Archive for February, 2008

Turning off the radio, the television, and the computer.  Down for a few counts, won’t be posting, screening or answering comments, mail, the phone, or anything for a while.

Black holes are not just space oddities.  And I am trying to convert my personal pity party into a meditational experience of change.  I may break some things in the process.

I am boring myself lately.  It seems the war has fallen even further out of the news in the rush to watch well-aged adults act like children while pursuing life in a really ugly large house.  Yeah, yeah, I know it isn’t for the White House….but I will let that rant go.  The current resident has pretty much reneged on any responsibility to finish his mess in Iraq and Afghanistan; and the next applicants are soft pedaling how they will do it.

But I was thinking today, as I walked the dog in the marsh; I often fall into poetic reveries there.  Today, under a blue sky, all about me seemed black, red, and shades of desert tan.  The marsh grass was no longer golden to me, but faded desert tan and my mood was black.  The red dogwood branches seem to drip blood for dew in the sunlight.  The water at roadside is so black and foreboding that you expect the LOR special effects crew to come implant pale faces there.  I search the landscape of the marsh and the interior territory of my mind for the reason for my gloom.

You see, several years back, we had this war.  We went to the “rescue” of Kuwait and beat the nasty Iraqis back across their border.  It was a cheap war, in money and in American blood.  Not a lot of red, either on bandages or ledger pages.  And the war ended in black—-not too expensive in cash or casualties, just burnt bodies of fleeing enemies on a sooty highway.  America recoiled a bit, I mean, it isn’t everyday you see stuff that wouldn’t pay off on a movie screen.  But all in all, it was a happy war for America—very little American red was spilt and the black oil did flow.  It was over so fast they barely needed to paint machines or dress men in desert tan.

This war has been a world of different.  We are in the red in so many ways that the mind boggles, the press and President lie, and such angry confusion reigns that those cats all gray at night may not even BE cats.  A lot more red blood from America has been poured out on Iraqi and Afghani sands.  Not so much, granted, as in the desperately  massive battles of World War II, or in the police actions of Korea and Viet Nam; but an awful lot for what should have been a splendid little military adventure.  And the ledger sheets on this war?  Oh…oh, now THERE is red in even more profusion.  The grandchildren of the shattered veterans will not see those bills paid off.   The money just spurts out like arterial spray—and the desert tan is everywhere in new uniforms and body armor that is never quite enough.  And then, in black for Blackwater, too.  They are SUCH an expensive non-Army.

The Army now sometimes seems merely a training tool for guys who like that sort of life, but like it better for contractor pay than Army patriot pay.  And it keeps the U.S. checkbook overdrawn, yet the war is not won.  The black oil is not flowing and the red stain of death, destruction, despair and deterioration spreads like the eclipse across the face of this week’s full moon.

And like the red of the eclipse, which plunged the world into the blackest of winter nights, the red of this war is sending America into the black.  Not the black of financial solvency, no, into a black of uncertain futures and fears.  Into a black of increasing government purview of our lives, into the black of police brutality and a climate of fear, into a paranoia only other countries hated world-wide can appreciate and understand.  Into a night of neo-medieval religious sensibilities (though there is nothing sensible about it!) and calls for religiously repressive government measures.  Into the black of a democracy dying as a minority of plutocrats seize the reigns of power and use the military might of America as their personal mercenary force to “get theirs” before their greed puts out the lights of what once was called Western Civilization.

Because there is nothing civilized about where we are bound on our own ashy road with no signposts reading “Redemption” in spite of the religious garb used to hide the controlling hands reaching for ever more power.  The nation slowly freezes under high fuel prices and body searches at airports (and soon, train stations), the home improvements seem aimed at securing your “nest” so you never need set social foot outside again.  Right before Rome fell, did you know, country villas became little fortresses of comfort and security for the rich.  Their minions could fight off hungry hordes; but gave nothing back to the nation.

I tried, this morning, to remind myself that the tan marsh grass will soon sprout spring green.  But I am very afraid it is the only thing that will have a flush of hope: America is headed into the dark, and at night, even blood is black.  And I don’t know how long it will take for an American Renaissance to begin or what Enlightenment will be sufficient.

The morning was white, lichen and moss on the trees comes out looking like neon lime on days like this.  Yesterday was sunny and the temperature climbed into the fifties, which sent us out on the motorcycle on roads not glazed with ice.  But after a warmer day, there is always the fog at dawn.

So, walking my dog in a color coordinated landscape this morning was an oddly harmonious experience.  He is white and dense, and so was the fog around us.  Trees loom out, moisture frozen on the limbs.  The tall marsh grass is wheat yellow with an overlay of white.  Even the returning birds are subdued and silent this morning.  It is a holiday, so there are no school buses and reduced traffic back on the main road.  The water in the pond is intensely black in contrast to the white and gold world.

Before me is a broken gate, on one of the rare raised spots off the road where you can walk into the field beyond without getting immersed to the knee in the watery ditch.  It is, of course, private property.  But I look around at the expanse of fog, the yellow white grass beckoning to me like Rumplestilzkin’s gold and just can’t resist.  There is no house here, not any more and nobody will see me in this fog—my gray Army sweats are perfect fog camouflage.  Through the gate we go.

Jayne hangs back, peculiar behavior for my big Pyr clown—-he has never been taken “off road” here before and looks at me as if I have taken leave of my senses.  He is patently uneasy.  I on the other hand, wish I was walking without him.  I’d like to stay here.  The fog, although cold on my face, seems like an insulation from painful reality of newscasts and headlines.  The blades of tall marsh grass, brushing my face, have a soft and caressing sound and they smell good.

The blackberry thicket still holds a few green and grizzled looking leaves, soon new shoots will spring out and there will be blossoms.  The tree branches look brighter, the buds swelling in toasty shades of red-brown.  The peace of winter is almost over, illusory  as it really is.  The quiet of winter—no lawn mowers, no weed whackers, fewer dogs out of doors, will soon be shattered with spring noise.  Leaf blowers, garden tillers, stereos blaring from open windows will soon rule the sound world of my neighborhood.  “Breaking news!” will blast out of open garage doors and there will be no momentary escape from the world.

So, this morning I walked into at least nominally forbidden territory, in the fog and frost—-barely allowing myself long enough to feel it.  Oh, that grass the color of gold, like my hair as a girl, like the wheat fields of my birth state!  And the soft white fog, like falling into a cloud from 30,000 feet, swirling round me like embracing ghosts of better days!  I didn’t really dare linger in Winter’s Fairy Hill, or I might not have come back at all.  I wanted to drop the dog’s leash and lie down in that lost-maize-crayon color, to dream forever, while tears froze on my cheeks.  The fog still calls, outside my white window, White Siren of luminous liminality!

Jayne walked home with rare dispatch, as if he feared that secret world of winter rest that could seduce me away from laundry and duty.  But then, my computer agrees with him, my spell check insists that “liminality” should be the word “Criminality.”  I suppose it is wrong that that makes me feel even less detered?

I was taken in by a photoshop image of a supposed Code Pink banner saying horrid things about US troops.  I am a nitwit and I am sorry.  Forgive my binge of stupidity, I shall have to be profoundly wise the rest of the year to make up for it.

Damn, the pressure is going to kill me now. :::head to desk:::

However, I will say one thing.  I do think it would be more conducive to social life in ANY city including Berkeley if protesting Code Pink ladies and city councils members realized and acknowledged that  the Marines and other recruiters are not really given a CHOICE of where to set up shop.  It is called military orders and that is what they follow.

Picket them, ask them to tell teens and students the TRUTH in their sales talk about what happens to members injured and PTSD damaged.  If they do that, any kid with more than two brain cells will be more likely to walk away.

Ok, I am all for helping military folks not have the burning desire to take their own lives.  Really.  I have a disabled vet for a son, I have another son in the Army now.  But Col. Elspeth Ritchie, a top level headshrinker for the Army thinks the cure is for them all to play with an interactive video to role play suicidal depression?

“Users will not be allowed to end the program until they have navigated to the optimum ending,” a plot summary says.  ”

Riiight.  This brings me to my second problem.  The scenario on the video, the dire thing making the poor guy (and yes, it is a guy—what do women do, I wonder?) blow his brains out isn’t seeing his best buddy blown up, or having accidentally shot a woman he mistakenly thought was an armed fighter, or just exhaustion and despair over losing friends day after day.  Nooooo, the trigger is a letter from home.  A “Dear John” letter.

So, let me get this straight.  It isn’t war driving our men to kill themselves, its unfaithful women back home in America!  Gee, it really is the old “You people stab our guys in the back” argument that the Germans blamed for losing them WWI …and to drive the populace into WWII.  Basic fascism 101, its not war, its the lack of support killing them.

So, what makes the women kill themselves, Elspeth?  Do they have a video, too; with a “realistic” trigger—like having been raped, then accused of lying when they reported it to their commander?  No?  Color me shocked.

Yes, I know “Dear John” letters have an impact, but the numbers of suicides during and after wartime experience canNOT realistically be laid at the feet of wives and girlfriends.  That is a crock of shit.  It further will give battle shocked men AND WOMEN the idea that their WAR RELATED feelings of depression, despair, and self-hatred are WRONG.  It will further alienate them and stop them reaching out for help —your video suggests that if they don’t have a runaway girlfriend taking Jody’s cock, they don’t have a”good” reason to feel bad.

Heckuva job, you stupid, stupid woman; and a pox upon you for the disservice you do to service members AND the spouses and sweethearts back home.   Read all this bullshit at: http://tinyurl.com/36nfok

The website guestbook is probably going to be going away.  And curses upon the idiots who slimed it with pages of crap.  What, you imbeciles?  Do you think anyone going to sign a note at a guestbook is REALLY going to read that crud and go to your sorry linkages?

Imbeciles.

Gee, color me not surprised.  If you are a big fan of Bush, you may want to browse somewhere else now—-but then again, maybe you should stay and see how poorly (as usual) what his mouth says matches with reality.

Do you all recall the applause at the SOTU address when he said he wanted military members to be able to transfer their GI Bill benefits to family members?  Yeah, words as empty as his head, folks.

” Bush drew great applause during his State of the Union address last month when he called on Congress to allow U.S. troops to transfer their unused education benefits to family members. “Our military families serve our nation, they inspire our nation, and tonight our nation honors them,” he said.

A week later, however, when Bush submitted his $3.1 trillion federal budget to Congress, he included no funding for such an initiative, which government analysts calculate could cost $1 billion to $2 billion annually.” http://tinyurl.com/39qcvq

Many of you probably are thinking, “But the GI Bill money is THERE already, right?  So what ‘more’ money is needed?”   You see, the GI Bill funding is based on usage…about two billion a year.  And most of the time service members use only about half their allotment (I contend because of various roadblock pains in the ass intentionally reared)…but if that “transfer of benefits” happened?  Oh my….well, then the REAL amount promised would have to ACTUALLY be available.  And you know, THAT amount is not there, not budgeted and not going to be.

Yeah, I am soooo not feeling the love.  Smoke and mirrors, bait and switch, burying the mushrooms in darkness and bullshit, business as usual.  Me, bitter?  No.  Pissed? YES!

Sweet Jebus on a pogo stick….The Bush idjits WILL make me stand up for Code Pink and the Berkeley City Council won’t they? I HATE this badly; Code Pink makes me want to puke on their pink shoelaces because ————SKREEEEEECH!!  The sound you hear is an embarrassed me putting on the brakes.  Apparently, the picture I posted at my earlier (now deleted) post was a mean hoax to do to the Pink and piss people off and I fell for it hook. line, and sinker!  CODE PINK DOES NOT SUPPORT MURDERING US TROOPS.  I AM A FREAKING IDIOT FROM TIME TO TIME.

BUT, BACK TO THE TOPIC of THIS post :  for the City Council to be punished for saying “We don’t want the recruiters here.” by having federal funding revoked is pretty outrageous.

This is like the high schools and colleges round the nation having money pulled for suggesting that the aggressive recruiters stay out of their hallways. The Bush Administration stands hard upon its right to quash dissent over the war. The Administration is punishing the city and the college in Berkeley for the Code Pink success at motivating people.  Why not do it smarter instead of the financial strong arm?

Code Pink has as much right to march as the KKK. The Feds never threatened to pull funds when various cities told the KKK to get off the doorstep of the city library, etc…or even if they didn’t !  So why the selectivity now, guys? Oh, yeah….riiiiight the war on terra MUST go on. Such selective prosecution, my my my….this puts me between a rock and a hard place. And it makes me ask, how much proto-fascist militarism can a city, state or nation be asked to endure? Cities and other municipalities have rights to decide what they can refuse, so long as it doesn’t violate civil rights of any group? Apparently, the military is now a special group of its own. And the city of Berkeley may NOT act at the behest of Code Pink or its own citizens in what it may misguidedly view as protecting the youth without big financial consequences.  How is this good or responsive democratic government?

It would seem to me a better approach would be to simply see that nobody wanted to sign up in Berkeley, paying rent and getting nothing to show for it would make the recruiters leave sooner than a big deal .  Or, stand outside with signs about how the Marines REALLY treat their Semper Fi buddies when they are broken and of no further use. (http://tinyurl.com/25×28q )
But here you go: go read about the biggest kerflubble in Berkeley since Viet Nam:

+++ Republican lawmakers in Washington fired back this week, threatening to take back more than $2 million of federal funding to the city as well as money designated for the University of California-Berkeley, the campus that became a haven of protests during the Vietnam War.

The battle erupted after the Berkeley City Council approved a measure last week urging the Marine recruiters to leave their downtown office.

“If recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders,” the item says. +++
http://tinyurl.com/36ome6

A big gift to Fisher House and a new hero for me to worship—Marla the Great!! I LOVE it when people put their money where their mouth is and REALLY support the troops!!

Now, I will be putting my money where my mouth promised and matching the donation….payday approaches.

Edit: Marla is matched.  By the way…the first two contributions last month : one was my husband’s and the second anonymous was me.  So, come on folks….come beat me at my own money tossing mania!

All the serious bloggers are passing round names of other blogs, I am such a tiny fish in a wee puddle with so few readers that I don’t know how much good I can do shining lights on others. But I will make the effort….so many of these blogs (as well as many on my blogroll to the right!) really have wonderful, amusing, infuriating, validating information to share. One I found today and am enjoying I will share right here: Orcinus–a blog made up of Northwest writers.

My favorite piece this morning in that long list of reading pleasures is the one entitled: “If conservatives really, really hate being called Fascists #3″ because it just hammers the much less well explained and documented point I have tried to make about American politicians literally slipping down that slope. Just because our polls don’t speak German and scream “Seig Heil” does not mean it can’t happen here; Orcinus makes the point that proto-fascism is NOT out of American reach, alas. Some of my favorite bits just because I HAVE to revel in finding someone who agrees with my worries:

+++ Therefore a woman belongs at the side of a man not just as a person who brings children into this world, not just as an adornment to delight the eye, not just as a cook and a cleaner. Instead woman has the holy duty to be a life companion, which means being a comrade who pursues her vocation as woman with clarity of vision and spiritual warmth.

– Paula Siber, “The New German Woman,” 1933, from Fascism [1995, Oxford University Press], edited by Roger Griffin+++

Gee, does that remind you all of anyone we hear and see on the public stage of late? Not only does it sound like Ann Coulter’s secret lesbian dream-date, but the religious right has been pumping this forever. And that is the mildest quote from the well-researched article, the rest are far scarier, for instance:

+++Hitler made an explicit link between “liberal” feminist and suffrage movements — which even then were working to undermine the traditional disempowerment of women — and Jews shortly after obtaining the chancellorhood in 1933. The next year he denounced the so-called New Woman as the “invention of Jewish intellectuals.” He also urged German women to reject as unnatural the “overlapping of the spheres of activity of the sexes” as embodied in “Jewish intellectualism.”+++

Man, is it just me, or does it remind anyone else of the GOP reaction to Clinton? And it cannot be a coincidence, can it, that as anime film makes Jesus into a sort of super hero, the Orcinus writers mention this:

+++Since Sept. 11, 2001, however, a lot of this talk — as well as the vision of the “warrior Jesus” — has returned with some intensity to the mainstream, though there had already been some seepage from the far right in the previous decade. Much of it, in fact, is closely associated with the increasing prevalence of pseudo-fascist thought as part of our political discourse. As we’ve well established by now, any American fascism is going to be wrapped in a flag and thumping on a Bible, extolling the virtues of “tradition” that includes sex and gender roles. And that’s what we’re getting.+++

And a final warning, of how greed and pro-corporate government sets this wheel of horror in motion, then you really must go read the whole thing to wake in time to stop the night mare:

+++In other words, “movement conservatives” are being molded into a mindset that increasingly resembles classic fascism, but it’s being done by leaders who mostly find this mindset convenient and readily manipulable. Unfortunately, the history of fascism is such that the arrogant corporatist belief that they contain these forces is not well grounded.

What’s important to understand is the real dynamic: A growing populist “movement” is being encouraged increasingly to adopt attitudes that, taken together, become increasingly fascist. Greater numbers of individuals are being conditioned to think alike, and more importantly, to accept an increasingly vicious response to dissent. This does not mean that genuine fascism has arrived as a real political force in America; but it does mean the groundwork is being created for just such a nightmare,+++

Find it all at http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/