war – Page 3 – The View from a Drawbridge

Jeannette Rankin: A Woman Who Stood Alone

Recently I watched a program about the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and in it they mentioned in passing that after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt went to congress to ask them to declare war on Japan and there was only one vote against it. Think about that for a minute. That had to take guts. We all remember how much patriotic pressure there was after 9/11. Most of us alive today can only imagine how intense it was after Pearl Harbor.

The resolution passed the Senate 82-0, and in Congress it passed 388-1. Who would have the courage to stand up against 470 of his fellow politicians and overwhelming public sentiment, and say, rightly or wrongly, on public record for all eternity, “I disagree”? There was hissing in the gallery when that vote was cast, and an angry mob pursued the voter after the fact. I had to find out more about this person.

And what an interesting person she turned out to be. Yes, she. Jeannette Rankin, a Montana Republican, was the first woman ever elected to the United States Congress, and ironically this occurred in 1917, when not all women in this country had the right to vote. She was for women’s suffrage, of course, and against child labor, and a devout pacifist her entire life. She voted against the war in Germany in World War I, and she led 5,000 marchers to Washington to protest the war in Vietnam. When she cast that single dissenting vote during World War II, she said, “As a woman I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.”

She also never married, despite many proposals, and she was highly educated. Those were two things that were extremely rare for her generation. Her first degree was in biology, and science is a field that is still underrepresented by women to this day, so you you can imagine what a good ol’ boy network it must have been in 1902.

Jeannette Rankin was a woman who bucked the tide. I never thought I’d say this about a Republican, especially a Republican woman, but I have nothing but admiration for the life she led. If you’d like to learn more about her, start here.

Practical Experience

Politicians make decisions every day that affect people’s lives. With great power comes great responsibility. When they negatively impact the world around them, I think they should personally feel that impact as well. Maybe then they would take their choices more seriously.

Governors of states that have chosen to forego the Medicaid subsidies, thus depriving millions of their health coverage, should cancel their own health coverage too.

Don’t think waterboarding is torture? Prove it. Experience it firsthand right there on the Senate floor.

Choosing to send thousands off to war? Send your own children. They should be first in line.

Supporting fracking? Offer up your own back yard for such treatment.

Against abortion and Planned Parenthood? By all means, adopt a crack baby with fetal alcohol syndrome.

Refusing to support the arts? Then everything within your field of vision, for the rest of your life, should be gunmetal grey.

Criminalizing casual marijuana use? Report to my office for your hair follicle test immediately.

Caught in a lie? Corporal punishment shall be meted out on camera in the Capitol rotunda.

Tempted to shut down the government? 5 minutes alone in a locked room with a grizzly bear from Yellowstone Park should take care of that.

Want to take away people’s pensions or Social Security? Yours should go, too, then.

Against immigration? Unless you’re an American Indian, get out.

Refusing to hold tobacco companies accountable? We’ll be happy to pump smoke into your home and office for the rest of your foreshortened life.

Don’t want to raise the minimum wage? Then the current one is now your salary.

Not taking steps to help the environment? May you only drink water from the Love Canal, breathe air from Beijing, and live on waterfront property on one of the islands that is sinking below the rising sea.

Refusing to sign off on a budget? Cough up your credit cards forthwith. Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of them.

As long as there are children in this country going without food, may you starve.

As long as there are people sleeping on park benches, may you never experience the comfort of a roof or a mattress again.

And for every false political ad that you choose to subject us to, may you be forced to watch 100 hours of Barney back to back.

Government without accountability ought to be a crime, and voting the bad politicians out should be a moral imperative.

[Image credit: ACLU.org]

The Past, Present and Future of War

If I were an historian, I think an interesting exercise would be to see if I could pinpoint one day in history, just one single precious day, when no country on earth was at war. I think it would be a lot harder to find than any of us would care to believe.

Having said that, most of us have not experienced war firsthand. We see it in the movies, read about it in the news, and hear about it from those soldiers who have come home and are willing to discuss it. And no American alive today has experienced the impact of a war within our own borders.

We cannot comprehend what it must be like to be sitting at home, perhaps having a cup of tea in our bunny slippers, only to look out the window and see soldiers running toward us, intent on rape, death and destruction. We don’t know that razor sharp moment of clarity when we realize that in less than a minute our lives will never be the same. It would be impossible to guess what it must be like to walk for days, painfully aware that people who hate you without even knowing you are at your heels, only to wind up in a refugee camp where you have nothing and are little more than a prisoner of your fate for years to come.

Experiencing of war is the epitome of living in the moment, because your past and your future have been taken away. That’s something you don’t see in the movies much– that concept of the ruin that goes beyond time. They can depict the “now” of war with a fairly brutal accuracy, but what about the once and future impact?

When I think about how war reaches back and destroys the past, it upsets me even more than the brutality of the present. For example,

The oldest known archeological site on the planet is in Turkey, right on the border with Syria. This has always been a high conflict area. Even more sites are in Iraq. What will become of them? Will we destroy what the sands of time did not already succeed in wearing away?
When I think of the footage of the 1700 year old Buddha statues that were blown up in Afghanistan by the Taliban in the name of religion, I weep. Those priceless sculptures can never be replaced.
During times of conflict, historians and archeologists basically pack their bags and go away, never knowing what they will find when they are finally able to return.
Likewise, the vast majority of the art that was stolen by the Nazis during World War II is still not back in its proper place, and for every piece of art that they stole, they most assuredly destroyed even more. They certainly did their best to wipe out the literature that didn’t meet with their approval.
You also have to consider the cultural heritage and traditions that are abandoned when entire groups of people are uprooted and scattered or slaughtered outright.
And then there are the family heirlooms and photographs that get left behind.
War also breaks the lines of family history. When your parents are killed, you are left with so many unanswered questions about your family, and you have to live with the fact that you can never get those answers.

War also shatters the future. For example,

During times of war, countries stop investing in their infrastructure. What would be the point?
Obviously the concept of creating jobs, encouraging invention and innovation, and nurturing foreign investment is relegated to the back burner.
Education also becomes a low priority when you are just struggling to survive.
Anger, bitterness, and physical as well as mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress have a long-term effect on societies which cannot be adequately measured, but should not be overlooked.

When war is waged, it’s almost as if someone drops a bomb in the middle of the vast plains of time, and the shock waves go both forward and backward in the continuum. There’s really no wholesale way to recover from that.

We are a belligerent species, so a certain amount of war is inevitable. But when nations choose to deploy troops, they should first rise above our concept of time, and realize that “now” is not all that matters.

Rest in Peace, Pete Seeger

It’s a rare thing when I’m moved to actual tears when a public figure dies, but I have to admit the tears are flowing now. The world has lost yet another amazing man.

Pete Seeger was one of those unique people who lived his convictions every minute of every day. He spoke out against war and racism, stood for civil and worker’s rights, and was a champion for the environment. He was blacklisted and arrested and repudiated, but he never gave up.

He believed that messages could be passed through music. To that end he gave us such songs as “We Shall Overcome”, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, “If I Had a Hammer”, and “Turn! Turn! Turn!”

We have lost much.

I’m sure one of the people grieving the most today is folk singer Arlo Guthrie. Here’s what he posted on his facebook page:

I usually do a little meditation and prayer every night before I go to sleep – Just part of the routine. Last night, I decided to go visit Pete Seeger for a while, just to spend a little time together, it was around 9 PM. So I was sitting in my home in Florida, having a lovely chat with Pete, who was in a hospital in New York City. That’s the great thing about thoughts and prayers- You can go or be anywhere.

I simply wanted him to know that I loved him dearly, like a father in some ways, a mentor in others and just as a dear friend a lot of the time. I’d grown up that way – loving the Seegers – Pete & Toshi and all their family.

I let him know I was having trouble writing his obituary (as I’d been asked) but it seemed just so silly and I couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound trite or plain stupid. “They’ll say something appropriate in the news,” we agreed. We laughed, we talked, and I took my leave about 9:30 last night.

“Arlo” he said, sounding just like the man I’ve known all of my life, “I guess I’ll see ya later.” I’ve always loved the rising and falling inflections in his voice. “Pete,” I said. “I guess we will.”

I turned off the light and closed my eyes and fell asleep until very early this morning, about 3 AM when the texts and phone calls started coming in from friends telling me Pete had passed away.

“Well, of course he passed away!” I’m telling everyone this morning. “But that doesn’t mean he’s gone.”

Goodbye, Pete Seeger, you wonderful human being. If anyone deserves to rest in peace, you do. You fought for that right your entire life.

I will leave you with one of my favorite Pete Seeger songs, which couldn’t be more apropos at this moment.

Dogs for Defense

Proof positive that we Americans are not the people we used to be: shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a program was created called Dogs for Defense. Citizens were asked to volunteer their dogs to be trained to help with the war effort. They were to become sentries, scouts, messengers and mine detectors. For some reason they specified that these dogs must be pure bred.

More than 10,400 families volunteered their dogs for this initiative, and only 549 came home, many to live with their handlers rather than the families who gave them up.

Today, this could never happen. For starters, we are now of a mindset where we don’t expect to sacrifice anything for war. If you tried to impose food rationing for example, riots would break out. I also think we are no longer the starry-eyed patriots we once were. I don’t think that any war has been considered noble since WWII.

Give up my dog? Not on your life. Not unless the front line was right down the street from my house. Not that my dogs would be much help. One is terrified of men based on his brutal start in an abusive puppy mill, and the other is such a lover he’d be kissing the enemy on the nose and begging for Snausages.

Over the years, our love of our pets has become more intense as well. In the 40’s, despite the “boy and his dog” image, pets were often relegated to the back yard and tossed table scraps. Veterinarians were a rare indulgence basically reserved for farm animals, and dry dog food was only just coming into vogue. Annual medication for pets has really only been popular for the past 20 years. I think if people in the 40’s knew we’d be taking our dogs to groomers and dressing them up for Halloween, they’d have laughed.

Moot point entirely. Now the military has its own dogs. Standard Poodles (I kid you not) and German Shepherds are on patrol at Guantanamo even as we speak.

It’s really interesting to see how public perception about various issues evolves over time, isn’t it?

To War or Not to War

There really hasn’t been a good clean war that everyone could sink their teeth into since World War II. Okay, I’m being sarcastic, but at least we can all agree that Hitler was the bad guy, and people were willing to ration their food and give up their panty hose for the cause. We were all on the same team, and the team spirit was palpable. Maybe modern wars just need better PR people. But today’s audience is much more cynical and selfish than the “Greatest Generation” ever was.

These days we much prefer that our wars not interrupt our primetime TV viewing schedules, and no one wants to actually have to sacrifice anything. Rationing? Are you kidding me? Not gonna happen.

Recently, whether or not to go to war has been on our minds. The consensus seems to be that we don’t want the expense. In these economically difficult times, this is a legitimate concern, but I personally don’t think it should be the only one.

More and more, Americans are questioning why we have been the world’s appointed enforcer, and the world is questioning why the US feels it has the right to stick its nose in everyone else’s business. I think these are both valid points as well.

There are those of us who think that war, in general, is counterproductive. I mean, all the death and destruction and horrendous public relations gets us where, exactly? And proves what? And, as is becoming increasingly obvious, achieves what?

Part of the problem, I think, is that we tend to fight for all the wrong reasons these days. We fight for oil. We fight to stop terrorism, as if it were some identifiable creature that could be corralled in one place and squashed like the cockroach that it is, never to be seen again. Sadly, terrorism is more like smoke. It simply blows away, appearing in other locations, and often our very attempts to combat it inspires more of it to form.

If we’re going to wage wars, the only acceptable reasons, in my opinion, are moral ones. For example, we should have waded right into Rwanda before the rivers flowed with blood. We should have prevented China from setting foot in Tibet. We should have never allowed a single human being to be mutilated in Sierra Leone, and no one should have ever disappeared in Chile. But we averted our eyes every time, and for all those things and many more, we should be ashamed. It’s truly unforgivable.

I certainly think that chemical warfare against civilians is a legitimate reason to be involved in a war. However, we have to stop getting involved in conflicts if clear-cut and achievable goals are not possible. This endless, “Gee, I don’t know, why are we here again?” stuff does no one any good, especially those we are attempting to help. And that’s the confusing fumbling that we’ve been doing since the Korean War. It must be frustrating for our soldiers who so often join the military for good, moral, and decent reasons to discover that they are caught up in bad, politically motivated and undisciplined clusterf***s.

We didn’t fight WWII for oil. We did have an identifiable foe. Not all our reasons for being involved were moral ones, but there was a definite and overwhelming moral element. We could feel proud of what we did, why we did it, and what we helped to stop.

Perhaps that should be the litmus test to determine when we should and should not get involved in international conflicts. Are our motivations something we can be proud of? Can we take pride in our goals and the way we go about achieving them? And will the world be a better place if we achieve those goals?

If we cannot answer yes to all three of those questions, then we have our answer. No.

“Those Towel Heads Can’t Be Trusted.”

Yup, that actually came out of a coworker’s mouth the other day while we were discussing the Boston bombings. And I must admit I went off. I couldn’t help it. I’m so sick of the ignorance and bigotry. This is what I said to him:

“Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Naturally his response was, “Huh?” To which I replied, “Do you seriously think the Muslims are the only group with a lunatic fringe, a mentally deranged and evil element? Seriously? Okay, then how do you explain the following?”

Adolph Hitler was a Catholic.
Pol Pot was a Buddhist.
Stalin, responsible for the execution of hundreds of thousands of people, went to a Greek Orthodox Seminary.
Pinochet was a Catholic.
Vlad the Impaler, torturer of thousands, was Christian.
Baruch Goldstein, an Orthodox Jew, perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the city of Hebron, killing 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounding another 125.
Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park Bomber, was Christian.
Ted Bundy was a Methodist.
James Holmes, the shooter in Aurora, Colorado, was Lutheran.
David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, called himself a born again Christian.
Sampson Kanderayi was a Christian who killed more than 30 people to appease evil spirits.
Andrew Kehoe, a Roman Catholic, blew up 45 people, 38 of them children, in a school in Lansing, Michigan.
Wade Michael Page, the man who shot six people in a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin last year, was a devout Christian.
Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw the Manhattan Project which produced the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly killing 150,000 men, women, and children and many many more in the years that followed, was interested in Hinduism.
Jeffrey Dahmer was baptized into the Church of Christ, the religion of his childhood, after he went to prison.
The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, was an atheist.
Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine shooters, was Lutheran.
Ivan the Terrible was Russian Orthodox.
Charles Carl Roberts IV, the man who shot all the Amish school girls, was a member of the Faith Church.
Torquemada, the poster child of the Spanish Inquisition, was, of course, Catholic.
Timothy McVeigh was a Roman Catholic.
Adolf Eichmann was raised Lutheran, and was an active member of the Evangelical Church until 1937.
Mao Tse-tung, who was responsible for 40-70 MILLION deaths, was an atheist.
Genghis Khan prayed to the Burhan Haldun Mountain, and consulted Buddhist Monks, Muslims, Christian missionaries, and Taoist monks.
Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter, was Catholic.

And how do you explain the following?

The vast majority of the participants in World Wars I and II were not Muslims.
In Rwanda, where the rivers have run with blood, 56.9% of the population is Roman Catholic, 26% is Protestant, 11.1% is Seventh-day Adventist, 4.6% is Muslim, 1.7% claims no religious affiliation, and 0.1% practices traditional indigenous beliefs such as the Jabiyan ethno-religious belief system.
Angola, home to one of the most brutal civil wars in history, is a predominately Christian country.
33 people died in the Salem Witch Trials, which were conducted by a Puritan government.
Very few Muslims resided in America during our Revolutionary or Civil wars.
The vast majority of the owners of slave ships that transported slaves to the Americas were Christians.
The Aztecs hadn’t even HEARD of Islam, yet still managed to perform their human sacrifices.
Apartheid in South Africa was perpetuated by the Afrikaner minority. This system was responsible for the death of thousands and the displacement of hundreds of thousands. Afrikaners are predominately Calvinists.
At least 110,000 Iraqis have died since we Americans declared war on them. Some say it’s more like 1,033,000. 4,486 US soldiers were also killed. Our main justification for that war? 9/11. The number of Iraqis who were involved in the attack on the World Trade Center? 0. Another justification for that war: weapons of mass destruction. The number of weapons of mass destruction found? 0.
The murder-suicides in Jonestown were conducted by the People’s Temple Cult.
It was Christians who gave blankets infected with smallpox to the American Indians.
It was the US Public Health Service that intentionally misled 399 black sharecroppers into thinking they were being treated for their syphilis when in fact they were not. (They wanted to see how the disease would progress. Nice, huh?)
The Crusades were started by Pope Urban II.
When the Chinese tried to stop opium from being brought to their shores by the British, the British started the Opium Wars.
Germans slaughtered 10,000 Nama in South West Africa.
11 Australian men, 10 of European descent and one of African descent, slaughtered 30 unarmed Aboriginals, mostly women, children, and old men, like they were dogs. It was called the Myall Creek massacre.

Do you still think the followers of Islam have cornered the market on murder and violence? Give me a break. We’re equally bad. And equally good, but that’s a subject for another blog entry.

So the next time you’re tempted to spew your Islamophobia, at least now you’ll have some facts, which means you’ll have to admit, at least to yourself, that what you’re trying to convince yourself of is actually nothing but hatred and ignorance. No culture is composed entirely of saints or completely of sinners. Stay stupid if you want to, but at least have the backbone to own it.

“Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Image credit: peaceisgood.net)

I’m Going Slightly Mad

I’ve got another cold. I’m feverish, and I suspect I’m hallucinating, so I apologize in advance for whatever I write today. Combine that with the fact that I’ve been looking at a summary of the search terms that people have used to find my blog, and having quite a giggle over that. Why did the following search terms bring you to me, dear readers? I have no idea.

range rental of rant stable apt
coole account bilder psychedelisch
stupidity
the book something girl reality-based
walmart sucks the soul out of you

Okay, so I’m trying not to take the “stupidity” one personally. And on top of all of that, I just got through watching the movie Contagion. Don’t ask me why. But in it one of the characters says, “Blogging is not writing. It’s graffiti with punctuation. “

So…hallucinating…weird search terms….graffiti…are you following me? Probably not. But from that muddled mental soup I got the idea that it would be kind of fun to write a surreal paragraph that would bring me an unexpected readership. So here goes:

Nuclear war is the broccoli and cheese soup of the Elizabethan Era. Labradoodles often breed anarchy amongst Croatian Cosmonauts. The porcupines of Greenland are constantly mistaken for barbed wire handbags. The robots of Kuala Lumpur toil vigorously in the Martian vineyards. Classic mustangs carry swine flu in Tamar Braxton’s panties. Daylight savings time accosted Justin Timberlake in the Australian outback. Barack Obama eats boysenberry aspic on melba toast while doing the watusi in a frothy silk kimono.

And that’s all I have to say about that, Forrest Gump.

(Credit: Wallpaperscraft.com)

Bridge Goes Boom

One of my coworkers reminded me of an incident that occurred a few years ago on our drawbridge. I can’t believe I had forgotten about it. It was very bizarre. Makes me wonder what else I’ve forgotten. Hmmm…

Anyway, two workmen from the Department of Transportation were leaving the bridge after doing some repairs when they came upon a barnacle-encrusted hand grenade on the sidewalk. Yes, I really said hand grenade.

In their infinite wisdom they decided to pick it up and carry it to the park at the foot of the bridge. Getting smarter by the minute, they then tried to detonate it themselves. I’m sure the future branches of their family tree will be quite grateful to know that they were unsuccessful in their efforts. Finally they decided to notify the police.

The police had the good sense to take this situation a trifle more seriously, and they sent out the bomb squad, who determined that this was a Viet Nam era device. They managed to detonate it without harming anyone or anything, unless you count the significant crater that it produced in the park.

Based on the evidence, here’s what everyone assumes happened: Someone came home from the Viet Nam War with a souvenir. They probably put it in their garage or attic where it was forgotten about for decades. Then it was rediscovered when the owner was more mature and he realized that, hey, it might not be the best idea to have a live grenade in the house. But how do you get rid of a thing like that? He brought it to the bridge and threw it in the river, where it sat for another few years gathering barnacles. Then one day someone was fishing off the bridge and brought something unexpected up in his cast net. Realizing what it was, he took off, leaving it on the sidewalk like the responsible citizen that he is. Luckily a jogger or a dog walker or neighborhood kid didn’t come across it before the DOT guys did. That bridge gets a lot of foot traffic.

Just to be on the safe side, the city had divers explore the river in that area the very next day. It wouldn’t do to have a live ordinance dump rusting away under the drawbridge. Fortunately nothing further was found.

You wake up every morning assuming that your day is going to follow a certain routine. You just never know, do you? Sheesh.

My Crunchy Granola Epiphany

Last night at about 4 a.m., alone at work and struggling to stay awake, I had an epiphany, and now I’m looking at the world in an entirely different way. Before I present you with my concept, let me say that I’m quite sure this theory didn’t originate with me. There are plenty of crunchy granola new-agey types out there who no doubt have come to the same or similar conclusions. And how’s this for a revelation: my philosophy doesn’t even have to be true for it to have a positive impact on me. Awesome.

I’m calling it Net Theory, and it’s deceptively simple: Everything is connected. All of us are one. From what little I understand about Quantum Theory, I’m fairly certain that it supports this notion. On a sub-atomic level, we’re all a part of one big, uh….thing. We’re bathing in a sea of light waves. There is really no place where I end and you begin.

And once you accept this idea, the way you perceive the universe changes. For example, I’m not as irritated by obnoxious people. I’m just grateful that they are performing this role instead of me. I’m not jealous of people who are more successful than I am, because their success is a reflection of the healthy part of this great net. Politics seem even sillier if that’s possible. It’s just one side of us disagreeing with the other side of us, and whoever comes out on top, well, it’s still us. Prejudice seems absurd, as does war, violence, cruelty, selfishness, pollution, road rage, even petty grudges, because it’s all negative energy directed at the great net of which we are all a part. In other words, it’s self-destructive. I suspect that moving forward, I won’t be as bothered by boredom, because I’ll know that somewhere something interesting is happening. I won’t resent work, because it’s part of what needs to be done.

Charity will seem like a way to be good to myself, as will sex and learning. Religion makes much more sense, because it seems like someone must be keeping this massive organism, for lack of a better word, on track.

Eating, I was musing on the way in to work tonight, is kind of problematic. Am I eating myself? Yuck! But then, why not? It is the gift I give to myself to maintain life. That’s actually beautiful, if you ask me. It’s kind of like the last supper writ large. It sure makes me want to avoid junk food, though.

And the more I get into this concept, the less I am afraid of dying, because now more than ever I can believe that I’ll still be a part of this great interconnectedness that is all of us and everything. I can’t imagine anything more comforting than that.