that Denver game to my first year in Minnesota, in 1996, until he started playing with the Chicago Bulls when the ‘96 season started. After being a Lakers’ fan while I lived in California and a Nuggets fan from ‘91 to ‘96, the Timberwolves were a letdown and I wandered away from my last vestige of sports fandom. Brian was a critical part of the 1996 Chicago Bulls championship team and he almost enjoyed that season. He always wanted to be doing something he enjoyed as much as he imagined his father enjoyed music, though. He’d changed his name to Bison Dele in 1998 and I saved about a half-dozen of the email conversations we had over the years, but the last one came before the 1999-2000 Pistons were going to be in Minneapolis and I’d offered to meet him downtown for coffee or a beer, my treat. His last email said, “Coffee or beer, sounds good.” And I never heard from him again.

When the season ended, the Pistons offered him tens of millions to stay with the team, but he’d had all of basketball he could stand. I’ve read a lot about the last years of his life, but hadn’t kept up with him until his disappearance and, likely, death hit the news. This, “The Love Song of Bison Dele,” is the best wrap-up of his incredible life that I’ve seen and I’ve come back to read it several times.

I will remember Brian with his statement, “I always figured there were two ways to go. You can die from living, or you can die from just dying.” I still wear the jacket he gave me when the weather is right and I keep it stored in a cedar closet when it isn’t. Not long ago, I was grocery shopping wearing the jacket and an older man in a wheelchair and what appeared to be his son called me “Old School” and complemented me on my 30-year-old jacket. It reminded me that I have meant to tell this story for years and probably better do it soon or never. Ms. Day wanted a picture of me standing next to a guitar sculpture and that gave me one more reason to tell the story.

Out of Patience

[Interestingly, after 25 years of telling essentially the same story, some wingnut snowflake "flagged" this rant as violating some Blogger nebulous "community standard."  I'm supposed to magically know what offended the fascist snowflake, but I am clueless. I this this might be the motivation I need to move my last blog from Google to Wordpress.]

When I was a kid, in the 50’s, Eisenhower was President and Nixon was Vice-President (heavy on the “vice”). For a brief moment, John Kennedy was elected president in 1960, when I was twelve and assassinated when I was fifteen. A marginal Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, followed that until he was chased from office (by actual Democrats) over his expansion of the Vietnam War. Nixon and his band of merry assholes and war criminals followed. After six and a half years and even more expansion of the war, Republicans stuck the country with Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller after Nixon and his VP, Spiro Agnew, were chased from office for corruption and various crimes against the nation. Ford was the 1974 version of Paul Ryan, with about the same lack of patriotism, with the same collection of corrupt corporate and 1% owners, and the same disdain for justice and honor that has been typical of Republicans for my whole lifetime.

For an incredibly brief 4 years, a competent businessman, experienced engineer, a reasonable politician, and decent person, Jimmy Carter, was president. Carter made the politically fatal mistake of attempting to explain the situation Americans had placed themselves in with those years of  expansionist war, Republican, and near-Republican misnamangement (Remember the “malaise speech?”). Reminiscent of the more recent words of Bernie Sanders, Carter told us, "In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but by what one owns." He called American lack of faith in the country’s future, “a crisis of confidence.” The truth may set you free, but in Carter’s case it cost him the 1980 election to a Republican con man and a collection of right wing crooks and traitors who haven’t yet left the stage. Carter was right, though, the post-Reagan USA became one “defined by . . . what one owns.”

So, with our heads in the sand or up our asses we elected Ronald Reagan, followed by George Bush Sr., and the country drove itself off a cliff of international debt and some kind of weird celebration of anti-intellectualism and greed that resulted in a habitual deficit spending and a vicious love of imperialism and militarism. Twelve years of regressive, corrupt, and incompetent Hollywood executive and mediocracy—inspired congressional idiocy followed. Somehow, brainless and lazy Americans decided to convey political sainthood on Reagan instead of admitting that they’d been conned and the country had been robbed by the B-movie actor and failed California politician.

Bill Clinton could have been a Democrat, but he chose to be an “Eisenhower Republican” and he only moderated the government’s incompetence during his eight years in office. Even Republicans don’t like Republicans pretending to be Democrats and the last four years of Clinton’s administration was taken up with “did he or didn’t he” bullshit about Clinton’s blowjobs. Republicans tried to conjure up real impeachable crimes, but being Republicans their success was limited by their lack of competence and their own massive corruption issues. Clinton might have been an easy target if Republicans still had an intellectual base, but by 1992 every intelligent Republican had left the building and their space was filled by the uneducated, racist, tools of the Koch brothers we suffer today.

Then eight years of G.W. Bush and a bunch of Reagan and Nixon cronies finally led us to the Great Recession. Obviously, the Party of Borrow and Spend borrowed and spent to the tune of increasing the deficit every year while the 1%, the conservative media talking heads, and the Marching Morons pretended that was a rational alternative to Democratic “tax and spend” policies that at least attempt to pay for their policies. 2008 through 2010 were budget years where the federal government attempted to spend its way out of what looked like the Second Great Depression. I guess it sort of worked, but prosecuting the financial criminals, recovering their booty to repay the trillions they cost the country and world, and taxing the 1% would have worked far better. Barak Obama was more of a Democrat than the Clintons, but not enough more to convince the Marching Morons that democracy is better than idiocy or mediocrity.

Trump, of course, will be the worst of Reagan and the Bush’s combined. He had no skill as a “businessman” and his mental instability has led to a collection of right wing idiots in the executive branch who are guaranteed to make life miserable for working people. The best we can hope for now is that Republicans and the inbred 1% will be stupid enough to crash the country and the resulting chaos will break up the oversized and overarmed US military and not cause the insane religious right, who now dominate US politics, to fire off their own perverted version of Armageddon. Today, the world’s most pressing problem is surviving the end of the empire known as the United States of America.

So, I went through the Vietnam War years, watching my friends die, be mentally or physically disabled, and being alienated from my family and community because I wouldn’t “get onboard” with an immoral war. Again, I was on the opposite side of the majority during Reagan and Bush I’s reign of world terror and imperialism and again with Bush II. After spending most of my 69 years suffering with the incompetence of Republicans and the stupidity of Republican voters, I’m tired of it. I have no more energy or motivation to put up with 4 or 8 years of a pack of Trump morons than I have with chemotherapy and a long “fight” with cancer. In fact, the moral character of my country feels disgustingly like a cancer infection/infestation.

#162 Appeasing Nazis (2006)

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

 

Defense Secretary and neocon wildman Donny Rumsfeld, a man whose bleary, boozy appearance always inspires the endearing nickname "Rummy," recently went into a hysterical rant comparing his critics to "Nazi appeasers" who are interfering in his pursuit of "a new type of fascism." Sam Kinison must be laughing, somewhere.

These days, any attempt to report an administration speech comes off as rightwing propaganda, these characters are so far off the political charts that they are coming around the other side and beginning to sound leftist. My source of information, a Los Angeles Times article (by Julian E. Barnes), was so badly written that I thought, for a few seconds, that Rummy had grown a conscience and swapped sides. The Times, a paper that once was so disregarded that it was barely considered to be more than a rightwing real estate promotion rag, has returned to its roots. Barnes works his ass off to make Rummy sound almost sentient, while reducing contradicting opinions to background noise. Still, even with careful editing, Rummy is pretty funny.

Let's face it, anyone who knows squat about history has long since connected the dots between the 1936 Nazi political takeover of Germany and the 2000 neocon overthrow of the United States democracy. But, no, when he presented his newest, most hilarious argument, Rummy was hiding in that great bastion of nationalism, the American Legion convention. An audience sense of history was noticeably missing.¹ Rummy went into a semi-literate rant about the people who were interfering with his dissection of the Constitution and his illegal Iraq oil takeover attempt. There weren't nearly as many laughs as Rummy would have received if he'd have picked a more conscious crowd, like a college campus. I expect he was disappointed. He went to a lot of work to assemble the best neocon comedic writers and this was some of their best work. Hardly anyone laughed, assuming Barnes and the Times accurately reported the event.

I laughed a lot, when I read the Times' article. I particularly loved this convoluted and typically-Rummy argument, "If we abandon the Iraqi people before their government is strong enough to secure the country, they we will show reformers across the region that America cannot be trusted to keep its word. We will embolden extremist enemies of moderation and of democratic reform." Has anyone ever seen any sign that Rummy supports moderation or democratic reform in this country? Did I miss Rummy's anguished performance when the 2000 Supreme Court disrespected more than 50 million votes, the majority, and politically "appointed" Rummy's boss; "Queen of America?" This is sarcasm, right? It has to be. When was the last time one of the monosyllabic neocons used the word "embolden?" Aren't conservatives terrified of people who are emboldened? When has a reformer ever looked to this administration for any inspiration? Reformers all over South America are looking to the north in fear, especially those who have oil resources. But no political leader with an ounce of good toward his citizens will would ever expect assistance from the Bush Presidency. We don't even expect assistance from our government. Our elections are so fraudulent that "trust" is a word that has vanished from the American political vocabulary. And does abandoning "the Iraqi people" mean that we'd quit shooting them for entertainment? There is so much irony in this pair of sentences that I think Mark Twain would be intimidated by the comedic genius of Rummy's writers.

Rummy tipped his whiskey jar and continued with, "I recount that history because, once again, we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism." Really? The Bushies are doing something new? What did I miss? It doesn't look new to me. 2000 was the same kind of turn-around year for the United States that Germany suffered in 1932 when the Nazi Party wrestled power from the Weimar Democracy in the heat of the world economic depression. Hitler's 1932 "victory" was no less legitimate or more creative than was George Bush's in 2000. The United States has made a slow turn in the exact Nazi German direction that led to WWII. But "new?" I see nothing new in fascism. Fascism is an economic system that attempts to reach corporate and elite goals through force, repression, and fear. Sounds like the Republican Party platform to me. The fact that working class folks keep voting Republican is the funniest, saddest proof that humans are a sincerely, chronically, pathologically stupid species. But that's nothing new, either.

He had to have had them rolling in the isles, but Rummy kept delivering punch lines. Like this one, "Can we truly afford to believe that, somehow or someway, vicious extremists could be appeased?" No, we can't, but we will. I have never believed that the brown shirt extremists who forced the end of the 2000 presidential election recount with violence and a politically corrupt Supreme Court overthrow of democracy can be appeased. I thought they should have been arrested, tried, and executed for treason; including the five members of the Court. Honestly, I can't imagine this country returning to democratic principles without a civil war and I have very little faith that the docile citizens of this country care enough about freedom, liberty, or democracy to go to war for it.  Still, appeasing the Bush Administration is a moral crime and I agree with Rummy, we should all be opposing them with every ounce of our existence. That was what he was talking about, wasn't it? Maybe he was still stuffing his contradictions into a paradox burrito. Irony is so subtle. Of course, when Rummy tosses off a phrase like "moral confusion," we know there's a punch line here somewhere. Morals? Republicans? Where would the two ever meet?

One after another, Rummy kept the one-liners coming, "Can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America--not the enemy--is the real source of the world's troubles?" I read that and thought, "No, we can't, but I don't remember ever leaving that view." Reagan really kicked it up a notch or ten, but since the end of WWII, the United States has destabilized nations and continents, continuously, for the profit of a few rich corporate criminals. I don't know how anyone with the slightest knowledge of world history can avoid pointing, like a compass swinging north, a finger at the United States when a discussion of "the world's troubles" begins. Still, at some clinging basic core, America (including Canada and Mexico and South America) are the hope of much of the world. Bush and Rummy, however, do not represent America (including the United States) at its best. They are us at our worst, our most destabilizing, our most class-controlled, our most short-sighted, and our most violently greedy. That's not that funny, now that I reconsider it. I guess I can see why the reporter didn't mention laughs at this point in Rummy's speech.

As background noise, Rummy (and Condi and Georgie and the rest) keep talking about "victory" in Iraq. This has to be a joke, right? How can an occupying force ever hope for "victory" in an invasion? Historically, the best imperialist occupation forces have ever managed is "balance." Balance usually means the occupier gains as much, in assets or trade, as they lose in moral character, national focus, and actual lives sacrificed so that the ruling class, who does gain from the occupation, can make their profits. That's "victory" when it comes to invading another nation in the hopes of controlling their resources. Oil, in this case and in case you've forgotten why we're in Iraq. With this history lesson in mind, I can't help but wonder when the Native Americans will reclaim this country. "Winning" isn't even an option, but it's pretty funny to think that anyone can take this argument seriously.

Democrats are making a mistake in calling for Rummy's resignation. Rummy isn't the problem, he's a symptom. He's distracting entertainment. When you are attempting to cure a disease, the last thing you want to do is hide symptoms unless the symptoms are all the damage the disease can cause. This disease is the entire conservative movement. Their irrational, superstitious view of the world is colored by rosy prism-shaped glasses that obscure anything resembling reality. They can overthrow the Constitution and the democracy and call it "national security." They can hand over the nation's assets to a tiny, inbred group of wealthy corporate traitors and call it "capitalism." They can destroy the nation's public education system and imagine, somehow, that unlimited immigration of unskilled, uneducated menial laborers and superstition-based charter schools will make up for the national brain trust that has been squandered during the last two decades.

I say let Rummy stand up and say what's on his little booze-soaked, hallucination-blurred mind. Let's ask him what he thinks, on every opportunity and on every subject, and be sure the cameras are rolling. For as little as Rummy seems to comprehend, he's nearly infinitely more conscious than his boss and, if he's the best Bush can offer up, we should be considering that very carefully. Of course, this is all part of Carl Rove's slavish devotion to maintaining Machiavelli's illusion of the "Prince." The goal is to make the Prince sound reasonable, a tough task for Bush, while his representatives act as vicious attack dogs chasing away opponents. The act is growing old and predictable. Maybe Machiavellian government has exceeded it's comedic limits? Maybe Rove is exceeding his abilities in trying to work both Rummy and Bush at the same time: all those hours with both hands up a pair of puppet's butts is probably tiring.

Rummy gives it his best, though. My favorite, and last, Rummy quote is ". . . but some seem not to have learned history's lessons." Exactly what I said in 2003 when I compared the administration's rush to invade and occupy Iraq, except that I was comparing Iraq to Vietnam. Using Rummy's Nazi lesson, I think it's clear how little this country learned from the "Great War" and the political and economic events that caused it.

That's not funny.

¹On Labor Day Weekend, let's not forget that the American Legion and the state militias (the National Guard) first saw significant use in modern times as strike-breaking goons. Celebrated in Woody Guthrie's "You Can't Scare Me I'm Working for the Union" and other famous lore, these guys hide behind nationalism while performing the menial labor for their corporate Republican owners. Sad, but a nasty piece of American history. Some things never change, some barely change.

September 2006

Book Review: American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History

Almost every word in this book is an explanation of why our mercenary military is doing to be the death of democracy. If "American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History" had been written 236 years ago, Chris Kyle would have been British and he would have been saying exactly the same things about the American "insurgents" he had slaughtered. His lack of empathy for the country he invaded and the people who fought to regain control of their country is embarrassing. The fact that he considers himself a great patriot and brags about decorating his vehicles with a Texas flag is telling.

When you read a book like this, you hope that there will be some sign of personal growth in the journey the author makes. The biggest disappointment was that Kyle is exactly the same amoral, bloodthirsty corporate tool at the end that he was in the beginning. He is the kind of guy you won't be surprised to hear assassinated a president, blew up a government building, or fell in with white supremacists and died in a gun battle with the ATF in some cultist whacko's suicide war. He loves to kill people and can find justification in the smallest ways. The most informative quote I found in the book was, "After the first kill, the others were easy." Scary stuff. Characters from these two irrational wars will be biting back on this country for decades.

Kyle appears to believe he has done something patriotic in his part of the Iraq invasion. He seems to have nothing resembling an analytical capacity regarding the reasons for that invasion, the feelings or motivations of the invaded, or a rational ability to see the inconsistencies in his own statements. In one paragraph, he calls the Iraqis "cowards" and "evil" and the next he is disgusted by their "courage" or "stupidity" as they try to fight an overwhelming enemy with primitive weapons. He is unable to assume responsibility for his part in the slaughter. When he witnesses war protesters, he contests their patriotism or courage because they don't properly honor his half-witted understanding of a citizen's personal responsibility. If Kyle were typical of the kind of people who volunteer for our military, it would be pointless for war protesters to try to provide insight, moral encouragement, or context to the volunteers. Fortunately, he is just one kind of poverty draft victim and I have known soldiers who were moved and informed by war protests aimed at the warriors.

On the best pages, this book is barely a soldier's diary; a recounting of the tools, days, and shallow mind of a man who lives to kill other men, women, and children. You'd like to believe that this kind of man would grow to recognize how much of a tool he had been, but that is as likely as Chris Kyle is to discover make useful scientific breakthrough. The day he and his fellow soldiers storm through a Wall Street bank's doors and "liberate" that company's assets for America will be the first day Chris Kyle performs a real patriotic act. Until then, he will cover himself in the Texas flag and chant the slogans he has been trained to repeat and his "service" to the country will be one of many acts that destroys the United States of America.