CSotD: Sweet Land of Liberty
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This is one of those “where do we start?” days, but we might as well begin with the massive element of self-deception that makes everything possible.
Part of it is embodied in the way so many people seem to be accepting both the inevitability and the desirability of our heading off to yet another war in Asia.
We don’t like the government of Iran and there are good reasons not to like them.
Just as there were good reasons not to like the government of North Vietnam, or the government of Iraq, or the government of Afghanistan. For that matter, we didn’t much care for the government of North Korea.
For those keeping score at home, the butcher’s bill for each of those adventures was 58,220, 4,419, 2,461 and 36,914 respectively, which means that not liking other people’s governments has cost 102,014 American lives.
During Vietnam, people said “War is good business. Invest your sons,” to which we can now add “and your daughters.”
And three of those four governments we didn’t like remain in power.
A little background here: Danziger served in Vietnam. Donald Tough-Guy did not. Both men had the usual four student deferments, one for each year of college. Then both were drafted and their stories diverged, because Danziger showed up for induction and Trump had his daddy get a friendly doctor to write a letter about his alleged heel spurs.
In his memoir of his military days, Danziger concedes that student deferments were a dubious thing.
Why should young people who were fortunate enough to be in college not have to share the burden of the war? Why should other young people lacking the intellect or the money for college be sent off to risk their lives fighting? Didn’t this hint that the thinking at high government levels was that if a young man were thick enough to get drafted, he deserved less from life?
In retrospect, Danziger questions the system.
In retrospect, Donald Trump thinks he deserves a big military parade.
Speaking of the Vietnam years, Abbie Hoffman joked that, if when Neil Armstrong stepped out of the Eagle onto the surface of the Moon, he’d shouted “Drink Coca Cola!” he’d have been set for life.
Which reverses Steve Allen’s adage that “Comedy is tragedy plus time,” because what Hoffman said as a joke has now become the Trump family’s business plan, proving that yesterday’s sarcastic joke becomes today’s tasteless reality.
And the tasteless part is not that they are behaving that way but that nearly half the nation appears to think it’s just fine.
According to Benson, the roughly half who disagree can expect to be held up for ridicule and contempt if they question their government’s actions, even when their government is rounding up and deporting legal immigrants without due process, and without even showing their badges, or their faces.
There was a time, O Best Beloved, when the nation was governed by Constitutional law, but there have been gaps in that tradition, like the 1920 Red Scare and the 1950’s McCarthy hearings.
It’s comforting to believe this, too, will blow over, but it’s distressing that Wikipedia refers to the disturbances of a century ago as “The First Red Scare,” because it sounds as if we should expect more.
Well, if Benson is right, perhaps we’re about to experience “The Last Red Scare,” not because they’ll stop happening, but because they’ll be absorbed into the continuity of whatever becomes “due process” in a permanent Idiocracy.
And as she suggests, those who stood in the way will be seen as traitors to our glorious cause.
There was a time, also, when the Supreme Court ruled, somewhat reluctantly, that burning flags was a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment, but we’ve replaced that group of liberals and Dear Leader is prepared to take another shot at making it illegal to criticize our country.
Just as soon as he finishes appealing the 5th Circuit’s erroneous ruling that mandatory posting of the 10 Commandments is a violation of the separation of church and state.
The Supreme Court having already validated prayer at school functions, they should straighten out this misunderstanding quickly.
After all, this is America, and no court decision can force us to be woke. It’s unAmerican!
Our schools are going to be forbidden to discuss disruptive, unpleasant things that some people believe happened in the past but which certainly didn’t because we’ve never been divided and nobody has ever been treated unfairly and there’s absolutely nothing in our history that we need to explain, much less regret.
(If you think that’s some dystopic view of the future, you haven’t been paying attention. We’re already imposing laws to make happy-talk mandatory in American schools.)
Besides changing the curriculum, we’re also changing history, with President Trump ordering an investigation into the 2020 election to uncover the fraud that all his lawsuits up until now have failed to uncover.
Gosh, apparently the Dark State was hiding the truth in the basement of a pizza joint built on a slab.
However, thanks to a free press, we are assured that Joe Biden was non compos mentis, which the free press covered up shamefully, but now they’re being very frank and honest about the capabilities of our glorious leadership.
They’ll be releasing a full report on it in two weeks, just as soon as Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong have finished going over it for errors.
And, in the end, we’ll easily explain the decisions we’ve made and the choices we took, because there’s nothing wrong with loyalty, obedience and always taking a positive view of things.
Besides, if we all just keep a positive outlook, nobody will ever ask us to justify anything anyway.
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