I put my latest chapter of the espionage novel called "Closer to God," on the other blogsite I maintain: http://www.from-the-chateau-dif.blogspot.com, simply because some people have complained when I have put fiction on this site. Not that anybody seems to be reading much on the Obama site anymore. I never get comments at all. You could say that maybe my writing is just not good enough to elicit commentary, but I don't think that is it. The grassroots wonder of what was established by the initiation and continuation of this site before and right after the last election was quite something, and great fun to be a part of. But our population loses direction easily. Our culture bores even more easily. And being fickle today, at home and abroad, defines most Americans and most American policy.
We are making believe our money is worth something, and it is still working...marginally. We are making believe that there are actually jobs to perform in this country, instead of in China, India and Indonesia...where we sent them. Friedman stated, last week in the NY Times, that the fault for that is simply that Americans did not properly prepare and educate ourselves for the future, when they had the chance. The man is a liar and low-life cur, making millions while he laughs about why American's should quite justifiably be paid the same as Chinese peasants. And he golfs with the president, when he should more properly be water-tortured in Gitmo. But there is no real justice in the universe. There is only the eternal movement of information packets. Quantum mechanics. And there is no mercy, consideration, or even intellect at work in quantum activity. We are the merciful, the considerate and the intelligent part of this universe...when we choose to be. Right now, in this period of time, we are choosing to be dumb as hell, and reaping the benefits of that stupidity.
We are so busy admiring, and holding up to high exaltation, the phony 'stars' of our world, that our world is falling apart around us. In the Chicago Tribune, yesterday, the headline was all about people (including families, women and children) living in storage lockers, garden sheds and abandoned cars. The tragedy of it. Above that headline was a four inch column across the page, with a photo of a fifteen million dollar a year baseball player smiling out at us. The Sports section took that photo and made it the size of the whole page. How many people got the subtle distinction of the idiocy illustrated by that presentation? I wonder. Bret Favre is actually given tons of sympathy as he awaits the big Packers/Viking game on Sunday. Sympathy? How many million is he getting to play for two hours? I love his interviews, however. The man is a drooling idiot when it comes to discussing anything other than his 'game.' Its pretty funny, at least.
We are still in Afghanistan. We are fighting the Taliban. We are at war with the Taliban. What the hell happened to declarations of war and Congressional approval? Gone. We now go to war at a whim, or the opinion of a president. We actually are dumb enough to say that we are depending on our generals in the war theater to tell us whether we should increase or decrease our presence in the war! Now that is as dumb as asking Bret Favre! What general in his right mind is going to say "Oh, cut my troops in half please!!" What do generals do? They make war. How do they get advancement and more power? They make war. And they do it like Bret Favre, by being exposed to about as much danger as a taxi driver or deliveryman. Others are fighting and dying, or coming home with PTSD so bad they will never have any bliss in their lives. We are torturing the wrong people. We have a whole line of bankers, generals and even sports stars whole could profit us all mightily with just a few turns of the screw.
Maybe, one day, prior to the coming disaster in 2012 (Oh please God, bring it on), the common man can celebrate the common man again. They guy or gal working to actually make cars, the people building our roads, the nurses, baristas, waiters and cooks. And those people living in storage lockers (until they are outed and thrown in the streets, because you can't be allowed to live in a storage locker!) who are somehow trying to held life together instead of becoming insurgents.
And that is what is next if we do not make some changes. We will have insurgency here in this country, and we will be no more able to stop it here than we were able to in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. We have a fiction of stopping it in Iraq, and we are going to try applying that same fiction to Afghanistan. We fortify the main population centers, then construct armored conduits to connect them, travelled by heavily armored vehicles. Then we claim that our 'surge' has worked. The natives laugh at us, as they properly should. We are not at war with Iraq or the Taliban. We are at war with our own self-imposed ignorance, and our willingness to glorify the ephemeral stupidity of stardom.
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