We're now apparently supposed to be all aghast that the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military thinks that people who get killed wearing a uniform are "suckers" and "losers".
Here's the thing.
If you are a GI, or someone who loves or cares for a GI, or just someone who “supports the troops”...at the very least be honest.
Those of us who wear the tree suit are tokens in the Game of Thrones. I'm not whining about that. That's the nature of the business. We knew that when we took the re-up bonus. When it comes right down to it our job is, at the final throw, to be used - and spent, if need be - gaining or trying to gain some geopolitical thing.
We can hope that those spending our health and lives and futures are doing that wisely, judiciously, frugally, and for only the best and gravest of reasons.
All the while knowing that the opposite is very often the case; we will be thrown away for ignorance, pride, hubris, and foolishness. Our lives, or some portion of them, will often be wasted.
That's what we get paid for. That's our bottom line. That's the bargain we've made.
And if you don’t like that, or that saddens or appalls, or horrifies you?
You need to be better citizens. Learn the issues. Question authority. Support people and policies...or protest against them! Vote...and vote with your head, not with FOX or Facebook or your old high school buddy’s latest email attachment.
Voting for some trashbag or fool or madman, or not even bothering to vote when there's a chance that trashbag of a human being might be elected, means that you lose the privilege to be shocked, shocked, when that trashbag trashes your precious "troops".
We are
your responsibility. We the People are supposed to be sovereign in this
republic. So We the People are the ones who ultimately decide whether our futures are hoarded, or wasted.
If someone you helped vote into power - or someone you're not fighting with all your might to keep from power - is disparaging, or mocking, or wasting your soldiers’ lives?
It’s not their problem.
It’s yours.
5 comments:
Exactly correct. Personal political engagement is the key.
Besides, it is a waste of oxygen to argue about *anything* that Trump says.
Nothing he says has any semantic content. It is pure sales patter of one sort or another. He can, and does, contradict himself from one breath to the next.
You need to watch and remember what he does to understand his actual intentions and motivations.
This latest media storm is just another manufactured outrage.
Epic journalism fail, again. One might think that there are systemic reasons for that, but thinking about that would be both hard work and boring.
That cuts to the core chief - very well put. And pretty much the entire problem with democracy today. Yes big money and corporate use their influence to manipulate the agenda, but it doesn't stop you as an individual actually taking time to inform yourself.
We the People have been carefully conditioned to see "politics" as a spectator sport and entertainment. And I'll be the first one to say that actually taking the time and effort out of a busy life to pay attention to the issues and look for more than one source for information is damn difficult.
But...sweet fucking Jesus, how hard is it to look at the current GOP grift and realize that it's utterly toxic, a Gilded Age nightmare for anyone not in the plutocracy? It shouldn't be that hard for about 80% of Us the People to see that we've become even more of an oligarchy than we ever wre (and that's saying a hell of a lot!).
The real struggle should be between the middling Left (the sort of group that are Christian Democrats in Europe) and the left-er Left, the people trying to expand the New Deal to the minority groups the original Deal left behind to win the Dixiecrats. The descendants of the Dixiecrats should be a powerless rump who can go die in a hole - they're the scum of the vilest brew of American politics, the virulent racism of the white backlash to Reconstruction.
Instead we've got a plutocratic Right that has nothing to offer that has weaponized these people and combined them with the frantic Bible-bangers mesmerized by anti-abortion politics, the gun-humpers, and the idiots who think that the wealthy lizard-people aren't going to eat THEM. Together this Coalition of the Damned has swept up about 40% of the U.S. public and has been pumping toxic sludge directly into their brains to the point where they can look at some meek anti-vulture-capitalist, anti-violent-racism protestor and see a fanatic anarchist waving a smoking bomb and a noose.
They're idiots, but they're dangerous, anti-republican idiots, and they've got us up against a wall.
And I have NO confidence that the other 60% of the public can get their shit together to prevent this 40% from taking us over into pure authoritarianism - let's call it what it is, fascism - to get what they want.
Heard that some suburbs of Portland are being evacuated. I hope you and yours are safe and doing well.
Chief, I trust you and yours are safe and well during this fire season.
When we had the wild fires in Fort McMurray the smoke was overwhelming even though the fires were hundreds of kilometres away.
The satellite images I see show some fires a lot closer to Portland than I was to Fort McMurray.
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