Ah, tea humor...snort. I know all y'all are thinking "how does she manage to get these sweet jobs, clicking around on the Internet all day?" By not being able to get those life-affirming jobs like teaching biology to a bunch of highschoolers. Now THERE is an useable job skill. *sigh* At least I can still look for jobs while I'm working.
Reading all this news thought has given me something to think about as well. I begin to understand what the last years of Vietnam were like for the population--yesterday's New York Times had two full colour pictures of Marines under fire on the front page--and the latest news story is, of course, about the soldier who was recently fished out of the Euphrates River. I don't like war, and I especially don't like THIS war, but I think my sentiments can best be summed up by a journalist writing in "The Week" who said, basically, that Americans don't like losing, and we don't like the idea of committing more of our resources overseas where they're having negligible effect, but what we ESPECIALLY don't like is this sensation of doing the same thing over and over, in effect, spinning our wheels. Which brings me back to Vietnam--these are two different wars, but they are similar in the way that the government can't seem to make up it's mind to retreat or commit fully to this conflict. And by "commit fully" I mean hand out the ration cards and turn the GM plants into bomb factories. Put those Union guys back to work. Not that that is likely to happen, of course. (That does remind me--I heard that President Ahmadinejad is in trouble for price gouging on gas prices in Iran. It was 30 cents a gallon two days ago, now it's 38.)I'm tired of the American people saying they support the troops even when they don't support the war--the inflated redneck rhetoric of "they are fighting to defend our freedom!" is going too far, but we must recognise that these soldiers are indeed fighting for our country. Not for this "administration" (how I distrust that word!) but for the US of A, where we get to write angry little blogs and hold free elections every four years. (Ladies--let's not forget we've only had the vote for eighty years or so! Ask your grandmas about it!) We can, and should, demand that our government spend its money and its attention in more important areas, like looking after the people who live in this country. If we are able to feed, educate and employ our our people, then the terrorists will not be jealous of our "freedom" they will appreciate that a democracy can and will care for itself. That is what should be meant by "support the troops" --support one another, recognise we still live in the best. damn. country. in the whole world, but we too have an obligation to fight for it and defend it--not against terrorists--but against naysayers who see the sunset of an empire. No. But now is the time to stand by America, by each other and say "This is it, all you who would run our bad name into the ground, your time is up. You finish what you started and you get us back on track. NOW." Of course, I don't have any suggestions for how to do that. If only it were that easy. I'm not going to co-opt the lessons from Vietnam, but I will say that we (Americans) are learning--four years is long enough. We're not going to let it go on much longer. How will it end? Who can say. But,if I may quote Sondheim here, "Every now and then the country goes a little wrong/Doesn't stop the story/Story's pretty strong." And, don't forget, after the end of an era comes rebirth.
And if it doesn't come fast enough, we may have to send in the ninjas:
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Some pages with thoughts:
http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/
www.cuteoverload.com
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