Monday, September 26, 2011

Euphemism of the month

Euphemism of the month -

Substance abuse: the overuse of drugs purchased by nice people in stores – as distinguished from drug abuse, engaged in only by messed-up derelicts in alleys.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Tony Bennett

I find it interesting that in this land of highly touted free speech and all, nearly ninety-year old Tony Bennett was required to affirm his patriotism because of a foreign policy opinion he expressed on a radio talk show. Where have you gone, Joe McCarthio?

Monday, September 19, 2011

9/11

After the media mourn-fest attending the anniversary of the United States' chickens coming home to roost, I am left with some observations. It is interesting that most Americans consider it an attack on America. In the cause of accuracy it was an attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, two building complexes near the eastern edge of the vast piece of land we call the United States, geographically insignificant. In the media parlance of today, the victims were not the targets, they were collateral damage. The United States then went ahead and attacked itself. And Iraq of course. This country in fact never has been attacked from outside. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, a military base in the South Pacific, was extrapolated into an affront upon the entire continental United States. Many historians believe the American blockade of Japan left the Japanese no choice. For Korea and Vietnam, of course, the U.S never was attacked, only her dominoes. So apparently there is an aspect of human nature that embraces catastrophe of people thousands of miles hither because we pay the same tax collector. Therefore some farmer in Nebraska feels attacked when really, he was not. No doubt the people running the show understand this and mine it to justify having a war.

Also noteworthy is no mention of domestic responsibility for the 9/11 attack, like the idea, for example, that American military activities abroad might make people angry enough to perpetrate such acts. As one American soldier in Iraq said on tv, “If we busted into your house and tore everything up and pushed you around, you'd be out there the next day planting bombs by the road. Unless you're a wuss.”

Americans might see things more clearly if they try thinking about them in an unpatriotic way. And then they might notice that this now media event was nothing to what the United States military did to the people of Iraq, a country which truly was attacked. The last body count I read as the result of the American invasion was half a million, a significant percentage of the population. It seems a bit indulgent to sit and watch 9/11 again and remember where we were and how effected we were when so many Iraqis can't remember where they were when they were attacked because they're dead. As Americans mourn, they might mourn the likelihood that their tax collecting entity operates in a way that would cause this.