"Words are loaded pistols" - J. Sartre
Demitri,
I got your e-mail with the attached photo of the statue of the soldier standing at the makeshift grave marker of another fallen buddy.
From any perspective, the death of a soldier is painful; to one its pain lies in the noble cause for which he gave his life, another for the frustrating needlessness of the young man's untimely death and inevitably to someone else for the reminder it brings of a personal loss, not necessarily related to the nation's involvement in Iraq. The subsequent text I suppose was predictable.
"Why do you let it bother you?" I've been asked, numerous times. "Why can't you just delete these e-mails before you read them and save the aggravation?" I guess this works for some people. Don't let the past ruin whatever peace you can carve out for yourself now. "I'm simply too insignificant", they must feel, "to change the future; God has it all under control anyway." If I recall correctly, you don't believe that we are powerless to change the future. God gave us "free will" to shape the world; the dignity and health of the planet is ours only when we earn it. Ignorance and vice stand in the balance to unwind these efforts. This is why these things apparently matter so much to you and me. Let them delegate their diligence to us, perhaps we are just better suited to fight it out.
If its a discussion you want, please digest the facts and speak to me in your own words. Forwarding these attachments simply robs me of a valuable opportunity to know you better. I re-read our Thanksgiving holiday exchange, looking for some ambiguity in my request that you stop forwarding this pre-packaged junk to me and instead let me know, through your own words, what you think about things. I still believe I wrote clearly and without subtlety. You know that I don't like it. You know that I think its a waste of your talent. And worst of all, you know that I can't ignore it. I can only believe that you don't care. For personal reasons that you have chosen to belittle, I will not drink your kool-aid. In hind sight, I believe you privately want me to write. Well then, let's look at the facts.
Why do you think America is being brainwashed? That photo by itself could have helped everyone who saw it to think and feel about the issue of patriotism and loss on their own terms. The accompanying profile of the artist, similarly, could have been well entrusted to each of us, American citizens all, to experience in our own perspective. What a powerful pairing, the photo and the background story. But that was not the true message of the e-mail, was it? It wasn't enough to draw attention to an artist, his will to express his gratitude to the United States or the tragic reality of the slaughter of a soldiers in the line of duty. No. This message was another chance by a half-informed radical to whine about the liberal suppression of "flag waving" opportunities, which somehow, even against the background of respect for the sacrifice represented, trump the sublime perfection of the artist's message.
"Conservative media" is once again powerless to defend America from the overwhelming tsunami of "liberal" (aka: anti-American) media advances. Since you allow half-wits to frame your position, you will have no claim to injury as I admonish the damage they do. It would be tempting to discard the discipline needed to support a brazen claim, in the manner of your "mentor", but I had more fun after all taking the few minutes to actually verify my suspicions with old-fashioned research. I focused on the pitiful claim that the American media was beholden to a dark and powerful liberal director, ceaselessly steering the fourth estate to a dominant throne on the dais of Political influence.
The stage is set. Now prove it. What would be gained for the effort? An overthrow of the private ownership of institutions like the healthcare system or greater transparency of the Wall street markets are high profile targets to our American aristocracy whose transformation by the media into Federally regulated institutions would play easily into the hands of an impressionable majority of "Main Street" Americans, eager to bring the privileged to their knees and affordable medicine into their homes. Chalk one up for the Socialist liberals. Waiting another twenty years for Friedman's trickle-down economics to baste the middle and lower middle class families, while expecting those in powerful corporate positions to "govern their own best interests against unbridled greed" (sic.: Alan Greenspan), would only require the liberal news desks to reference Stockman's famous "trojan horse" analogy from the Reagan years. Raise taxes on the rich and give tax money back to the real backbone of America. Don't mention that Obama's pre-election/pre-recession tax proposal would have changed the lifestyle of America's top 0.1% earners by less than -5% (source: The Tax Policy Center, Washington) while John McCain's more conservative approach would have improved the same individuals by +12%. Let's keep that a secret too. Another score for the socialist liberals. And then there's all the good news coming in from over seas.
I got a job in New York City, working for the Carpenter's Union: Manhattan's 1536, back in May, 2001. Five months later on September 14 I was on a bus at 9:00pm to the base of the two towers I watched get hit three days earlier while building a scaffold, hanging from a jump harness 600 feet in the air. We all put American flag decals on our helmets; we all cried like young boys, stunned by the violence. We all wanted revenge. Al-Qaeda benefitted the most from the lies, cover-ups and treasons that got us mired in Iraq, with American popular support whipped to a frenzy by the media. From the "aluminum tubes" (Sec. Colin Powell: address to U.N.), the "sale of uranium to Saddam" (see: outing of Valarie Plame), the "Downing street Memo" July 23, 2002 (sic:"O.K., the Italian informant is a liar. Make a case against Iraq! Facts are secondary.") and the ever-so-memorable, "Hey, heh. . heh. ., this is the guy that tried to kill my father. . heh. . .", the liberal media was sure overpowering here.
Probable Fact: All those purple fingers on election day in Iraq better represented the voting dictate of the community Mullah than the informed will of the individuals waving them around.
Probable Fact: The "surge's" effectiveness was misinterpreted by the peace resulting from the troop's separation and redistribution of neighborhoods along Sunni and Shiite boundaries. Ethnically diverse neighborhoods were gentrified; homes formally owned and inhabited by a member of one sect were essentially vacated and repopulated by the opposite sect. Refugees, broke and lured by the re-patriacian reward of $3,000 per family, wishing to return from Jordan and Syria faced the probability of having nowhere to come home to. "Honey, there's a Shiite in your powder room!" There was no contingency plan.
The departure of overwhelming American troop forces from a semi-stabilized town, be it Mosul, Kirkuk, Tikrit or Ramadi deteriorated to its former, more familiar tribal configuration within a brief period of time, a cultural homeostasis you might imply. A strategy not unlike that carnival game where one tries to hammer the heads of gophers who pop their heads at brief, random moments from the hidden world below the table. Al Qaeda was welcomed in and protected by Iraqi Patriots reacting to the American invasion, the bombing and slaughter of neighbors and family, the lack of protection from occupying forces from renegade extremists in the outer provinces supported with arms and supplies from Iran; the looting of priceless antiquities and treasures that represented an irreplaceable national heritage.
We screwed up. We handed Al Qaeda an open invitation to reproduce. They are the enemy. I'm unhappy with the media's whining. And what about "cut and run!" What a powerful and damning epithet to aim at anyone with the nerve to suggest that the United States does not belong in Iraq, should withdraw from Iraq and should stop funding the engagement in Iraq and use the money, ($12 billion per month), to support programs at home. Haliburton spent three years in Iraq. They spent every dime they were contracted to receive, fulfilling less than 10% of their contractual obligations. How can you rebuild a society when fundamental institutions like police stations, schools, fire houses, courts, power plants, traffic and street lights etc. . are not built. Haliburton squandered the resources on less than capable, less than scrupulous subcontractors who were beyond the accountability of congressional over-sight. They packed up when the money was gone, leaving police training barracks that were uninhabitable due to water leaks and substandard construction.
Brown-outs in the "new and improved" Iraq outnumber the pre-invasion statistics. Who would not fall back on the advice and comfort of an ancient system of tribal elders and codes? The money needed to finish Haliburton's obligations must come from somewhere or the whole "stand-down when they stand-up" strategy will have to find a more abstract approach. Its gonna be tough to figure out how to do this without police and fire stations. But I guess Haliburton cashed their check and doesn't lose sleep over the equation. "Cut and run."
And wait! There's more! If you buy into this war now, the same team that bought and sold the media and America on the invasion of Iraq will bring you (and the rest of this great nation of uninformed, apathetic citizens) another Republican victory in sensitive voting districts with their fool-proof, slimy Attorney's General Voting scandal.
I apologize for the sarcastic tenor. However, the point here is that the very same characters responsible for allowing the United State's world wide reputation for justice be tainted by rationalizations of rendition and physical interrogation, joined heads once again to load the dice during a tenuous election. Thank heaven for the few, non-conformist investigators that succeeded in producing the few subpoenas that survived the cover-up. Watch this one, it ain't over. But can't the media find something less "anti-American" to write about? How about those lazy slobs on welfare?
So where are these Liberals and their sick, anti-American agenda to be found? Lets look over America's shoulder and read, watch or hear what they do. Here's one now. Sorry. He doesn't pay attention to the news. I guess he's just one of the 57% of Americans who just don't follow the papers, TV or radio. Forget about the internet. He couldn't care less. Of the devoted news hounds who get their information from cable TV (38% of all regular TV news watchers) 25% watch FOX, 22% watch CNN and only 11% watch MSNBC. I thought MSNBC was the big liberal threat here. Taking a look at the local news broadcast stations, I found that NBC took the lion's share with 17% of the regular, repeated viewership, followed closely by ABC and CBS with 16% each and McNiel/Leher (from that leftist PBS) showing in at 5%.
Forget about newspapers. Readership is way down among the under 30 age group, at 23% admitting to reading a paper. This is the age group with the highest percentage of liberal political values. Contrast this with a 60% regular readership in the over thirty demographic and you've got an interesting case of reciprocal dynamics: the more you read the leftist-poisoned journals, the more conservative your value system becomes. Facinating.
Overall, 40% of those informed get so by listening to the radio. (Where do I get all these numbers? Its easy to be informed in this age of the information Super-Highway; you know, Al Gore's baby. I went to the Pew Research Center web-site for People and the Press. You can too by simply going to: http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=834.) Now the radio statistics are pretty interesting. In the Talk-show category, which itself represents 41% of the overall listening population, it seems that 41% are republican and only 28% consider themselves democrat. 45% call themselves conservative and only 18% liberal. Of all the surprise numbers I found, NPR, the scourge of good American values, training camp for liberals, accounts for only 16% of the listenership. Rush and Hannity have ratings untouched by their closest rivals.
Which begs my final question. I could bore you with statistical minutae concerning the habits of magazine readership, blog readership and subsequent breakdowns of catagories already mentioned, but the pattern remains unchanged. The Marvin Davis', Rupert Murdochs, Ted Turners, Sumner Redstones, Bloombergs and Conde Nast's own Donald Newhouse have all minipulated the media for decades, protecting the rights of specific, priveledged Americans to run their companies with as little government regulation as can fly under the radar without stirring the sleeping working, middle class.
"We are being farmed", -Jello Biafra.
Sedated with TV, alcohol, prescription drugs and a fractal-ized truth about our country, our world and our neighbor. Overstimulation, via violence or an overabundance of facts without reference will keep the greater percentage of Americans subcontracting their analysis of the state of affairs. "Let Hannity read up on the subject and tommorrow he can tell me what I think." Send a volunteer army into a foreign country and America will wave their little flags to the metronome of patriotism.
Don't breathe a word about a draft. Mothers and fathers, currently busy working the best days of their lives for some future, a future currently being seduced away from them by irresponsible corporate executives and slick hedge-fund managers, these fathers and mothers might wake from the great dream and realize the cost of docility is ultimately the loss of any record of having lived at all.
So in the end we have a bronze casting of war-time grief; a vinette of an artist with a story to tell; and the conservative right, highjacking the story to cry about the rock under which their values must hide. Yes, those are the suppressed stories. Those are the stories that might lead to cavities in the brain. I just wonder how the conservative flock convinced itself for these many years that noone knew it was asleep on its feet. - Jeff
© Jeff Thomas 2009
Demitri,
I got your e-mail with the attached photo of the statue of the soldier standing at the makeshift grave marker of another fallen buddy.
From any perspective, the death of a soldier is painful; to one its pain lies in the noble cause for which he gave his life, another for the frustrating needlessness of the young man's untimely death and inevitably to someone else for the reminder it brings of a personal loss, not necessarily related to the nation's involvement in Iraq. The subsequent text I suppose was predictable.
"Why do you let it bother you?" I've been asked, numerous times. "Why can't you just delete these e-mails before you read them and save the aggravation?" I guess this works for some people. Don't let the past ruin whatever peace you can carve out for yourself now. "I'm simply too insignificant", they must feel, "to change the future; God has it all under control anyway." If I recall correctly, you don't believe that we are powerless to change the future. God gave us "free will" to shape the world; the dignity and health of the planet is ours only when we earn it. Ignorance and vice stand in the balance to unwind these efforts. This is why these things apparently matter so much to you and me. Let them delegate their diligence to us, perhaps we are just better suited to fight it out.
If its a discussion you want, please digest the facts and speak to me in your own words. Forwarding these attachments simply robs me of a valuable opportunity to know you better. I re-read our Thanksgiving holiday exchange, looking for some ambiguity in my request that you stop forwarding this pre-packaged junk to me and instead let me know, through your own words, what you think about things. I still believe I wrote clearly and without subtlety. You know that I don't like it. You know that I think its a waste of your talent. And worst of all, you know that I can't ignore it. I can only believe that you don't care. For personal reasons that you have chosen to belittle, I will not drink your kool-aid. In hind sight, I believe you privately want me to write. Well then, let's look at the facts.
Why do you think America is being brainwashed? That photo by itself could have helped everyone who saw it to think and feel about the issue of patriotism and loss on their own terms. The accompanying profile of the artist, similarly, could have been well entrusted to each of us, American citizens all, to experience in our own perspective. What a powerful pairing, the photo and the background story. But that was not the true message of the e-mail, was it? It wasn't enough to draw attention to an artist, his will to express his gratitude to the United States or the tragic reality of the slaughter of a soldiers in the line of duty. No. This message was another chance by a half-informed radical to whine about the liberal suppression of "flag waving" opportunities, which somehow, even against the background of respect for the sacrifice represented, trump the sublime perfection of the artist's message.
"Conservative media" is once again powerless to defend America from the overwhelming tsunami of "liberal" (aka: anti-American) media advances. Since you allow half-wits to frame your position, you will have no claim to injury as I admonish the damage they do. It would be tempting to discard the discipline needed to support a brazen claim, in the manner of your "mentor", but I had more fun after all taking the few minutes to actually verify my suspicions with old-fashioned research. I focused on the pitiful claim that the American media was beholden to a dark and powerful liberal director, ceaselessly steering the fourth estate to a dominant throne on the dais of Political influence.
The stage is set. Now prove it. What would be gained for the effort? An overthrow of the private ownership of institutions like the healthcare system or greater transparency of the Wall street markets are high profile targets to our American aristocracy whose transformation by the media into Federally regulated institutions would play easily into the hands of an impressionable majority of "Main Street" Americans, eager to bring the privileged to their knees and affordable medicine into their homes. Chalk one up for the Socialist liberals. Waiting another twenty years for Friedman's trickle-down economics to baste the middle and lower middle class families, while expecting those in powerful corporate positions to "govern their own best interests against unbridled greed" (sic.: Alan Greenspan), would only require the liberal news desks to reference Stockman's famous "trojan horse" analogy from the Reagan years. Raise taxes on the rich and give tax money back to the real backbone of America. Don't mention that Obama's pre-election/pre-recession tax proposal would have changed the lifestyle of America's top 0.1% earners by less than -5% (source: The Tax Policy Center, Washington) while John McCain's more conservative approach would have improved the same individuals by +12%. Let's keep that a secret too. Another score for the socialist liberals. And then there's all the good news coming in from over seas.
I got a job in New York City, working for the Carpenter's Union: Manhattan's 1536, back in May, 2001. Five months later on September 14 I was on a bus at 9:00pm to the base of the two towers I watched get hit three days earlier while building a scaffold, hanging from a jump harness 600 feet in the air. We all put American flag decals on our helmets; we all cried like young boys, stunned by the violence. We all wanted revenge. Al-Qaeda benefitted the most from the lies, cover-ups and treasons that got us mired in Iraq, with American popular support whipped to a frenzy by the media. From the "aluminum tubes" (Sec. Colin Powell: address to U.N.), the "sale of uranium to Saddam" (see: outing of Valarie Plame), the "Downing street Memo" July 23, 2002 (sic:"O.K., the Italian informant is a liar. Make a case against Iraq! Facts are secondary.") and the ever-so-memorable, "Hey, heh. . heh. ., this is the guy that tried to kill my father. . heh. . .", the liberal media was sure overpowering here.
Probable Fact: All those purple fingers on election day in Iraq better represented the voting dictate of the community Mullah than the informed will of the individuals waving them around.
Probable Fact: The "surge's" effectiveness was misinterpreted by the peace resulting from the troop's separation and redistribution of neighborhoods along Sunni and Shiite boundaries. Ethnically diverse neighborhoods were gentrified; homes formally owned and inhabited by a member of one sect were essentially vacated and repopulated by the opposite sect. Refugees, broke and lured by the re-patriacian reward of $3,000 per family, wishing to return from Jordan and Syria faced the probability of having nowhere to come home to. "Honey, there's a Shiite in your powder room!" There was no contingency plan.
The departure of overwhelming American troop forces from a semi-stabilized town, be it Mosul, Kirkuk, Tikrit or Ramadi deteriorated to its former, more familiar tribal configuration within a brief period of time, a cultural homeostasis you might imply. A strategy not unlike that carnival game where one tries to hammer the heads of gophers who pop their heads at brief, random moments from the hidden world below the table. Al Qaeda was welcomed in and protected by Iraqi Patriots reacting to the American invasion, the bombing and slaughter of neighbors and family, the lack of protection from occupying forces from renegade extremists in the outer provinces supported with arms and supplies from Iran; the looting of priceless antiquities and treasures that represented an irreplaceable national heritage.
We screwed up. We handed Al Qaeda an open invitation to reproduce. They are the enemy. I'm unhappy with the media's whining. And what about "cut and run!" What a powerful and damning epithet to aim at anyone with the nerve to suggest that the United States does not belong in Iraq, should withdraw from Iraq and should stop funding the engagement in Iraq and use the money, ($12 billion per month), to support programs at home. Haliburton spent three years in Iraq. They spent every dime they were contracted to receive, fulfilling less than 10% of their contractual obligations. How can you rebuild a society when fundamental institutions like police stations, schools, fire houses, courts, power plants, traffic and street lights etc. . are not built. Haliburton squandered the resources on less than capable, less than scrupulous subcontractors who were beyond the accountability of congressional over-sight. They packed up when the money was gone, leaving police training barracks that were uninhabitable due to water leaks and substandard construction.
Brown-outs in the "new and improved" Iraq outnumber the pre-invasion statistics. Who would not fall back on the advice and comfort of an ancient system of tribal elders and codes? The money needed to finish Haliburton's obligations must come from somewhere or the whole "stand-down when they stand-up" strategy will have to find a more abstract approach. Its gonna be tough to figure out how to do this without police and fire stations. But I guess Haliburton cashed their check and doesn't lose sleep over the equation. "Cut and run."
And wait! There's more! If you buy into this war now, the same team that bought and sold the media and America on the invasion of Iraq will bring you (and the rest of this great nation of uninformed, apathetic citizens) another Republican victory in sensitive voting districts with their fool-proof, slimy Attorney's General Voting scandal.
I apologize for the sarcastic tenor. However, the point here is that the very same characters responsible for allowing the United State's world wide reputation for justice be tainted by rationalizations of rendition and physical interrogation, joined heads once again to load the dice during a tenuous election. Thank heaven for the few, non-conformist investigators that succeeded in producing the few subpoenas that survived the cover-up. Watch this one, it ain't over. But can't the media find something less "anti-American" to write about? How about those lazy slobs on welfare?
So where are these Liberals and their sick, anti-American agenda to be found? Lets look over America's shoulder and read, watch or hear what they do. Here's one now. Sorry. He doesn't pay attention to the news. I guess he's just one of the 57% of Americans who just don't follow the papers, TV or radio. Forget about the internet. He couldn't care less. Of the devoted news hounds who get their information from cable TV (38% of all regular TV news watchers) 25% watch FOX, 22% watch CNN and only 11% watch MSNBC. I thought MSNBC was the big liberal threat here. Taking a look at the local news broadcast stations, I found that NBC took the lion's share with 17% of the regular, repeated viewership, followed closely by ABC and CBS with 16% each and McNiel/Leher (from that leftist PBS) showing in at 5%.
Forget about newspapers. Readership is way down among the under 30 age group, at 23% admitting to reading a paper. This is the age group with the highest percentage of liberal political values. Contrast this with a 60% regular readership in the over thirty demographic and you've got an interesting case of reciprocal dynamics: the more you read the leftist-poisoned journals, the more conservative your value system becomes. Facinating.
Overall, 40% of those informed get so by listening to the radio. (Where do I get all these numbers? Its easy to be informed in this age of the information Super-Highway; you know, Al Gore's baby. I went to the Pew Research Center web-site for People and the Press. You can too by simply going to: http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=834.) Now the radio statistics are pretty interesting. In the Talk-show category, which itself represents 41% of the overall listening population, it seems that 41% are republican and only 28% consider themselves democrat. 45% call themselves conservative and only 18% liberal. Of all the surprise numbers I found, NPR, the scourge of good American values, training camp for liberals, accounts for only 16% of the listenership. Rush and Hannity have ratings untouched by their closest rivals.
Which begs my final question. I could bore you with statistical minutae concerning the habits of magazine readership, blog readership and subsequent breakdowns of catagories already mentioned, but the pattern remains unchanged. The Marvin Davis', Rupert Murdochs, Ted Turners, Sumner Redstones, Bloombergs and Conde Nast's own Donald Newhouse have all minipulated the media for decades, protecting the rights of specific, priveledged Americans to run their companies with as little government regulation as can fly under the radar without stirring the sleeping working, middle class.
"We are being farmed", -Jello Biafra.
Sedated with TV, alcohol, prescription drugs and a fractal-ized truth about our country, our world and our neighbor. Overstimulation, via violence or an overabundance of facts without reference will keep the greater percentage of Americans subcontracting their analysis of the state of affairs. "Let Hannity read up on the subject and tommorrow he can tell me what I think." Send a volunteer army into a foreign country and America will wave their little flags to the metronome of patriotism.
Don't breathe a word about a draft. Mothers and fathers, currently busy working the best days of their lives for some future, a future currently being seduced away from them by irresponsible corporate executives and slick hedge-fund managers, these fathers and mothers might wake from the great dream and realize the cost of docility is ultimately the loss of any record of having lived at all.
So in the end we have a bronze casting of war-time grief; a vinette of an artist with a story to tell; and the conservative right, highjacking the story to cry about the rock under which their values must hide. Yes, those are the suppressed stories. Those are the stories that might lead to cavities in the brain. I just wonder how the conservative flock convinced itself for these many years that noone knew it was asleep on its feet. - Jeff
© Jeff Thomas 2009
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