WAR with EVERYONE!!!! Yippie!!!

EXTERMINATE! EXTEMINATE! EXTEMINATE!

We’re still that crazy, don’t be fooled. We won’t be out of Iraq for six months before Americans start getting antsy for another war.

Or as Custer last said, “CHARGE!”

Yoo-hoo, lotion-boy, do let’s roll, please.

These people are either naive Utopians, or ridiculously neurotic over compensators. They either think all the worlds ills can be cured if we just kill the right people, everything will turn out O.K. if we just BELIEVE hard enough, and that every nation on earth would happily become our obsequies lackeys if given the chance. That or the only thing that matters to them is the feeling of power and domination. Either way they aren’t the sort of folks who should be running a nation.

I completely forgot about “Let’s roll.”

Ugh

Hey guys, out here in the Pacific Northwest, one of our most entertaining wingnuts has appeared to have packed it in. I’ve compiled his greatest lines here.

That picture is as haunting as a picture could be to a father of two daughters.

Fuckin’ nightmare.

I’m afraid it’s a lot simpler than that. They have “A Terrible Love of War”.

*Sigh*

Days like this, where I can feel the hot breath of the past on my neck, smell the sulfur and hear the thunder, days when the scars itch and burn, when the weight of the sadness is like a full ruck on a three day hump, when temper and patience are short and yet lonliness eats away at my heart, while corrosive misery disolves my soul, days like this when I can see them for what they are, and hope fades to black.

War isn’t just violence, suffering, disease and the end of so many dreams. It is something much worse, a collective madness, a sickness of the soul that infects all of us, that darkens our days and fills our nightmares with cries of the worst kind of pain.

There is no stopping them, you know. When war is what they want, they will always get it, because so many humans are willing to provide it. The endless shedding of blood, the blood of the innocent and guilty both, war without end, amen. And it will always be true that the worst of them will never take a life, will never fight for their lives under swaying, sputtering illum rounds, hand to hand with other terrified men who would want only to see one more sunrise, will never know the anquish of firing up the muzzle flashes from a tiny hooch, only to later find a mother and her children cut to pieces inside.

It’s easy for them to wish for war. It has always been easy. But it seems, somhow, easier today…

Peace…

mikey

Peace in this world only follows victory in war.

This must scan better in the original German.

Once, I wanted to be a soldier.
Older, wiser, and lucky enough to have missed both Gulf Wars, I can only say that I would rather carry the kind of scars mikey has than be the kind of disgusting, reprehensible creature that is Michael Leeden. May his name be cursed for eternity, as a warning to future Americans of the price of reckless bloodthirst and warmongering.

“Peace in this world only follows victory in war.”
This must scan better in the original German.

Ledeen might have been riffing on the Tacitus tag. “Peace in this world only follows the creation of a desert.”

What comes first: a smashed chicken or a smashed egg?

“Let’s Roll Again”: because an unprovoked invasion of a vastly overmatched opponent is exactly the same thing as a desperate, self-sacrificing charge against armed hijackers.

Y’know, when most people think back on the 1960s, 70s, 80s and even the 90s, it’s kind of nostalgic:

“Gee, weren’t those bell bottoms cute.”

“OMG, look at the bad hair.”

“Boy, that music they listened to back then was pretty [insert desired adjective here].”

“It’s so cute the way everyone was protesting in the streets and getting hit in the head by the cops.”

“Is it my imagination, or did everyone get laid more back then?”

What will they say in future years, looking back on the dreaded decade of the Aughts? Certainly none of the above. More like the following:

“Boy, those wingnuts sure did eat a lot of Cheetos.”

“Did anyone to the right of Joe Lieberman ever exercise?”

“What was it about the turn of the century that made these people so obsessed with war and killing?”

Of course, by then all of this may seem like small potatoes. If Ledeen and his ilk have their way, we will have invaded and killed large portions of the population in half or more of the countries of the world.

Of course, in the process of doing so, we will have earned the hatred and enmity of the entire planet, and having depleted our military and other resources, we will be a helpless giant before the rest of the world.

Which reminds me: when I was a kid, there was a war game (with cards and dice, in those days) that involved the rest of the world invading the United States. I used to think that this was a ridiculous idea, that it would never happen in my lifetime. I’ll say this now: if Michael “Fuckall for Brains” Ledeen has his way, it will happen, if not in my lifetime, then in my children’s.

For this as much or more than so many other things, I hate these motherfuckers with all of my heart.

#

Yoo-hoo, lotion-boy, do let’s roll, please.

Welcome back, tehl4m3, I missed you. Iffy and RB have been keeping us supplied with ridiculous and entertaining user nyms, but we can always use more. :=)

Michael Ledeen is a disgusting imperialist. And a fascist.

I will know this country is on the right track when it’s possible for someone to say that in public without worrying about Godwin, accusations of treason, or flying monkey attacks.

Actually, a large number of Americans are barking lunatics.

Now, I’m sure the rest of the world has it’s share of crazies (I’ve only lived in the US) but the people I encounter on a day-by-day basis here are fairly delusional.

I believe this comes from unearned inherited wealth and actions not having any immediate negative consequences. But this will change, fairly soon I think, with any number of potential economic and/or environmental catastrophes this administration has set in motion.

Sadly, we also will suffer along with the tiny brains.

I don’t know that they are that crazy, not personally crazy. Sometimes it seems to me that fantasy is a truer vision than realism. It is as if there really is an evil wizard who has entrapped the minds of the populace with a dealy powerful spell. The spell makes them all love war and killing, as long as it is not near them.

Yes, I am drunk. And as I read Chomsky, I see that he has described this propaganda, this ‘spell’, and how it works, in very specific detail. But, sometimes, for this reason, I think that fantasy and mythology are actually a truer visions of the world than ‘realism’.

I don’t know what pisses me off more.
That 30% or so of the country still support the kind of crap that helped make Hunter Thompson suicidal, or the indeterminate sector of the population always symbolized to me by an ex, who thought knowing things about the world around me was just an excuse to be depressed.
Same girl who dropped out of high school, dropped out of community college once we broke up and I wasn’t pushing her to learn how to effing think a little, but spent two years planning out her nose job.
Who, me bitter? Nah, just single n not lovin it.
N still clueless about how anyone can be apolitical.

Apolitical people are funny. For a time I was apolitical. I guess 9/11/2001, and more precisely the lead-up the Iraq war, jolted me out of it.
But people who are like deep-down apolitical, in their very marrow, yeah I don’t get that either.
It kinda scares me actually. It is a strange thing.
And I am sorry to hear that you had that experience with your ex. But like, if she was that way, and you, you obviously are the kind that gives a shit… it might have been hard to make it work.
It sorta sounds like she just wanted to focus on something that was personal and achievable, you know? A nose job, it’s personal, you wear it on your face, and it will happen, and you will succeed.
So much of political engagement is thinking about things that will take a long time to come to fruition, and may not affect you directly, or not as directly as a nose job.

“Peace in this world only follows the creation of a desert.�

Maybe Herr Doktor, but then the whole desert thing hasn’t worked out all peaceful either.

It’s good to be back, GW! I’m still kind of partial to “Claire Booth Loonjuice,” meself…

bemused said: “Did anyone to the right of Joe Lieberman ever exercise?�
Bush does. But we all know that’s just more evidence that he’s secretly a librul.
REAL MEN don’t need to leave the recliner!

Maybe Herr Doktor, but then the whole desert thing hasn’t worked out all peaceful either.

Who doesn’t like pie?

It’s good to be back, GW! I’m still kind of partial to “Claire Booth Loonjuice,� meself…

That one’s real good.

Zees President Boosh I am hearing about. He leads heez armies from zee front on heez campaigns, n’est ce pas? He eez, how you say, a warrior president, a bonne homme who leads heez cavalry een battle, eez eet not so?

Viva la Guerre!!

Ehh, the ex seems much less significant after a quick nap. We went out in 03-04, and she was much younger. I guess maybe she had to be apolitical to survive. I at least made it out of college before this Admin got to start making the future a much more frightening place.
I’ve known many who were relatively apolitical pre-9/11 and Iraq invasion. Oddly enough, in many ways I’m almost less political now than before. There used to be nuance, subtle shades of black and white, and real reason to wonder what the right answer to a problem was. Gave reason to read widely around a topic. Now it’s been boiled down to the fucking retarded versus figuring out how to slow or stop the fucking retarded. Even under Reagan it wasn’t that simple, I think.

“Peace in this world only follows victory in war.”

It’s called “6th grade History Class”. You should try it sometime.

Now it’s been boiled down to the fucking retarded versus figuring out how to slow or stop the fucking retarded. Even under Reagan it wasn’t that simple, I think.

As a one-word rebuttal: AIDS.

The other old people here can verify that under St. Ronnie’s cloven-hoofed Reign, it looked like a significant percentage of our best, most creative friends and neighbors and role models were going to be wiped out by a medical tsunami. Even those of us who weren’t gay men learned to cringe whenever someone prefaced a conversation with, “Uh, you know how you haven’t seen Bob / Susan / Terry at the usual parties lately?… ” People were dying horribly, inexorably, and suffering endless indignities and ostracization as they did so. And it wasn’t just middle-class white Americans — although part of the horror of those days was the number of whoever-could’ve-guessed individuals, from Roy Cohn and perhaps 10% of the American Catholic priesthood to “blameless” individuals like Ryan White, whose only sin was being born hemophiliac. People were dying all over the globe, gay men and straight men and women and little babies. I know plenty of people think ANGELS IN AMERICA is silly and melodramatic, but before the current antiviral respite it really did seem like the disease the conservatives chose to label ‘the Gay Plague’ might keep spreading like a slow-motion cholera until everyone on the planet was, at the very least, mourning a dear friend or family member…

And how did The Party in Power react to this universal tragedy? Well, the worst of them, lead by the too-recently-late Jerry Falwell, screwed up their piggy little features and thundered that it was “God’s punishment” upon those who weren’t sufficiently straight, white, or American. They spoke of “rounding up” HIV-positive “walking time bombs”, or of tattooing them so that potential sexual partners, not to mention potential employers, landlords, and neighbors, would be able to avoid their contamination. (Conservative godfather Bill Buckley was a vocal proponent of this ‘kindler, gentler’ social excision.) The *best* of this sorry bunch, including Ronald Reagan himself, simply pretended that AIDS didn’t exist, that spending government money or allocating government researchers to fight it would be futile, even as their own dearest friends withered and rotted and died of “liver disease” or “brain tumors”. At the very start of the epidemic, the most powerful country on the planet chose to look away, to waste ten precious years as new victims were infected every single damn day.

Yeah, the current political climate sucks. We could be looking at the end of America as we know it, or of human civilisation, or possibly even at the death of life on earth (although I suspect that that Gaia is more resilient than we think; we may wipe ourselves and large swathes of the biosphere away, but the universal mantra is that Everything Strives, and life of some kind will go on without us). But there’s been damned few days in human history where any significant portion of the human race has been able to look around and say, “Gee, how fortunate we are that all our problems are in abeyance, and everyone save a few cripples and malcontents is happy.”

And there was Watt in the EPA. I don’t mean there weren’t clear and sometimes frequent cases of obvious right and wrong. Nor do I mean the threat is worse now than ever. As bad as the effects of global warming will be, and have been, a nuclear war would have been and would be worse. (Also, sunshine is warm.) I don’t mean to buy into the ever present idea that right now is the mostest everythingest ever.
But… hmmm, how to say this. To vastly, vastly oversimplify, it’s like Cheney is angry at the world that it’ll live far longer than he, so he wants to be sure it’s fucked after he finally dies. It’s like all these selfish, narcissistic, grown infant spoiled rich white assholes want the world to end when their lives do, cause they’re that fucking important, dammit. There’s a hint of the genuinely suicidal, which feels new to me. It’s not that we can destroy ourselves, but that they want to.
Also the simple degree of incompetence and apathy in this Admin probably are unprecedented in American history. Literally the only things they’re good at are the only things they genuinely care about; rigging elections and looting the Federal Treasury.

Oy. Saw it as I submitted. “the simple degree of incompetence and apathy in this Admin probably *is*…”

Who doesn’t like pie?
The have made a dessert, and called it peas.
“Give peas a chance!”, as I used to say to my daughter when we were trying to persuade her to eat her vegetables. “Fuck off, hippie!” she would say in response. Oh how we laughed.

Let’s roll again.

This guy’s hooked. Rehab, stat!

Mikey, that was Fortress America. My friends had me play that damned game a half dozen times, as a change of pace from the House Rules modified Axis and Allies they played every day for an entire summer.

AFAIK Chirac was waaaay to close to Saddam. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have given Bush’s grandstanding the finger, but I still don’t like the guy one bit and I am glad that he is gone.

used to be nuance, subtle shades of black and white, and real reason to wonder what the right answer to a problem was. Gave reason to read widely around a topic. Now it’s been boiled down to the fucking retarded versus figuring out how to slow or stop the fucking retarded. Even under Reagan it wasn’t that simple, I think.

You are right that the feeling of despair that this time can give you, makes it somewhat hard to learn and read. I guess that for many, the fear factor was not as up-front with Reagan, although he did create one, just like Bush has. I still try to learn and read, because there are still things that need to be done.

Perhaps by reading, I can learn more about the Neoconservatives. This may enable me to someday help a bit in putting a stake in the heart of their ideology. Or at least help someone else get into their lair safely.

Reading about Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan is not wasted, as far as I am concerned, for no other reason than that knowing about Iran could give you the tiniest of edges when trying to defeat the propaganda that has been coming from the US media about Iran.

There is also ample reason to read about the religious right, and also about religion in this country in general, because the religious right has been trying to tear down the wall between church and state for a while, and they have had significant success. Someone needs to partner with the religious, and non-religious, people who still want that wall in place.

Reading about reasons that scientists believe global warming is really happening, and possible solutions to it, isn’t wasted time either.

I know that I have gone on a long time about this, I don’t mean to lecture. All I am really trying to say is that grim as this time seems, there’s still reason to read, learn, speak, help, and act.