A Long Boring Post
05/29/07 20:13
It looks like Cindy Sheehan is throwing in the
towel on her anti-war activities.
That's some brutal honesty right there. Cindy put everything she has into protesting the war and ran smack up against the wall of intransigence that our two-party system of government has devolved into. I've been suffering from the same malaise myself of late. I blame the Democrats. The American people demonstrated their discontent with the war preznit and his party in the 2006 elections by giving the Dems control of Congress. They did so because a solid majority of Americans have decided it's time to get out of Iraq. So after taking control of Congress, the Dems responded to this clear mandate by cutting off funding for the Iraq occupation, forcing dubya to begin immediate troop withdrawals. No wait ... that's not what happened. No, instead they took a page out of dubya's playbook and put lipstick on a pig. They utterly capitulated to the preznit, giving him the funding to continue prosecuting his imbecilic blunder, and declared victory in doing so. It's just mind-boggling to think about.
My neighbor and I were discussing the different ways a liberal government and a conservative government utilize resources when he said "It all depends on what you think a government is for. Is it about corporate growth or about the people?" That sums it up pretty well for me. Lincoln described our government as being of the people, by the people and for the people, but with the vast majority of our lawmakers (Democrat and Republican) dependent on corporate cash for election financing, the will of the people has long since been supplanted by that of "the economy" as defined by corporate America. There is no liberal government option for the people to choose. Cindy Sheehan is perceptive enough to see past all the rhetoric and posturing and realize that in today's environment of bottom-line governance, the pursuit of peace is not even part of the calculation.
The paradigm she refers to is our government's long-standing (and entirely bipartisan) policy of maintaining US economic superiority through military means. That's what Iraq has always been about. Initially, there was quite a long list of rationales offered up for our invasion, with the big scary WMDs at the top, but over time that list has been pared considerably. Stripped of bullshit about nukes and terrorist training camps and pipe-dreams about spreading freedom and democracy, the list comes down to one basic truth; Empire. Sure, it's couched in the form of platitudes about protecting US interests and maintaining stability in the Middle East for national security purposes, but the logic behind this line of reasoning is perfectly circular; We must use our vastly more powerful military to threaten and/or invade and occupy other nations to ensure our continued access to some 25% of the world's oil supply, and we must ensure access to the oil to protect our economy because if our economy falters we won't have the ability to maintain our vast military superiority (and then, of course, the terrorists come and take away your jeebus).
I know people who feel there is nothing wrong with American empire, that in fact our leaders have the responsibility to ensure Americans continued access to cheap and plentiful energy using any means necessary. Aside from the sheer arrogance and stupidity of this we-deserve-it-because-we're-Amurka-goddammit mentality is the fact that our government isn't actually maintaining the status quo. Or rather they are doing so on credit, by running a massive deficit. The whole thing has an artificiality about it that reminds me of a pyramid scheme. We're borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to finance the War on Terra. Around 40% of the money has gone to American corporations, so on paper "the economy" is thriving, but you don't have to be an economist to see that this can't go on indefinitely. Sooner or later the bills must come due and corporate America's name isn't on any of them.
"I have tried ever since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful," she wrote. "Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives.
"It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years, and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most."
That's some brutal honesty right there. Cindy put everything she has into protesting the war and ran smack up against the wall of intransigence that our two-party system of government has devolved into. I've been suffering from the same malaise myself of late. I blame the Democrats. The American people demonstrated their discontent with the war preznit and his party in the 2006 elections by giving the Dems control of Congress. They did so because a solid majority of Americans have decided it's time to get out of Iraq. So after taking control of Congress, the Dems responded to this clear mandate by cutting off funding for the Iraq occupation, forcing dubya to begin immediate troop withdrawals. No wait ... that's not what happened. No, instead they took a page out of dubya's playbook and put lipstick on a pig. They utterly capitulated to the preznit, giving him the funding to continue prosecuting his imbecilic blunder, and declared victory in doing so. It's just mind-boggling to think about.
My neighbor and I were discussing the different ways a liberal government and a conservative government utilize resources when he said "It all depends on what you think a government is for. Is it about corporate growth or about the people?" That sums it up pretty well for me. Lincoln described our government as being of the people, by the people and for the people, but with the vast majority of our lawmakers (Democrat and Republican) dependent on corporate cash for election financing, the will of the people has long since been supplanted by that of "the economy" as defined by corporate America. There is no liberal government option for the people to choose. Cindy Sheehan is perceptive enough to see past all the rhetoric and posturing and realize that in today's environment of bottom-line governance, the pursuit of peace is not even part of the calculation.
"I am going to take whatever I have left and go home," she wrote. "I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost.
"I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble."
The paradigm she refers to is our government's long-standing (and entirely bipartisan) policy of maintaining US economic superiority through military means. That's what Iraq has always been about. Initially, there was quite a long list of rationales offered up for our invasion, with the big scary WMDs at the top, but over time that list has been pared considerably. Stripped of bullshit about nukes and terrorist training camps and pipe-dreams about spreading freedom and democracy, the list comes down to one basic truth; Empire. Sure, it's couched in the form of platitudes about protecting US interests and maintaining stability in the Middle East for national security purposes, but the logic behind this line of reasoning is perfectly circular; We must use our vastly more powerful military to threaten and/or invade and occupy other nations to ensure our continued access to some 25% of the world's oil supply, and we must ensure access to the oil to protect our economy because if our economy falters we won't have the ability to maintain our vast military superiority (and then, of course, the terrorists come and take away your jeebus).
I know people who feel there is nothing wrong with American empire, that in fact our leaders have the responsibility to ensure Americans continued access to cheap and plentiful energy using any means necessary. Aside from the sheer arrogance and stupidity of this we-deserve-it-because-we're-Amurka-goddammit mentality is the fact that our government isn't actually maintaining the status quo. Or rather they are doing so on credit, by running a massive deficit. The whole thing has an artificiality about it that reminds me of a pyramid scheme. We're borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to finance the War on Terra. Around 40% of the money has gone to American corporations, so on paper "the economy" is thriving, but you don't have to be an economist to see that this can't go on indefinitely. Sooner or later the bills must come due and corporate America's name isn't on any of them.
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