American Exceptionalism

I wanted to put some thoughts down on this, since it has begun at least locally to become a major thrust of conversation… Has America lost its Exceptionalism?

Be wary,  that is a very general question, and the wisest answer so far to date, has been Rick Jensen’s:  “Which definition of American Exceptionalism are we going to use?”

“If you define American Exceptionalism as Marilyn B. Young does i.e.: Liberals whose beliefs changed toward an exceptionalism that calls for imposing democracy worldwide, then, yes, the theory is likely. If the definition is Jay Lovestone’s (as in Lovestone v Stalin), then most people would likely agree with American Exceptionalism as our natural resources, strength, and capitalism prevents communism from being overwhelmingly popular. If you choose de Tocqueville’s original definition, then to deny American Exceptionalism is to deny the historical facts of a largely Puritanical population taking advantage of their opportunities to engage in commerce, worship as they choose, and live in a country whose government functions as a representation of the people, not of the ruling, royal class.”

So all “Exceptionalism” arguments are circular, because we are comparing bananas with apples and oranges, to see they all are better than watermelons… (they aren’t; watermelons rule; btw)

But,… what if we made up a new definition, one in which America was defined as being its people’s right to self determination?…. Simply put, it steals from our Declaration of Independence and states along Jeffersonian lines, that people have the right to go in the direction in which they want.

If that becomes one’s definition, then not only is our nation non-exceptional, but it is working hard to become as unexceptional as possible.

At the crux of this change, is the probably this facet:  Those rights and values that used to be held up as true for people, have now been usurped by big business, or multi-national corporations…

One could take it one step further, that at one time America was exceptional… With a wide open frontier growing faster than regulating authorities could keep up, best practices could evolve and become powerful, before the squelching counter-force of the status quo could take its effect….

In real life, we are facing the return of the status quo, as being defined as ruled by an elite, in all that has changed over the last 14 years.  I would mark the tipping point (based on my viewing stand) as tipping in 2007… Other’s may use different markers and put their finger before or afterwards, but the playing field has seriously changed based on Conservative principles which originally emerged out of the 1994 Gingrich neo-Conservative movement… Some of the changes occurred through their emphasis on lack of regulation, some through their pro-financial legislation, and some through their Conservative Court decisions…

But all have been enacted to embrace restraints and control over democracy, by those landed class having tremendous amounts of money at their disposal.  Ironically, for them to have the freedoms expressed in the Declaration of Independence, they must suppress yours….

What we are looking at transpiring over just the past few years, is a return to a ruling class, just like in Ireland, where the subjects have no rights at all, and if any amenities are to be given, it is only to keep them alive to keep the profiteering economic engines continuing to spit out money for its owners…

A topic recently discussed here was Wal*mart and speculation that some corporate pressure would now be upcoming to re-invest a bit more of America’s resources back into food stamps because one of its landed-gentry (the Waltons) was now foundering.. in other words, it is deemed to be good landed-gentry policy to put the boot into ones people, but only as far until one feels the effect applied to oneself, and then and only then, does the pressure get let off.

Under old American thinking, that never could have happened.  The majority would revolt through elections and the landed gentry would be forced to pull the idea off the table until another opportunity.

In arguments of this structure and magnitude the future use of adjectives such as “good” and “bad” to describe the two sides, is misleading.  For in any type of disagreement, one always sees oneself as representing the good they wish to represent, and the other with opposing belief, sees them as evil…

Therefore a more thorough distinction must be used.  Rich and poor is too general and too relative.  The most accurate definition I can think of how to delineate the two opposing parties, is that one employed by the Wall Street activists of the 1% versus the 99%…  That is such a convenient piece of language.   Realistically, of course the area between 90-99% would be full of people who had some fingers in some pies on both sides… And quite probably a more accurate delineation would be to draw the line at the 15% mark, at which a very clear line evolves between being either self-sufficient, or a supplicant…  But, for reference primarily due to its common use, it just makes sense to continue using the 1%–99% divide.  That polarization helps illuminate the major discrepancies and make arguing points for each side, .. much easier.  .

What we have seen since the century mark passed us with no Y2K disaster….. is the 1% making giant inroads into our government, our communications, our economy, and our employment….

Money can do that.

If one is wealthy, one can a) hire people to craft legislation,  b) pander it through Congress and state legislatures surreptitiously attached to campaign contributions, and c) hire scholars to invent and trumpet the advantages of each of those bills.   This creates a one-sided argument against which no one is immune… Those too poor to pay cash, those too poor to take off work, those too tied down to drive down to Washington or one’s state capital, have their side eclipsed.  The legislator could be one of the most benign to the principles of the Constitution, but if he is lied to and provided glowing accounts of how his vote will resonate glowingly among all voters, without a contrarian opinion, he is doing whatever they say.

Not to absolve their blame, but it is just as if you, saw me every day and said “how are things going” and I said “not so good”, you’d feel concerned and want to help.  But on the other hand if you stood in a checkout line with a mom and two kids using WIC paper to get necessary nutrients, and asked… ” how are things going”,… their negative answer would roll off your back… Not because you are callous; but because you don’t know them.   Excessive wealth has insulated our Congress, in fact, I would go out on a limb and say it has insulated the entire DC belt-way.  They just don’t know what average America goes through anymore.

When your most pressing problem is that you were invited to two important functions and have to figure out which one to snub and turn down, your prowess of representing your constituents is in question…. You have effectively been insulated from your constituent’s priorities…  As long as big money is allowed to be involved, it will happen to all we send there.

Against this, one would think that our communications industry would be implored to exploit for its own power, the divide between the ruling high gentry and the peasants supporting them.  Truth was, it WAS that way post-WWII. Perhaps their healthily dislike of the government came from seeing up close and personal it’s inefficiencies during the fog of WWII, but clear evaluations did take place inside our major media over the McCarthy Hearings, Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, and Welfare and Poverty. People always got a perspective different from the official government’s opinions.  And newspapers were far more partisan way back then, on both sides.

But big money bought them all. Big money owns them all.  Instead of competition, we have homogenization. with nothing ever wrong being pinned on big money…. We have arguments of why taxes need cut;  no one ever sees arguments of why they should be raised even though the paper receives 9 to 1 letters in favor of raising taxes… Our media no longer represents American thought;  it represents corporate mouthpieces, as was recently evidenced by NBC cutting away from the collapse of the USA to gargle over a troubled Justin Bieber in its networks competition over Neilsen ratings and getting the most “Likes” on Facebook..

When the reality of events shows Big Money in its correct light, the media does everything to discount it.  Whereas the media was once considered a courageous fourth element of government, it is now the house slave, whose whole survival depends upon the whim of his master… When one questions the slave if his master is a nice man, one can certainly pre-guess the only response one will get….

So when a wealthy power grab bill comes up in Congress, every media outlet sugar coats it.  UMMM Sugar Rush!!!! There is some good, there is no bad.  The top wealth has quenched all argument.  Of course the arguments burn inside of us.  Our frustrations grow.  For we see the reality.  But as in Eastern Germany, we tend to keep it too ourselves, since we must assume we are the only ones, and thinking such is dangerous…..

Besides government and communications, big wealth has taken over our economy.  When we sell low, they bought. They own everything.  When one owns everything, what is best for one, is not best for all others.  Hence, bundling securities in 2006-2007 which meant bundling very bad loans and selling them as very safe investments to all the world’s governments, was partaken without anyone having the right to answer, … “um did you say those were … “bad loans?”  

The how to “how this happened”, was that the very wealthy thorough their influence in Congress and through squelching all dissent in the media, were able to remove previous laws that required that risk to be disclosed.  There is a valid reason why such a deep crash never occurred in the interim between itself and the Great Depression.  It was illegal to do so.  But once pursuing those policies known to lead up to a great crash became unregulated and therefore legal,  guess what?  We got exactly the same result as when we tried it the last time….the 1920’s.

Other economic factors are its result of Big Wealth’s interference. Big wealth is the reason our college debt is too high.  Big wealth is the reason no new manufacturing investment is now taking place. Big wealth is the reason our government is cutting jobs instead of growing them.  Big Wealth is why your take home pay has gotten smaller, and now buys much less… Big Wealth is why Unions are less effective, being mostly illegal unless they apply by the tight rules Big Wealth has set for them…

But mostly all three of these came about by your fear of losing your job.  Big Wealth is your boss.  He may be your bosses’ bosses’ boss but Big Wealth controls you in your job.  Don’t believe me?  Just perform this test… Stand up in your next meeting and publicly say… “Occupied Wall Street was right about everything and dead on….”

i’m not going to dare you to do so, because I already know the answer.  You can’t say that, unless you don’t care whether you work there or not.   “Freedom is just another word… for nothing left to loose”…  If you have nothing to lose, only then are you free to speak your mind.  If you stand to lose your job for doing so, face it, you are silent for that reason…  If you are afraid to speak your mind, then essentually all your freedom is gone.  Stripped away. It may exist on paper, but your freedom today is not guaranteed in any way.

Sad thing… is that it used to be.  In my lifetime, one could keep one’s job and be a communist…  whatever…. Son, as long as you doing your work?  Then that’s ok.

But today one can never say that at one’s employment: “I agree with Occupy Wall Street”.  , for it is full of spies.One cannot even rant it on Facebook even jokingly, without being kicked out of ones job.  Our nation has lost its way.  Everything is controlled by the 1%.”

Now I’m sure some people will take issue with this, and do their best to weave it into whatever they want to weave it into.. That’s fine.  That is what the 1% is paying them to do and I am relatively confident that those people will stick out like sore thumbs for being the toadies they are: supplicants to the teats of excessive wealth.

If America is destined to go the way of all other past nations, then let it only speak in one voice and become a mouthpiece for its landed gentry, I can do nothing to stop it.  All I can do is point out, that today, the America we have at our disposal, is no different than that of ancient empires, than that of Roman control,  than that of medieval warlords, then that of imperialistic Europe, then that of Hirohito, than that of Soviet Russia, or even that of our own Guilded Age whose excesses led to the creation of the New Deal….

In fact,  I would go so far to stretch out on a limb that the current public perception of America’s Exceptionalism, was founded  upon the structures first put in place by the New Deal… I know that opens a theory up to a whole battery of counter-arguments, and most of them I have used myself to test out this hypothesis.  But after all the dust has settled, I have still to admit (and you probably will too), that with historical analysis outweighing whatever theoretical arguments get dashed against it,  the New Deal worked for 70 years until we started taking it apart…

With it gone, we are not exceptional anymore. We are just the same as everyone else.  A 1% ruling over the 99% peasant class beneath them…. The same as King George’s Great Britain. The same as Robespierre’s France. The same as Caesar.  The same as Babylon’s king… The same as the ancient Pharaoh….

None whose empires are still around today.  None today hold onto their power they once possessed.  With our expansionist opportunities now dimming, with the advent of a disturbingly stupid but powerful upper class, with our allowing them to usurp our edifices of democracy and force them to rule in their favor, not ours, America is now at a crossroads.  We can either choose to become comfortable slaves, grateful for the shelter, food, and Super-Bowls thrown for our benefit, … or we can choose to become the masters of our own destiny, and accept whatever that may befall.   The latter option worked best in our past. The later option was the Golden time of American Exceptionalism from which we have now removed ourselves…..

Should we go back?  Or accept the incremental slavery slowly wrapping its tentacles around us?

If my words ring hollow, then our time has already passed.  If you feel the same, then time is short.  It must change 2014, and in 2016 must make it even more clear…  After all, 2012 was writing on the wall…  America is only exceptional because its people are exceptional.  Its everyday simple people who wake up every morning and go to bed every night. That theme rolls through all the definitions of Exceptionalism listed above at this article’s very beginning. But when those people no longer own their nation, our fate will be sealed… and it won’t be pleasant….

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Why Would Delaware’s Chris Coons Let Israel Determine When We Go To War?

Courtesy of the Economist (since removed)

There is an old saying I’m fond of repeating….

It takes great courage to stand up to one’s enemies.  It takes even greater courage to stand up to one’s friend….

Chris Coons, Delaware’s Junior Senator who happens to be up for election this year, apparently lacks that amount of courage.  (The Senior Senator, with more experience, does not seem to lack that courage (maybe from all those flights in a C-135…))

The bill known as the Schumer-Kirk-Menendez Bill is a poison pill designed to break the sanctioned negotiations with Iran.  It was written, paid for, and lobbied by Israel.  It has only one purpose and one purpose only;  to put limitations on the President and Secretary of State in their negotiations over Iran’s non-proliferation….

(It is now dead btw.  It does not have enough votes to override a Presidential veto…)

Sadly it shows we have kooks in our Senate running our foreign affairs, and unfortunately for Delaware, one of ours is one…. By kooks, I mean people who sign on to a bill without reading it, (probably not one’s regular definition of kook).

But a kook he is….

Benefit for signing on?  A) money for campaigns and B) protection from the whacky Christian right (think O’Donnell)…  If the bill were dead in the water, if it were just for a show, I could see some sensibility in trying to look good to a certain “whacky” constituency.  After all, sad to say, that is political reality. One has to do, what one has to do….

But this bill would do severe damage.  This bill would allow the nuclear process of Iran to continue.  This bill would keep the sanctions in place, ensuring the nuclear process would indeed be the only option Iran would have at its disposal.

The “zero Iranian enrichment” option demanded by Netanyahu and his allies in the Senate is thus not only a non-starter in negotiating terms, but is not grounded in international law. One must assume that the AIPAC folks who wrote Kirk-Schumer-Menendez understood this, which is why they wrote their bill the way they did — not to “aid” Obama in negotiations as some senators often disingenuously claim, but to kill the negotiations.

We have been cold enemies with Iran a long time.  This negotiation is the equivalent of Ronald Reagan’s reaching out to Gorbachev earlier in our lifetimes.  Imagine if upon Ronnie’s return from Reykjavik, the US Congress bought and paid for by then Communist China, had passed a resolution saying that no thaw could occur until the Soviets dismantled everyone of their nuclear missiles and silos, and destroyed everyone of their Atomic submarines…. We’d still be at war with Russia.

That is the equivalent stupidity of what this piece of legislations does. AND CHRIS COONS SIGNED ON TO IT!  HAS HE LOST HIS FREAKING MIND?

Many of you may not remember but when Ronnie came back, there were a few hawks in the Senate who said exactly what I mentioned above.  BUT WE ALL KNEW THEY WERE KOOKS….

Like the pontifications of Ted Cruz today, nobody, nobody, nobody of any import, took them seriously.  Reagan was instead encouraged by the majority to go forward and meet with Gorbachev again…

Unlike those fine statesmen of the 80’s, our Senate is bought and paid for and according to Diane Feinstein, has apparently sworn to AIPAC put the cause of Israel above our own interests! And it is not to all of Israel’s interests they subscribe … it is strictly the war-mongering Conservative Hawks in Israel to whom they subscribe… Close to fifty percent of Israel is not Conservative!…. Simon Peres who recently passed, once led the other half of Israel, the half  which sees progress involving cooperation and diplomacy.  Israel’s Conservatives only get power when there is a crises involving war.  That is behind their drumbeat for war with Iran.  If in the middle of constant conflict, they can keep their hold of the Knesset. But once cooperation appears fruitful…. oops… out they go….

And so somehow they get Chris Coons to sign on to derailing the negotiations…. They got all the Republicans and a number of Democrats.  At one point they gloated they had 77, a veto proof majority….

The bill argues for the US to declare war on Iran, if Israel attacks it..

REALLY CHRIS COONS?  YOU SAID WE WRONGLY WENT TO IRAQ FOR 9/11. NOW YOU COMMIT US TO ANOTHER, VERY MAJOR, AND AGAINST A SMART ENEMY, A 1000 TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN THE AFGHANISTAN TALIBAN, JUST IF ISRAEL SENDS A MISSION INTO IRAN?

The US, according to this provision, “should stand with Israel and provide…diplomatic, military, and economic support” should Israel launch a preventative war against Iran in what it deems to be self-defense. Though this language is in the nonbinding “Findings” section of the bill, its sense is to partially delegate to the government of Israel a decision that would take the United States to war with Iran. Senators report that AIPAC’s advocacy of the bill has been intensive, even by its usual standard.….

If Chris had not listened to AIPAC, and listened to Allan Loudell of WDEL he probably would have known that Iran is at the negotiation table because the Iranian people demand it, by voting for the one candidate who promised to try to end their isolation. They want to be on more friendly terms with the West. A more cooperative Iran could yield any number of real benefits, including help in stabilizing Afghanistan (which we will need on the way out), the possibility of tamping down the civil war in Syria, and perhaps above all as positive role model of a modernizing and democratizing Islamic state—something of clearly global historical significance. Not to mention economic benefits for U.S. companies…..

SO CHRIS COONS… WE HAVE A BREAK-THROUGH FOR PEACE WITH VERY TANGIBLE BENEFITS BECAUSE A DEMOCRATIC NATION THREW OUT THEIR TOTALITARIAN, AND WE GET LOCKED INTO GOING TO WAR IF THE CONSERVATIVES OF ISRAEL FEEL THE NEED TO CHALLENGE IRAN, THEN STEP BACK WHILE WE GO IN TO DO ALL THE FIGHTING?  AGAINST A DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED REGIME?

What was it I said above?   Yes.  ARE YOU FREAKING OUT OF YOUR MIND?

Lots of love back at you. Just don’t let it happen again, ok?

Excuse Me! Can We Get Some Respect For Some Who’s Free Speech Was Truly Taken Away?

Excuse Me! Can We Get Some Respect For Some Who’s Free Speech Was Truly Taken Away?

So a millionaire gets kicked off a reality show only ever seen by  3.8% of Americans….

Meanwhile, no one even thinks, discusses, or cries for these 5 at all…

Our national priorities are entirely misplaced…. 

Each one of those 5 is a 100 times a bigger hero in any true American’s book, over what anyone on television can hope ever to be….  I can only imagine what was racing through all 5’s heads at that moment they faced their common threat together…. 

“Ain’t that America..”

God,…  bless them…

NSA Surveillance and the Vietnam War

Maybe one has to live through both to see the similarities.  Going to Vietnam was wrong. We killed a lot of Americans for nothing, then gave the country over to the North Vietnamese.  Spying on American citizens, and storing every piece of electronic data, is wrong as well. Not doing so is one of the founding principles of our government. Two wrongs don’t make it right.

Lyndon Baines Johnson escalated the war, then quit, leaving others to finish it.  The winner created a tag “peace with honor” and with that we tucked our tails and bugged out.  There were a lot of protests. Four died in Ohio during one.

Back then, those defending the military machine, all had hidden agendas.  Back then, a big effort was to turn those protesting into thugs who had to be killed to be eliminated.  So intent was the defense of the war, that bugging the hotel room of the Democratic conventioineers was deemed proper and approrpiate.  They were, after all against the war, and therefore traitors to the nation.

But in our history as a world power, sometimes those real traitors to our nation, are those who most fervently support the hard knuckle tactics being done.  The US was blemished over 5 presidencies because of the Vietnam War.  We are currently doing significant damage to our reputation as we speak.  Take Dick Cheney.  Imagine if we had not gone to fight and borrow $1 Trillion in Iraq?  We did it for oil.

The world was so relieved that Dick Cheney was gone, they gave the Nobel Peace Prize to the man who pushed him out of relevancy.

In the end, the Vietnam War and the Iraq War did not create a better world.  In fact, we made it worse.  Likewise, as we are struggling to create jobs, our computer cloud technologies are cutting back because no one trusts them anymore.  The cost is going to be a thousand times more than any benefit.

And what has the benefit been?  Allegedly, … the benefit came not in the terrorist arena. The benefit is that large multinational corporations have benefited from the inside news gleaned by the NSA… For this reason, every call you make, every email sent, every text you type, is buried on a disc somewhere, pulled up at a moments notice.

Just so we will have an unfair advantage…   Time to pull all NSA funding, just like we shut down our involvement in Vietnam.  The problem back then, was we waited too long.  We can shut it down before Utah opens.

Danger From Dummies……

Remember that American Serviceman detained two weeks ago…. for supposedly threatening the safety and sanctity of America? Well, he is out now, and we can hear his story.

Brandon Raub, a 26-year-old decorated military vet that served two tours overseas, was visited by agents with the US Secret Service, the FBI and local law enforcement on August 16 after statements he made on his personal Facebook page raised the eyebrows of authorities……

Posts calling for a political revolution placed his social networking profile on government radar, and after briefly questioning him at his house two weeks ago, Raub was handcuffed and hauled off and we now know, admitted to a psych ward..

One week later he was released from custody, but Raub and his attorney say that not only was no crime committed, but that the Marine still has yet to be charged with a crime….

Let’s see. Officials read his facebook (private only to friends), come in the middle of the night, interrogate then take him away, incarcerate him in a hidden psyche ward, release him one week later…… No crime charged…. Authorities never read him his rights or charged him with a crime; instead he was detained under a civil commitment statute that his attorney says whisks away hundreds of thousands of Americans every year in episodes just like this one that rarely go recognized in the media.

Was he a Taliban suspect then? NO, HE WAS OUR FRONT LINE DEFENSE AGAINST THE TALIBAN IN AFGHANISTAN…….. SEMPER FI….

Yes, but in that case, he should have KNOWN not to publish inflammatory or revolutionary stuff in public media…. He is asking for it….

Oh, btw, the stuff he published? Was the rap song lyrics he and his friend were talking about earlier and had gotten messed up, so he googled them, and put them on facebook for his friend……

I’m pretty tough, I rolled with the punches…. It made me scared for my country……

SNAPPED

Both photos courtesy of The Daily Mail

Those of us who know military code, new it was inevitable. Usually these things happen and no one is left to report it. The Russians are especially good at it. You lose one of your men, and no one in the village knows anything about it… not one thing. And so you wipe out the village… old men, women, and children. At the next village, everyone suddenly has remembered everything.

If you are nice, and the other side isn’t, you are doomed. Pretty soon your retaliation tactics deeply develop resistance to your presence that originally wasn’t there.

We are doomed.

We have two options. One is to slowly leave and have it collapse completely before we do, because the whole time we were there, our opposition gets stronger.

The other options is to say: we are leaving now. If you beg hard enough, we may keep some troops in the area to create a smooth transition, but, DON’T EVEN THINK WE ARE WASTING ONE SINGLE RESOURCE IF YOU AREN’T EVEN GOING TO APPRECIATE OUR HUGE SACRIFICE!

Same as marriage. Don’t appreciate me? Gone………………

Sometimes the threat of leaving, brings out the appreciation one had upon sullen reflection of his future opportunities.

It is not politics as usual. It is making a solid decision that will, upon the reflection of historians ad infinitum always be deemed as being the courageous one.

Every place is different. Had we made such a decision in Vietnam, we would have done much better. But such a decision would have been incorrect in Bosnia and Macedonia. And such a decision would have been incorrect in the early days of Iraq…

But it is right for Afghanistan. We can never forget why we went. We went to help the Afghan people. The people in Kabul have it much nicer than when Taliban ruled….. Woman especially.

As the details filter out, I can’t blame Sgt Bales for what he did. If I look deep into my heart, I’m scared I’d do the same in his situation, and I doubt that it would have waited until my fourth tour… So I can’t blame the Sgt. He is me.

Likewise, if Republicans ran my neighborhood and one of them walked in and wasted my family while I was away, I would want all Republicans dead… So I can’t blame the Afghans. They are me.

A man tries to follow the rules set before him. But when your friend gets his leg blown off, and those you are sent to protect and help, laugh at you when you question them….. gee, what on earth would you expect?

If Afghans didn’t want to get killed, they could have informed the Americans of each and every Taliban human sympathizer they knew.

But they didn’t… They made their choice…

Better get us out before the rest of our troops-stretched-too-thin start SNAPPING too……..

Advice on Afghanistan

Comparisons to Vietnam may come up.

But Afghanistan is not Vietnam. There is no giant wall of communism that will progress if we walk.

We have to remember our mission.

Our mission was not to defeat the Taliban. Our mission may have appeared that way for a while, when the Taliban and Al Qaida were in cahoots together…. but the Taliban, kooky as they are, are Afghanistan’s equivalent to our conservative wing over here… There is no reason they and moderates cannot work together….. In retrospect, their views and those of Santorum, mimic each other perfectly.

No, our mission was to protect the Afghans…. and remove Al Qaida. The second half was accomplished last May.

So then, what is the biggest problem in Afghanistan?

It is: that a majority of its citizens don’t want us to be there…
Now if we were occupiers, that would be their tough luck. Just like the Russians, we’d throw down the gauntlet and say… “chase us out then.” and at some future point, we’d eventually leave…

So since we will leave anyway, and they don’t want us there anymore, pulling out is a win-win situation. We have a time-table to pull out and we might as well stick with it considering that all the expense, the lives laid down, the infrastructure built… are not appreciated…

Just like in Vietnam….

So expect the Republicans to capitalize on the impending collapse of Afghanistan, and say they would have stayed and fought it out.
…. Just like in Vietnam…

So, recognize that President Obama is taking the right path. If Afghans wanted to live together in peace, they could have figured it out by now… If they want to fight for the hell of it, putting American troops between the two antagonists… will make no difference in the outcome….

It is what it is….

How To Stop The Afghans From Killing US Personel

It is actually pretty simple…..

You announce from this point forward, official policy is that we burn a Quran for every American killed…. And we will do it here on television, in absolute defiance, perhaps on the Capitol’s steps…….You announce the survivors of  any future killed, will burn a Quran every day this day henceforth, in remembrance of that person.

 

I don’t know why we didn’t think of this before… We know how much it means to that particular sect … One book means so much more than human life over there…My guess is one book has the relative value of a million souls over there. So instead of losing American flesh and blood by trying to do the right thing, we could just simply burn one of their books whenever they failed to live up to our expectation.  We could also do it for retaliation…..

And if they retaliated by burning Bibles, I don’t think any of us would mind.  We could print more.

Bottom line, instantly, the killings would stop….

Al Qaida to Afghan Police of Soldier:  “Sneak in and then turn your gun on Americans.  Allah will reward you in heaven.”

Man to self:   ” Oh, no. My killing will cause a Quran to be burned in my name because of my actions. These guys are liars. I will rot in hell if I follow through and do what they want…”  

The Effect of Pee (Urine) on Dead Human Cells

It makes people angry….

Which is why, we have to be very careful whether this video, which purports to show U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters, is doctored of not….

If you’ve been in war, and most of the third world has, this action is believable.. After all, these dead characters had just tried to take the live ones life in a game of brinkmanship, and the Marines prevailed… There is sort of a giddiness that up-wells during moments like that. Sort of the real world’s equivalence of a touch-down dance… one that could easily happen during such a moment of euphoria… One person comes up with the idea, probably as a joke, and in their limited world of the moment, there appears to be no harm done, and it happens… Anyone who has ever been in war, knows a lot worse things could have happened. …

But there are a couple of problems with this easy answer. One, this is the Second Battalion of the Third Marine Corp.. It is one of the finest in the world. Very hard to believe that four guys who one day one day are building a hospital in a village to show we are the good guys, (who are positively trained and aware of how their personal behavior ripples out to determine the fate of the war), are peeing on cadavers of slain enemy warriors on the next. Yes, it can happen, of course. But I would believe David Anderson turned Muslim, before I’d believe THIS group would violate everything they’d been trained to do… (It would take hell freezing over for me to believe David Anderson had become a Muslim.)

Of course, I can be accused of turning a blind eye because ” I CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH”… lol.. I’d say, no… I’d think the video was faked because that, considering all the players, all the activity, a fake video would actually make more sense, than having four random Marines desecrating several enemy bodies…

How? You Ask?

Ok, you twisted my arm so tight it hurts…if you promise to let go, I’ll tell you……

The United States is pulling out of Afghanistan. That means there will be no market for munitions. Currently the United States and Afghanistan have a very fragile relationship. There is little trust. We do not trust Karzai and his way of governing through corruption. We know he is in cahoots with the Taliban. Not publicly, but privately. We don’t tell him much, because it will cost American lives. He, upon realizing we are acting unilaterally, doesn’t trust us at all, because we will one, not confide in him, and two, not listen to him because the intelligence he could be giving us, could be leading us into a trap… One that will cost American lives.

Anything that pours gasoline onto this fire, will reap great amounts of money for people who sell weapons for a living… The absolutely very last thing those people want, is a cessation of hostilities. They will do anything possible to prevent that from happening… Not publicly of course, but surreptitiously .

So there is this tremendous pressure building, much of it emanating from the America Right and remnants of what once was called the Military Industrial Complex, that does not want this conflict to end…. And that pressure, is what makes this video popping up right now, kinda suspicious…

I’m no expert, but even as I looked at the difference of shadows between the bodies and the soldiers, I noticed the sun was at different angles.. (you can tell by tracing the shadow to the object and the angles should be identical). So I asked a 14 year old knowledgeable about video editing if such a thing was possible.. He responded by running the video through gaming software, and replaying the video with miniature anime characters holding umbrellas dancing on the dead bodies as the urine cascaded down… It was that easy…

So, looking with a clear eye, we have the motive. We have the means. And we have the evidence.

Of course, I could be over-speculating; it could be a real event, but I will hold my breath until the military investigation is complete. We have the Marines, we know by now who they are, we know if they are guilty or innocent. If guilty, we will condemn them and punish them just like we do a touchdown dance that goes too far… If it turns out they are innocent, and this is a circumstance of trying to poison the well, we can recognize the real enemy: those who sell weapons to both sides, and negate their influence on the diplomacy of that region…

It would be no different than two people at work, who upon finding they’ve been manipulated into hating each other, join forces and together, expel the perpetrator of all problems…

Education

If an EMP went off right now, what would happen? Let’s say it was caused naturally, and not from an earthly application… Just stop for a second and imagine if in one split second, all electronics got fried…

What could you do? You would initially do just what you do when the power goes out. You would get up, open the door, look at all your neighbors opening the door looking back at you, say a few words, and go back into wait for the power to come on…

You might get suspicious when your cell phone wouldn’t turn on, or not being primed to consider what the possibilities were, you might just think your battery picked that interlude to die…. You might likewise get suspicious when your car wouldn’t show life. You might curse your luck that the power went off, your cellphone battery died, and your car now needs a new battery, all in the same afternoon… You couldn’t get a hold of anyone to help, and so you walk over to your neighbor. He’s out back trying to get his generator started. It won’t work either. He’s mad as hell and is taking it back to Lowes where he bought it.. and he finds his Ford Pickup battery has died too… Oh the terrible luck …

So you walk to the store and see no one is open, everything is temporarily closed until the power kicks back on….

Only it won’t come on… ever.. I mean ever… Well at least in your life time…

Why? simply put, every electrical component, every magnet, every fuse, every connector, will have to be replaced from your house to the nearest power plant. .. Even if somewhere a power plant opened, and produced, that would leak all over the country unless someone actually got up and cut the wires to keep that power from dissipating and becoming too weak to do any good…

So new power plants would have to be built. New wires strung, new transformers built, forget about the ones on the shelf for emergencies, they’re shot too. Everything would need to be rebuilt from scratch…

And we would have no access to the information that told us how to rebuild….

This is how civilizations disappear rather quickly.. They become so specialized, that no one can put everything back together. It mimics the Tower of Babel accounting.. “There once was a great civilization, that evaporated instantly” is how most scholars view the accounting of that story today…

To survive, you would have no heat.. unless you had either a fireplace of wood stove. Everything else is electrical unless your unit dates back before 1990…. You would have no transportation. You couldn’t buy a working car. The first cars to be made would have to be created from scratch, at a factory, that unfortunately had no power.

Your world would shrink to where you could walk. There would be no news, unless someone walked to tell you what they saw in Wilmington. And what someone from Philadelphia had told them when they had walked from there, and rumors that had been told from those who had walked from New York, and from New Jersey, and up south from Washington and Baltimore…

Was any of America working? NO one knew… Once a military fighter roared overhead, and it was the first sound heard since the event, and all raced outside to cheer… But that was it.. Hope was that someone, somewhere out there, was in charge, and was working to make our lives return to normal…

But years went by…. Most people moved from the cities. Many died of disease, and starvation, and life became involved of defending oneself and ones property from those that wanted to take it… To live, you really had to sell yourself to an Overlord, who was intimidating enough that no one moved into your neighborhood because of him.. Most of what you made, he took as payment for protecting you. It included your children.

The once great civilization, was erased. No one knew about Rome. No one knew about Babylon. No one knew about Greece… unless it was from the old Bibles kept in decorative cabinets. Some books existed, but most had been burned to keep warm that first winter…
Just like that… Our huge skyscrapers, began to fall, one by one, each time covering the streets with an overbearing dust cloud.

Nature began to reclaim her own. The ice caps grew back. The seas lowered. The flora and fauna multiplied as people perished. The children heard stories, about the world being round, and names like China and Japan that could be found on old artifacts. But, without any reinforcement, they gradually faded from all knowledge…

The question I want to raise is this. Is our education system as it stands now, capable of continuing civilization as we know it, in and if, such a natural event were to occur? Or non natural event?

Do we currently teach enough basics so anyone can build a computer, build a electronics kit, and repair cars, generators, home electrical appliances, were such an event to occur?

It is not hard; the hard part is that no one knows how to do it.

If everyone knew simple basic electricity, and how things worked, we’d have power in some places within a week, and withing three months, we’d be 50% back to normal. We would be back to normal within three years.

Our current educational system is teaching us the wrong things…. We are focused on the wrong items. We test for the wrong items. We do not teach the basic knowledge our life needs right now…

It should be: A: fixing your phone/ and or computer.
B: fixing your generator.
C: fixing your vehicle.

This knowledge is vital for national security. It needs to be taught to every man, woman, and child… 3 x 6 equaling 18 doesn’t do much.. Nor does Black History Month, or proper English Grammer, or American History, or Economics, or ………….

Our first grade needs to begin…. “Ok, kids…. this is a 1… this is a 0…… All of life revolves around those two numbers…”