Saturday, May 03, 2008
What just happened here?
I'll tell you: I can't do the political side of blogging the way I did. It was making me absolutely crazy. Depressed, paranoid, awful. I'll say that again: AWFUL.
The world is all messed up. So is our country. We're in a war we can't...we're in a war that shouldn't have happened. We invaded Iraq on false pretenses, simply. It was as fraudulent as Germany's attack on Poland, as the Spanish-American War, as the invasion(s) of Mexico. Invading Iraq was not the first time the United States moved in on a sovereign country—Jesus, just look at the "Indian Wars." We've done it many times. Most big nations have, but that doesn't make it OK. Nor does the halo America tries to wear around the world. Anyhow—
—it's all whacked. The problem is maintaining enough sanity to help change things. I'm not really certain things can be changed, but we have to try. People are hungry, sick, wounded, freaked-out. Not just in war zones: right here in what Bill Clinton once asked "Is this a great nation or what?" It's an "or what," Bill.
I'm not sure where the moral superiority went, assuming we actually had any. The Jews fleeing the Nazis didn't find very large welcome mats at American docks. We held Africans in slavery for generations, claiming they were sub-human, or at least retarded. We committed what was, effectively, genocide against American Indians. How many civilians died in Viet Nam? We don't even have solid data—at least for domestic consumption—on the number of Iraqi civilians who have died since the invasion and occupation.
What I do worry about is karma. I believe there's a national karma, retribution. The problem with karma on a national level is that it's an equal opportunity shit-storm. There were good-intentioned people in Nazi Germany. They were steam-rollered by the closing weeks of World War II. There were good white people in South Africa, back in the bad old days. Their fates are still uncertain. England is getting a major pay-back from it's colonial policies. Americans are simply out-numbered in the world. These days the country isn't looked upon favorably by millions in Africa, Asia, Latin America. We've taken and taken everything we could grab. America is going to have to pay for that behavior. All of us, I'm afraid.
The world is all messed up. So is our country. We're in a war we can't...we're in a war that shouldn't have happened. We invaded Iraq on false pretenses, simply. It was as fraudulent as Germany's attack on Poland, as the Spanish-American War, as the invasion(s) of Mexico. Invading Iraq was not the first time the United States moved in on a sovereign country—Jesus, just look at the "Indian Wars." We've done it many times. Most big nations have, but that doesn't make it OK. Nor does the halo America tries to wear around the world. Anyhow—
—it's all whacked. The problem is maintaining enough sanity to help change things. I'm not really certain things can be changed, but we have to try. People are hungry, sick, wounded, freaked-out. Not just in war zones: right here in what Bill Clinton once asked "Is this a great nation or what?" It's an "or what," Bill.
I'm not sure where the moral superiority went, assuming we actually had any. The Jews fleeing the Nazis didn't find very large welcome mats at American docks. We held Africans in slavery for generations, claiming they were sub-human, or at least retarded. We committed what was, effectively, genocide against American Indians. How many civilians died in Viet Nam? We don't even have solid data—at least for domestic consumption—on the number of Iraqi civilians who have died since the invasion and occupation.
What I do worry about is karma. I believe there's a national karma, retribution. The problem with karma on a national level is that it's an equal opportunity shit-storm. There were good-intentioned people in Nazi Germany. They were steam-rollered by the closing weeks of World War II. There were good white people in South Africa, back in the bad old days. Their fates are still uncertain. England is getting a major pay-back from it's colonial policies. Americans are simply out-numbered in the world. These days the country isn't looked upon favorably by millions in Africa, Asia, Latin America. We've taken and taken everything we could grab. America is going to have to pay for that behavior. All of us, I'm afraid.
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