Archive for October, 2007

Yes, now if anyone wants to comment, you will have one more hurtle….you will be shown words to type (if I recall, WITHOUT a space between them).  This is because I get 50 to 70 spam ‘comments’ in my mailbox per day that need to be dealt with and I am weary of it.

Those of you who have registered, I am sorry for the additional hassle, but well, I don’t think any of us really want 50 ads for buying drugs online per day, do we?  Nor the fake blog sites ON WORDPRESS for crying out loud, pretending to be fellow bloggers who then change their initial post to drug or porn ads.

Yes, the image below IS titled “Kiss it!”

I don’t know any Iraqi veterans really well, up close and personal, so although I have heard of all sorts of non-life threatening, but certainly miserable medical mystery-conditions afflicting them, I don’t really know how it is for them. But I do know how it has been for my Viet Nam veteran husband of over 30 years. He has had this misery-inducing rash ever since his first year spent in Viet Nam. Doctors have given him the ounce by ounce equivalent of a 55 gallon drum of topical salves and creams. He has been told it is athlete’s foot gone wild to his crotch and chest, he has been told it is psoriasis, he has been told it is a yeast infection. He hasn’t been freaking CURED.

Our last civilian doctor since 1988 mumbled about it maybe being fungal, but said our insurance wouldn’t pay for the oral drug to treat it. So he didn’t prescribe it. He has been “sacked” for that and other reasons. So, yesterday, my husband and I went to a local “doc in a box” quick care place. I am fed up with fancy doc offices with color coordinated receptionists running in hot and cold herds and spending an entire half day in commute and waiting to be blown off by a guy who spends 5-10 minutes ignoring your questions and demands.

Imagine my surprise when the tiny woman doctor with over 25 years of practice and teaching behind her, looks at this rash and says, “That IS a fungus…..you have put up with that since the 60’s? Do you want me to treat it or just get RID of it?” Duuuh. She prescribed oral Lamisil and said that the insurance would likely puke about it—so I mentally girded up my loins to do battle.

Off to the pharmacy we went. Happy information from pharmacist—there is a generic now for the drug, so we hope the insurance company doesn’t have too big a fit. But no, they won’t pay, we will have to fight. Then I ask how much the drug costs if we simply plastic card ourselves further into debt hell. The pharmacist whispers to us: “Too much, but I know Costco sells it cheaply, and we MATCH prices if you call and find out the price at Costco.”

Here is where I get profane, so all of you with virgin ears and eyes….go away now. The price at Costco for the generic Lamisil is $21.53 (only about $7 more than I pay for insured prescriptions). The pharmacy matches the price and we buy it. Then I look at the receipt—the “normal” price for this drug, for 30 little pills is $390! That is the grocery chain ‘reduced’ price, down from $420. FOUR HUNDRED TWENTY DOLLARS??!! Holy fucking shit, are you kidding? So let me just say, pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy chains are blood-sucking, gutter-crawling, low-life, douch bag sons of bitches, ok? I wish I could simply transfer the ailment that has made my husband miserable since 1965 to THEIR sorry low-life asses (literally), but I would be satisfied with puking on their shoelaces if it is all I can get.

Not only that, but the insurance companies that play with them are the same AND stupid asshats as well. Do you know how much they have paid for all the useless if barely mitigating tubes of creams over the last 20-40 years? They could have paid ONCE for the pills and been freaking DONE! Dumbfucks, ok…yes, they ARE.

So, the point of this rant? If you are a Viet Nam vet, if you have lingering crotch rot or any sort of rash and it won’t go away and you have NOT tried treating it as a systemic fungal infection, I urge you to do so at once. The Man has had ONE pill, and he can already see the fire engine red beginning to shrink at the margins of his misery. Find a Costco, or some pharmacy that will match prices and ask for the generic when you have a doctor’s prescription in your hot little hand.

Queen Eleanor, wife to Henry II of “Becket” fame (and yes, I phrase it such for convenience of those who learn what history they know from movies–insulting bitch, aren’t I?) reportedly once said “I was a bad wife, a bad mother, and a bad queen.” I have to admit, having read about Eleanor, I cannot imagine her saying that in anything other than a sarcastic vein. I think I have her beat, at least if you listen to the pundits of the day—and I am worse without benefit of a crown. If this month is any indication, this will be another “winter of my discontent” likewise without a crown mashing my hair.

I am surfeit, this morning: filled up. First, for the strength to put to page the discordant screechings flying round my brain like banshees, I had to fill myself with the beauty of the a morning walk in the rainy marsh and it was breath-taking in dramatic turn of the season glories. And fortified with coffee to banish the wood smoke induced cough, I am now ready to release the other surfeit onto this page.

For some while, legal wrangling and much public chatter has revolved around some of the freedoms we are all to agree our soldiers are dying to preserve. This got me to thinking—never a good thing, some would tell you. One of the “freedoms” we hear trumpeted most stridently is “freedom of religion.” Now, here is where I surpass Eleanor in one way—I am terrible at religion in the traditional sense. I was raised by an atheist and while I couldn’t take comfort in that (there WOULD be this nagging sense of “Presence” in my life), nor could I embrace anything traditional. I’d make a very bad Jew: had I been Abraham or Job I would have told the white-bearded sadist where to go in short order. I tried to be Catholic and that was a failure, too. I didn’t see why I should wear out my body producing more children than I could feed, among other issues and no, sorry, I never “found Jesus” at all. And Islam, well, studying history and philosophy as I did, it seemed a blending of the first two, so if I didn’t like eggs or cheese; really, how likely was it that I would want an omlette? I am honestly not trying to give offense to members of these three great faiths; but it simply didn’t work for me. I find what spirituality I do attempt to be experimental in the extreme—I am lumped into something called “neo-paganism” as a result of experiences that seemed very like what anthropological literature calls shamanic initiation. But Doubt is ever the first deacon of my personal “church” and for every experience that speaks of the noumenal world to me, others scream about the illogic and nonsense of it. So, if Eleanor is in Hell and some of those I now WILL attempt to offend are correct in their rantings, she and I will get to compare notes on who is worse at mothering and marriage.

Freedom of religion, eh? The largest scream on this the last few years has been raised by holy pharmacists who do not want to dispense birth control pills or worse, morning after pills, to women. Now, this has been adequately explained as to why birth control is NOT abortion before. That is not what I am about; I just have a few questions for these pill-counting breathren (and they are always men, who do NOT bear the physical stress of pregnancy).

Do you likewise refuse to ring up condoms for men?

Do you insist on a marriage license for men asking for Viagra prescriptions?

Do you, in fact, never wonder (since the voice of God MUST be in your ear) why these men, even if married should have Viagra—cause, if birth control should be natural, wouldn’t it be conceivable (no pun intended) that the inability to get it up IS God’s own birth control? Why would it be ok to contravene the naturalness of no hard ons, but not alright to contravene fertility….or at least delay it? Why for that matter is it acceptible to carry umbrellas and not get rained upon? Lets carry natural law to its full extent, maybe?

But let us drop that and go more into the presumed laws of God, and without leaving the grocery store—which is where many pharmacies are located. Every religion has laws…even my own experimental slightly Hellenism infused brand has a few precepts to cling unto like bride to husband! If one is Mormon, and works in a large grocery store, does the Mormon refuse to stock or ring up beer, cigarettes, tea or coffee? I mean, these things are forbidden to them….so why don’t they impose that on everyone? Will courts coddle them in their religiously informed sensibilities? Shall they be guaranteed employment as checkers even if they have to call for another person everytime someone brings a six pack to the cashier.

Are the courts going to support Jews and Muslims who don’t want to touch or ring up that pork roast? And my Hindu friends, well, they shouldn’t be required to see or sell packages of beef—the horror of slaughtering the sacred cow and all. Some of my neo-pagan acquaintances believe that iron implements offend their deities—-shall we tell them they never have to handle the iron skillets in over in the houseware’s aisle? How far shall we go in catering to religious sensibilities. Though, I must note, all sarcasm aside, some of these things have utterly no “sense” about them. Like a former very strict Baptist neighbor who believed that since the Bible said “Women shall not dress in the clothing of men” that she and her daughters should never wear trousers of any sort, should people like her be able to refuse to sell jeans or slacks in women’s and girls’ sizes? “No, I’m sorry, that is wrong, you will have to take your order to that already damned godless bitch on checkstand #6!”

But, for fun, let’s leave the relatively safe confines of the grocery store. It’s fall and that means Halloween…..our Baptist Rightist in the store likely won’t sell you those bags of candy for Halloween, by the way, either. Because if a woman in America sues in court to protect her freedom of religion, since it is impinged upon by co-workers’ decorations for Halloween because it “exposes” her to “paganism” you can imagine how such folks would feel about feeding the frenzy that is 31 October.

And if a pagan gets offended at an effigy of a witch hanging in Salem at this time of year and calls it a “hate crime” because OMG…that is a slam at Wiccans? Holy crap, call the Smithsonian…those historical displays might actually be hate crimes; can’t be apropos since a century or two ago, Salem DID hang witches, right? We couldn’t acknowledge the past without it infringing upon some-freaking-body’s sense of religious proportion.

And maybe we should all sheathe our bodies in veils, because there are many immigrants from areas in Africa where women are taught that the mere exposure of more than their face and hands will loose sexual anarchy upon the world—-creating an unavoidable sexual frenzy in men. Maybe that is really what my former Baptist neighbor was worried about, but too shy to say aloud? And what about my best friend in high school, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth? Her father believed radio and television were “of the Devil” and I had to take current events notes for her. Tell all those restaurants with televisions in the corners that they are creating a bar to the holy, as sure as a flight of steps to a wheelchair, by God.

Now, obviously, many readers are saying something like “But NObody is suggesting those things.” Well, no….not yet, anyhow. But logically speaking, they could. It could just be that slippery a slope and may be already. A television commentator (you know, it just MIGHT be of the devil??!) was asking how a Catholic like JFK or a Mormon like Romney could be both a “good President” and a good Catholic or Mormon. Now, come ON…..this man actually said it was impossible. So, let me get this straight, if one cannot be the head of state of a country without imposing one’s own religious values upon said nation….how the hell can we tell the difference between America and Iran, or Saudi Arabia? There are people out there who now believe that in America a man of faith MUST be a theocrat? Have we somehow fallen, without notice, back into the 1600’s? Is a neo-JFK going to pillory Protestants like a neo-Bloody Mary? And is some neo-Elizabeth going to send Catholic priests back to hiding in secret rooms and fleeing across the borders to live?

How is this ridiculous dialogue even happening? Can we all step away from the stupid yet? Who on earth decided that following one’s own precepts of faith MUST mean imposing the consequences of those acts on everyone else, regardless of their faith. And may I say, America is being particularly selective about just which religious ideals it is lauding to the skies—most of them deal with subjugating women and controlling their reproductive and sexual lives. I find it more than a “stupidism” that sexism and cruelty of this nature is being labeled as obedience to ANY god. Lest you think my list of stupidisms is just a feminist rant, let me add one small rant about that—I recently saw a blog comment about Doris Lessing’s Nobel prize. The commentor wasn’t sure how she felt about Lessing’s body of work, because she wasn’t sure what the writings meant for feminism….now if she meant that as it sounded, THAT too, is a stupidism. I say this as an old time feminist, thank you very much.

One IS falling into the stupid, slipping down the slope of slippery shit ANY time one decides to judge everything in life by only ONE meter—-whether the meter is religion, politics, feminism, fashion or any other artifact of human existence. For humanity’s sake, people, pull on some boots with traction tread and haul your asses back up the hill into some sort of intellectual rigor. Even those deities I semi-believe in are all “big boys and girls” who do not need me to do their dirty work, they can take care of themselves and what WE humans need to do is the same thing. We need to CARE for each other and stop acting like automatons of bad movie lore. Or we will become nothing but artifacts for some other culture to judge.

I want to remind you all….and ask you to pass it on and remind everyone.  Tie people up if needed—-but don’t let them go to work on October 17th!  Solidarity with labor and people needing peace instead of endless war.  Call in sick, take vacation…..whatever it takes; stay home, don’t work, don’t spend.  Make it a day to focus on America regaining the moral imperative instead of imperial morals.

If Washington can hear nothing else, hit them in the pocketbook and their sweet corporate sensibilities.  Shut It Down!

Being the terrible old blood-thirsty pagan I am, this is the end of my year. Some would consider it a horrid parody of the Christian Christmas candle ring….a wreath made of tiny apples sits on a table in my living room, with four candles rising. One is partially burnt, and one will be lit every Saturday…along with its forerunner, to mark the time until the 27th of October. For that date, selected when the full moon sits in the house of Scorpio, marks my “Samhain” this year.

Samhain is different things to different pagans. To me, it is the final harvest festival—I admit, I more or less ignore the other two that Wiccans joyously celebrate (Lughnasadh and Mabon). Not only am I not Wiccan, but I am too old. Does that statement make sense? It does to me. Samhain is the “soul harvest” to me—it connotes the end of the growing green life-sustaining season and is all about the darkness of winter and the cold time of year. Anyone of northern Europeon ancestry knows that winter is the season of death—songbirds that linger fall, frozen, out of the bitter sky, cattle left un-rescued in the field starve as snow buries the grass, and cold seeps into your bones as you go about your tasks, stiff and shivering at once.

Modern life denies all this brutality, but it is there just below the civilized veneer. And for me, that veneer is as clear as glass any more; I am not ancient, but I feel old indeed. Something about seeing the names of so many so much younger than me….dead already is aging me faster. Inside, I feel my bones creaking like the glow-in-the-dark skeleton in my window; I pad my flesh by gorging on cookies in sheer reaction to the perception of runaway mortality. I would trade my old, worn, had-my-fun-already life for one of those young lives being snuffed out by an IED or gunshot in distant Iraq….I’d sign back up in the Army and go if they would take me and if they would irrevocably send some 19 year old back home to his parents. But they don’t make those kinds of deals any more. So, yes, I am too old for Mabon and other rites of joy and growth. My life is no longer about planting and birthing, it is about going into the dark.

I play with the beautiful hand made kaleidoscopes my husband has given me as gifts; my favorite has the container you can fill with wee bits of things of your own choosing. Looking at them in the triangular chamber, dazzlingly multiplied and full of sparkle, is a wonderful sort of diversionary meditation. This is the time of year I aim that wooden toy at the brightest light in the house and study the images of wonder that life has been. That wonder is gone for over 3800 Americans in uniform—in Iraq alone. More in Afghanistan, and more from the shrinking number of “coalition” nations. I put beads on the monument…I light candles to Athena and wonder if She rages against the waste, too? I put beads in my kaleidescope and sit by the hearth wondering how to connote the night of passage into the dark.

Each year, there is usually a fire in the outdoor pit, and most often several friends close enough for me to be comfortable baring my grief and fury openly to them. But this year, the days are already much darker with heavy wet clouds, and the time seems so much later; the rain lashes down with icy fingers down my neck and I doubt I could maintain composure even for those with whom I am most simpatico. So, yes, a fire in the pit, perhaps. But nobody there this year, not even family. A quiet meal and for the first time since long ago Beltanes (the year’s opposite opening summer fest), sleeping out of doors—but this time, in the dark, trying with all my inflamed senses to hear the whispers that hover just beyond reality when I read (as I do) the entire roster of the dead before the Labyrinth’s gateway.

Sometime there is not enough light for the night that threatens. It is time to sit in the darkness, amidst the ashes, and properly mourn and weep. Even the kaleidescope knows it this year.

Just a question to begin: does this little conversation between a worker and his supervisor strike you as reasonable and right?

“I have not been paid in more than a month, my bills are all overdue, I am being evicted from my apartment and we are out of groceries and have no money. Today my car was repossessed, I really need to be paid now.”

The supervisor’s reply? “Can’t you get a rental car to get to work?”

This isn’t some below the border sweat shop, folks. This is in a “blue” state of America with American workers. This is a rant and likely just a bit disorganized and scattered, because apparently civilian job life for a lot of Americans is just that bad. The workers I am talking about in this rant are ordinary folks, some are active duty military, working 30-40 hours on the weekends to make their inadequate military pay stretch for essentials. Some are single parents, all work hard and are at the mercy of bosses who constantly make sure they know they are expendable, replaceable, and too worthless to think they have a chance at a better job elsewhere

My son came home from the Army on a medical out—his knees are wrecked to the point that artificial knees are not an if, but a when. He got a job in a big warehouse down the highway, he is very good at warehouse and supply chain stuff: he did it for the Air Force and the Army. He found the civilian job extremely stressful right away; this big warehouse chain had the Target contract for the whole Northwest—a huge score in business. So, with that kind of success, it should be a happy workplace, right? Not exactly, and now my son knows why they can lower costs. The entire warehouse complex, square MILES worth of buildings, had very few employees like him: the bulk of the labor is provided by “temps” hired by the hundreds for daily work. The promise of permanent employee status is held out like a carrot, but very seldom granted. What top things made him want to beat someone bloody nearly nightly?

(1) Temp agencies send their own supervisors and these guys should wear linen pleated skirts, Egyptian headdresses and carry whips, because they act like the bad guy extras right out of Heston’s old “Ten Commandments”. They treat the temps incredibly bad. Verbal abuse, screaming and threatening are just the tip of the iceberg. Firings are for as small a thing as chewing gum.

(2) The threat of firing, even for non-temps is constantly in the air for the most minor things, like not asking before using the bathroom. The company was angry that safety concerns made it illegal to lock the doors and the break rooms during working hours.

(3) The scheduled work is ten hour shifts, four days a week. People were routinely ordered to stay for TWELVE hours or more, and told to come in on their days off, if they “want to keep the job.” This is hired employees, not the temps, by the way. If someone “needs” their days off and say they can’t come in until the next scheduled day of work, they are told not to bother coming back at all if they don’t report on their break days. Washington state allows for what is nicely termed “forced overtime.” Some of the employees have one or two hour commutes home—imagine driving that when you have worked twelve hours after your initial commute to work?

(4) Pay is erratic at best. When my son returned after almost a year of medical recovery time (a new injury in a workplace accident required yet more pain and surgery) he wasn’t paid for his first three weeks work, in addition to being demoted from a supervisor’s position to desk clerk(with a pay cut of $12,000 a year) He called and told them he didn’t even have money for gas and therefore would not be to work until they paid him and he filed a complaint with Labor and Industries. Others, including supervisors have not been paid for a month or more. My son was mystified as to why L & I wasn’t breathing fire on the company. He was more mystified as to why people didn’t refuse to work until paid—they DID pay him a partial check a week later. Though they told him his hours were not as he had worked them, and since they don’t do time cards, but paper “sign ins” easily lost, it works to their benefit.

Yeah, this is an American workplace, a huge money making business; these are American workers being treated like serfs. They fear to complain to L &I, as my son did, probably because they will either be fired, or more to corporate practice, they will be forced to quit. They told my son, last night, that he will NEVER be offered his supervisor job back, only the desk clerk job that pays him $12,000 less per year. And he will be the only clerk (tho’ now there are three); he figures what is in the works is that if he follows doctors orders to work only 40 hours, they will fire him for not staying overtime as they routinely force workers to do. On the other hand, if he stays, they will fire him because that would subject them to liability for not following doctor’s orders. It is apparent that something is in the wind, as the job must have that clerk on duty as long as the rest of the crew is there.

The truth of it is, they know he tells workers their rights—what few they have and that they should ALL walk out at the appointed hour. L & I of Washington state has more loopholes than a basketball net—they consider NO pay complaints so long as workers get some pay at least once a month. It apparently doesn’t need to be full pay, or conform to the corporate promise of pay every two weeks. They don’t like the example he provides—no pay no work, for instance. He quit this morning after a bitter phone argument with the home corporate office back in the Midwest. They know people are not paid, are losing their cars, and homes, and can’t feed their families. They don’t care.

But Target and other companies that use these warehousing monster corporations can pay for huge glossy ads and charge lower prices. Right, Target is the new Walmart, folks. They employees have few benefits and the mass of temps have none. Your taxes are paying for shopping at Target because of things they can say they don’t do—they HIRE companies that do employee abuse. Target just sent me a $10 coupon; it will go back with the letter detailing abuses of the employees of this warehousing subsidiary and with instructions as to just where they can put it.

This may seem a stretch for a mostly anti-war blog; but I am not only anti-war; I am pro-American Constitution, pro-democracy and anti-fascist as well. This blog is MY say…but the story is going to soon hit the desks of local journalists and local lawmakers and the corporate office of the Target stores (or my son is going to cook his own dinners—because pro-democracy or not, he is going to “vent” where there are bigger ears than mine).

….Gone to graveyards, every one.

I am sure, somewhere in America, someone is dusting off that old protest song about where the flowers and soldiers have all gone. Something else is gone, too. Something the song doesn’t talk about, but it used to be in every school social studies book about America: the concept of a “melting pot” of peoples.

Now, I am not such an idealistic-moron-wandering-in-the-dark that I don’t know full well that America is not a massive fondue pot. We don’t make a pretty, golden goo of wine and cheese melted into a silky easy to swallow meal to be devoured with laughter and song. America is more like a stew with every thing separate and flavorful, but tied together with blue jeans and red, white, and blue ribbons. I rather like that it doesn’t all melt into a homogenized mass of bland. I like Irish potatoes and hot red Mexican chiles and good strong German rye bread and all other kinds of “separate” flavors. But, all the same, some things I liked about that idea—mostly that we were all in the same kettle, and therefore needed to get along.

The latest of several pings about how we are so not doing that, and a relatively minor one at that, is how often recently people go to court claiming they are discriminated against by something pretty minor: a very right wing Christian didn’t want her co-workers to put up Halloween decorations cause, oh, my goody-two-shoeness incarnate, that was “exposing her to paganism.” Uh-huh, this, brought to you by the same sort of people pissing and moaning cause they can’t put a Nativity Scene on the courthouse steps. Or, in Seattle recently, when a Jewish rabbi asked if a menorah could be included in the holiday decorations at SeaTac Airport, the airport made a big humongous fuss and ordered the Christmas trees taken down. Cause, no by Gawd, we can’t include no stinkin’ menorah—and see, you kike bastard, you spoiled it for the rest of us! No, asshat….YOU exculsionary reactionary dumbass, YOU spoiled it for everyone. Like in the case of the Muslim mother who asked, at her children’s school, if a decoration emblematic of Ramadan could be included in the fall decorations—-and a spoiled and spoiling school board member ordered a ban on ALL holiday decorations. Cause, by all that is holy and ethno-frickin-centric, we couldn’t possibly acknowledge EVERYone, now could we? Like the school my children attended, teaching very Christian hymns in music class, though both Jewish and Muslim children had to take the required class—my protests got me looked at as if I had fallen out of the sky while flaming. “But you aren’t Jewish or Muslim, are you? So why do you care?” Yeah, they said that. Hello, you idiots….public school, public funds, Constitutional “no establishment of religion” clause……you guys graduated college without somehow internalizing that? Insert highly ethnocentric expletives here!

So, what has this to do with my title? Well, groping about in my own mind, sorrowful to see segments of my population marginalized, excluded and scape-goated for “spoiling it for everyone” when all they asked for was being included in the fun, I found an inclusionary place after all.

It is the list of those soldiers, “gone to graveyards every one” from the Iraqi and Afghanistani wars. The sad, tear-drenched litany of their names reveals every ethnicity, every gender, every religious tradition in America in their names. I wish I could sing, this old former Catholic would happily render the list into Gregorian chant to give that list the dignity and awe it deserves; it is the seeming last place in America where you can be safely included even if your survivors do have to fight for what religious symbol goes on your gravestone. But that is another story….

Someone whose opinion I usually value said something today that made me twitch.   The statement that got me going was to the effect that Cindy Sheehan was wrong to politicize her son’s death, since he volunteered for the Army and apparently knew what he wanted to do as a service member.  A service member said this, not someone like Rush Limbaugh; that is why I will play relatively nicely instead of swinging my axe in a double punch to remove both heads from the usual mouthy neo-con assjack.   But, service member or not, I feel the statement does profound damage on several levels and I intend to twitch and knee jerk like a fish on a spike.  So prepare yourselves.

First, just on the face of it, why shouldn’t Sheehan “politicize” her son’s death.  Goodness knows, the GOP certainly politicized the deaths of 9-11, every damned chance they got.  Every bloody thing wrong in the world was blamed on the 9-11 disaster, one way or another.  And every death in Iraq is being politicized by the pro-war crowd: “If we leave without victory, they have died in vain.”  That IS politicizing their deaths, and they are not even in mourning. And even if Sheehan’s son was indeed a “vivid volunteer” who got in a patriotic frenzy and had to wear and bleed green for sheer love of country, why should that invalidate the opposite opinion held by his grief-stricken mother?  Why should she be silent about her feelings that her son died for lies?  She should shush and mope about in a black veil because the Republicans say so and consider dissent a form of treason?

Other deaths are likewise egregious, and yet the end result of voluntary action.   Families of the members of Jim Jones’ little kool-aid-of-doom cult knew their lost loved ones volunteered to be there; but nobody told them to shush therefore when they asked how such a nutjob could be allowed free rein.  Pharmaceutical companies sign up volunteers for drug trials and have them sign wavers, too.  But when and if they die, their surviving family members are never told to not ask questions and demand to know if the drug was to blame and if the study was conducted properly.  People smoked cigarettes voluntarily, and died of cancer or heart disease; far from shushing their broken-hearted relatives, whole states took up the question of responsibility in the form of lawsuits against cigarette companies.

So, why should parents and spouses and children maintain a discreet silence about dead soldiers?  Because we have been told to do so; because America shouldn’t be awakened by the open sight of caskets and tears and laments?  Silence is not the respectful response.  Silence is the convenient response.  And sometimes, though not always, it is a cowardly response.

Why is there a presumption that “supporting the troops” only means supporting them dying in a war not of their making?  Do you know, this government looks at the members of the military as bought and paid for “assets”?  And since YOU, the taxpayers are paying for those assets, don’t you think you have not only the right, but an obligation to ask how YOUR assets are being used?   Do you really believe it is patriotic to waste them on a war that seems to have most benefited private dogs of war like Halliburton and Blackwater, when real enemies might be out there?  Enemies that have nuclear weapons, without doubt, like Pakistan, our so-called ally, that cannot find bin Laden though he has been in the country for possibly years.

Shouldn’t we all be asking why so many soldiers have died in Iraq and how many more will die if Iran is invaded on the pretext of an “Islamic bomb”?  Shouldn’t we ask why American policy is creating new enemies faster than we could ever hope to kill them?  Why should Cindy Sheehan or any other person who has lost a loved one in Iraq be silent just because the Army is “all volunteer”….especially in this time of “stop-loss orders” that keep enlistees after their normal tour of duty?   Real patriotism isn’t bowing your head at any piece of crap wrapped in red, white, and blue bunting; patriotism is participating LOUDLY in what is allowed to be wrapped in red, white and blue.  Sadly, the only thing my current government and I agree upon, so far as that flag-wrap, is caskets like the one Casey Sheehan came home in for that very last time.

Speak up America, act like you have a loved one “under arms” as they used to say….because you do, you see.  Even if you are not a veteran like me, married to another veteran, mother of a veteran and of an active duty soldier, you DO.   Speak up for the sons and daughters of your nation—you paid for them, now look after your investment.  YOU are all the military has to care for them; our current Administration only wants to wrap their dead bodies in flags, not care for the living.