NEWS OF THE WEIRD

horse




The news about McCrystal makes me laugh every time I hear about him on the news, every time the news is on. I found the Rolling Stone article online more or less interesting. I remember him and Petraeus were generals that did not retire in protest of the Bush / Cheney / Rumsfeld Junta. Because of that, I've never trusted either one of them to function in a pretend democracy. "Winning the hearts and minds of the people" is hilarious. American military? Any way I look at it, I can't see how killing and torturing people is effective to that end. Even if we kill less than we did before, every person killed has relatives and friends. There is not only the killing, also the arrogance of ruling by deadly force. If occupying Chinese military patrolled my road in a Hummer with big machine gun on top every day with a recent history of torture, bombs from the sky, and I know their reputation from the period of occupation, there is no way they could win my heart and mind. They might win my false cooperation by keeping me reminded I dare not resist.



Reporter Helen Thomas was fired from her career for speaking truth on camera about Israel. She said, "The Palestinians are OCCUPIED." Oops. The Israeli lobby finally got her out of the picture. We don't do truth around here. I expect McCrystal is saying the same thing. Only difference is, Helen Thomas is not in a chain of command. A general knows by the time he becomes a general that in the military you do not criticize your superior in a pop magazine with major circulation. I'd say McCrystal consciously made it public he doesn't respect our N-word president. This will make him a hot dog of Alice's Tea Party. Another threatened white man.



And winding up this opinionated commentary of the recent news, the Malian umpire in the World Cup game who denied Americans the winning goal will probably never tell why he called the goal off. I've an idea he was doing his own personal, private political duty as a muslim. Or he could have been paid a very great deal. Something was way off about that deal. I'd like to think they discarded that ump, but I doubt they did or will. That call fired me up to pay attention to the games. I'm hoping USA will plow through and win the final game. I hope it gave the team the fire to beat every team they play. Until that call I didn't care if USA won or lost. Now I'm wanting our boys to come out on top.



The McCrystal thing is something of an enigma, like the Malian umpire. McCrystal's slip was not a slip. He knew what he was saying. You don't get as far up the military chain of command with a loose tongue as he's done. He knew what he was doing. Why, is yet to be known. It will show up in time to come. Sarah Palin pulling out of being governor of Alaska looked to me like she had something offered she couldn't refuse that was playing to her vanity. Alice's Tea Party. The spokesperson at rallies and maybe take Charlton Heston's place in NRA. She's the cheerleader bimbo of the Repubs now. The new Dan Quayle, the new Ronald Reagan, the new George Bush I, the new George Bush II. Appealing to the bottom half. They might be setting her up to run for president. It's like a serious effort to appeal to ignorance. We see there is enough ignorance going around to make such a vision a likelihood.



I see in news clips the rise of militia outfits around the country, a groundswell among white people, men and women, of reaction to seeing white is not the majority any more. When I learned that Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia had more black people than white after the Civil War when the slaves were emancipated, I got it. Democracy didn't have much place in those states. Only among the white, shutting out the black. Over the last half century that system of apartheid has broken down, and now that the people of color are beginning to outnumber the whites, Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Junta took power in a Shakespearean way to assert white man power everywhere in the world. Then we got a black man who won the election overwhelmingly and now I see the white people hunkering down. Custer's last stand was a momentary success for the Indians that brought on the slaughter that put an end to the Indian wars. White man doesn't like to give up power. Every day I think about a quotation from Huey Long I found recently, When fascism comes to America it will be called anti-fascism. America is a unique place predictably unpredictable. Democracy, or the dream of it, is in perilous times.