Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Harvest of Shame

I had a chance to stop for a moment this morning and got to read the World's Worst Newspaper over my coffee. And for just a moment I was pleased to see that the headline had nothing to do with the events of twelve years ago today.

That's nice, I thought; maybe we're starting to get over ourselves.

And then I continued to think about the entire business.

And realized that the silly, self-licking-ice-cream-cone of our Middle Eastern "policies" remain both unchanged and unquestioned,

Recognized that our national greed for the sweet, sweet crude remains unslaked, and we have not even seriously considered any sort of sensible attempt to even discuss weaning ourselves from the petroleum teat proffered by the unstable, violent strumpets that feed our lubricious petrochemical craving,

Acknowledged with bitter anger that the willful crimes, errors, and omissions made because of the events of that day have never even really been examined, much less punished or expiated. The doors to that madhouse still stand open, ready for another cabal of idiots, criminals, and grifters to pull us back inside,

And accepted with rueful regret that we appear to have learned nothing and yet forgotten nothing from that eminently forgettable day.

I rose from my table angry at myself, at my "fellow citizens", but most of all at the greedy, cynical opportunists that have continued to use this day to create the United States they crave; the fearful, ignorant, credulous Skinnerbox of useful idiots that will continue to prefer "safety" to liberty and "strength" to honor.

I looked out over the green hills of Portland and saw, instead of the dark firs and big-leaved maples a broad field sown thick with the foolish ideas planted that day twelve years ago; planted by fools, would-be oligarchs, and con-men, yes, but nurtured and grown to ripeness by the carelessness and indolence of you and I.

And clenched my fists with my useless fury at the grief of it.
Because - as vile as are the shoots that we have already gathered - I know that someday, perhaps in my time but more likely in my children's, we will likely come to reap a bitterer harvest from that poisoned field.

6 comments:

gruff said...

Inflammable material is planted in my head
It's a suspect device that's left 2000 dead
Their solutions are our problems
They put up the wall
On each side time and prime us
And make sure we get fuck all
They play their games of power
They mark and cut the pack
They deal us to the bottom
But what do they put back?

[Chorus:]
Don't believe them
Don't believe them
Don't be bitten twice
You gotta suss, suss, suss, suss, suss out
Suss suspect device

They take away our freedom
In the name of liberty
Why don't they all just clear off
Why won't they let us be
They make us feel indebted
For saving us from hell
And then they put us through it
It's time the bastards fell

[Chorus]

Don't believe them
Don't believe them
Question everything you're told
Just take a look around you
At the bitterness and spite
Why can't we take over and try to put it right

[Chorus]

We're a suspect device if we do what we're told
But a suspect device can score an own goal
I'm a suspect device the Army can't defuse
You're a suspect device they know they can't refuse
We're gonna blow up in their face

FDChief said...

Great lyrics. That's just how I feel when I think about this crap.

Ael said...

Speaking of bitter harvests, has the media down there been paying attention to the decimation of arctic sea ice?

Record low ice volume, area and extent. The changes are happening in years where most climate models had predicted to take decades.

All sorts of nasty feedback cycles appear to be kicking in.

FDChief said...

Ael, the "media" has little on it's empty mind other than Snooki and JWoww and the "horse race" between Obama and R-money. The entire coverage of AGW is ridiculous; it's inevitably reduced to a "he said/she said" presentation even though on one side there's a growing heap of hard science and on the other there's "Isn't can't doesn't oh look! A shiny pretty!".

So, no, anymore than the annual lamentation of 9-11 has been useful in examining the benefit to the republic of decades-long expeditionary wars, secret prisons, the advancement of the surveillance state and the fragmentation of the rule of law.

I honestly have no problem with wars if there's a point to them; I wore the tree suit for twenty years and it's almost impossible to do that and sing kumbaya. But the degree to which we the citizenry have become subjects and allowed our masters to prosecute these idiotic and self-destructive little cabinet wars is getting increasingly enraging.

To me, anyway.

Ael said...

Well, it is going to get worse.

Multinational corporations are busy buying up (cheap) farmland in third world countries (mainly Africa). At some point soon, we will have a catastrophic harvest in India or China which will cause prices to skyrocket(and make the multinationals a pile of money as they sell grain for record profits).

Third world countries will then have to choose between their starving citizens or protecting the multinational's property rights. There is no doubt which side the US Marine Corps will back.

Happy days.

BigFred said...

It is to weep, Chief.