How the Bad Superman's Reign Ends

       Humanity loves the idea of greatness. Powerful mythical leaders with super-human intelligence, strength, healing, or harming. At least that is the standard lore, the baggage attached to many cultures and religions. Since the current Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions are very touchy (to say the least) about having their mythologies called mythologies (many in them can reason but the intolerant fundamentalists rule the day today and shout down reason whenever possible) I will start with the Greeks. The Greeks loved them freaks.

        The Greek Gods, though as prone to genocide when provoked as much as the big G(od), generally could be questioned. There was more than one of them, leading to specialities and you could (sometimes) pick your favorite to put upon your mantle. This made storytelling about them much easier. One could play the good god, and another could play the bad god in each story. A good god could accidentally kill a lot of people (usually unimportant “mortals” anyway) by mistake, or even hurt a fellow immortal without due reason, and feel bad about it afterwards. Infallibility was not part of the picture, and why they were so easy to relate to. They were superior beings but prone to jealousy, anger, lust, and any number of good old-fashioned vices, at least in stories which were parables about what not to do. And among many many of these stories was the arrogance of power and the pain and suffering it can cause.

        Beyond the gods, the Ancient Greeks had half-gods, or mortals with god-like powers. They were half-breeds usually, with a father or mother who was a god. There were all kinds of stories about how these half-gods could be conceived, often through trickery or magic, but with them were the original Supermen. Because the Romans “adapted” the Greek gods as their own, the foundation was there for understanding Christianity as having a half-god at its core, the father being an immortal, and the mother being a human, usually a virgin. Some Christians cannot really fathom that the idea of a virgin birth is older than Christianity and is found in other religions, but then many of them cannot believe the Universe is older than a few thousand years. (Actually to me, the Universe is not older than I am but of course that is not exactly the case and strictly a matter of a certain perspective, so who am I to throw stones?)

        Of the half-gods with super powers, the most famous still around today in Western cultures are Hercules and Prometheus. They had adventures, had different super powers, sometimes with the aid of magical devices, but they were less than gods themselves. They were partially human. At the risk of pissing off followers of these Gods, it is safe to say that these myths came about over time through the creativity of people who were fully human, although I can allow that some may consider their creativity divinely inspired. They certainly did capture the popular imagination of large numbers of people over thousands of years, and we still repeat their adventures today to every new generation.

        One of the modern myths of supermen, is of course, Superman, as in the DC Comics super-hero. Being an American, it is impossible to gauge whether Superman is as Universal as our culture would like to think, at times called the American Messiah, but it is safe to say many who are familiar with Western culture at all have at least had multiple if not countless of possible references to that popular cultural icon, Superman, who inspired countless other comic book characters which they probably did hear of. In reading how this new myth evolved, it was revealing as to how such stories can begin, if one can concede that we low humans are capable of creating such mythical characters out of thin air.

        It is worth mentioning that Superman was originally conceived and written as a villain. That obviously did not fly. But heck, it was a super name, and with a little retooling, became what now is a part of a lot of peoples consciousnesses. He was originally a human, given super-powers, behaved predictably like a Dick Cheney, tried to destroy the world, but luckily the powers wore off in time and he ended up in the end again becoming a nobody. Good parable, but wrong super character.

        The Superman we all, or most, know today slowly took on more and more super-powers, kind of like President Bush, made up out of thin air as the story went along. As Superman became more god-like, it became harder and harder to come up with villains to make the story interesting. If your hero could not die, could not be injured, and really was so much out of the league of any bad guys to have to break a sweat to always save the day, it would have made for a very boring set of stories. So as Superman's powers evolved, great and more powerful bad-guys had to evolve to threaten our hero with death, dismemberment, or at the very least, a black-eye.

        Going back to the Ancient Greeks, they had no really “all good” gods, and even the bad ones were not really all bad. Hades, the lord of the underworld, basically got a really bad job, was despised or feared by most humans, but still got invited to most of the really big god parties. If there were bad gods in this mythology, one could say it was the Titans, who were the previous generation of gods who were overthrown by the next generation, whom Zeus was a part of. Still, other than arrogance or complacency at getting overthrown, their biggest sin seems to have been being a bit dated. Time seemed to march on, even for timeless beings, and one generation seemed to have to yield to the next. That may have been why Zeus was such a bastard, knowing he too could or might eventually be overthrown.

        To those who think, at the very least, this is not the actual "History of the Universe" but an at least partially fictional history made up by humans to understand both themselves and an order to their societies being ruled by similar kings and dynasties, they ought to realize that Judaism and later Christianity and Islam shared this “War in Heaven” pre-history. With God really having no protagonist to be God against except humans, who were really no threat to him, and like Zeus or Superman, really too easy to beat to make for interesting reading, if not a non-fictional "History of the Universe", there needed to be a villain, a match for God to have to kick ass against without it being a foregone conclusion or such a mismatch in power as to seem just plain boring.

        Thus the Devil stepped up to the plate as the mythology evolved, became a devils-advocate to God's instructions, and other than contributing to a little thing called free will, generally was seen in mostly negative turns. (I leave out Lucifer as that is sometimes more than just another name for the Devil, for then it gets into a big complicated mess because it is not a simple religion (or even three simple religions) but has been expanded and simplified (and re-expanded and re-simplified, again and again) as time went on.) As with the Greek's mythological history, there also was a war in Heaven between immortals, the big G won, and the devil was stuck with Hades old job, but no longer got invited to the God parties, although he did get summoned to talk with him from time to time, kind of like Henry Kissinger. At least God got to at least once kick some super-villain immortal's ass once upon a time.

        With a new offshoot called Christianity, it too was lopsided. However, an “amendment” which I have already written about as having wrecked havoc against what was up until that time a fairly harmless peace-loving philosophy, gave birth to the idea of the “anti-Christ”. Unfortunately for comic book lovers or literal interpreters of revered writings, there is no real detailed template for how this war went down because it has not actually happened yet, but of course to its believers it will happen, and of course to them cannot happen any other way than how they imagine, so for them it already may as well have happened. That being the past tense future case, lets look at how it did/will have gone down.

        The “anti-Christ” supposedly will not/did not get any cool comic book super-powers, and generally other than trying to control the world, have lots of money and power, and making most of the world think he is the cat's meow (damn, I so wanted it to be Bush), really does not get much to hold against the big C(hrist). He is a super villain to be sure, a causation of countless suffering, but he is merely a warm up act to the real Christ, which is why so many Americans are hip to get the Armageddon bandwagon rolling. That being because he is fated to lose, and there was/will be much rejoicing afterwards, and Lord knows there is littler every year for us to rejoice over these days, economically, environmentally, and liberty and justice-wise.

        Long story short, Jesus the reincarnated, or just reinstated, does some sort of battle against this ultimate foe, the Anti-Christ, or even the Devil, which his Father had spared and just let him rule Iraq, oops, Hades, finally gets this War thing over with once and for all, even with the approval of Halliburton, Boeing, and every other industry devoted to War on Earth, no doubt a bigger miracle even than defeating the Devil and the Anti-Christ combined. And in this miraculous military industrial complex permitted peace there is even greater profits for all major warmaking corporations, and lower taxes for all, amen.

        So Zeus and his crew got to fight the Titans, God and his Angels got to fight the Devil and his rogue Angels, and even the peacenik Jesus gets to, at least in one warped story which has become Gospel for countless numbers of Christians, finally will get to/did already kick some super-villains butt, someday, but what about Superman?

        They just made him too damn super! As his origin became more fleshed out, gaining more abilities as time went on, at least the opportunity for other Super beings became in the cards who occasionally made it to Earth so he could at least deal with something other than humans with freakish powers or weird inventions. He also was given an Achilles Heel, Kryptonite, to make it at least possible for him to die. But in typical mythological and moralistic fashion, to some, his greatest enemy was himself, the bad Superman.

        The bad Superman was Superman from an alternate Universe. This opened up an avenue that other older more revered mythologies (or actual Histories of the World if you are so inclined to believe) did not have, that the Universe goes more than one way, and that different paths not taken exist somewhere. Usually in this manner, the bad Superman somehow makes it into this reality and proceeds to do, well, bad things which is made easier because everyone thinks he is Superman and trusts him implicitly.

        Now in religious mythologies, this has many precedents. The Devil had pretended to be God to deceive people, Zeus often pretended to be a human when he wanted to get laid with an Earth chick, and of course, the Anti-Christ gets very rich or a lot of power or both, from playing the J(esus) card, or at least is ambiguous enough about it to get a very good retirement portfolio from dropping the name at the right times.

       The problem is, for those whom these are more than just stories, they are heavily indoctrinated or raised to defer to those who play such super cards of unquestionable authority. He is God, he is Jesus, he is Superman, he is the President, he is the King, he could not possibly be leading us astray / taking advantage of us / trying to wreck our economy / country / reputation. Such blindness makes it so damn easy, no matter how much you warn people about it, they just never are willing to wrap their little heads around the concept.

        EVERYONE has good and bad in them, possibly in equal measures. These can be brought out in numerous ways under extremely varied, and sometimes extreme circumstances. And to those who think they are above or beyond such mistakes or transgressions of their self-image, it makes it that much more tempting and fun to do to them. Even the most holy god-like people among us can be broken, and Lord knows there has been enough studies done on torture to know which buttons to push in people to bring out the worst. Others are intuitive and can sense weakness in others, blindness, and can zero in on how to manipulate them without even having to torture large numbers of people in their cultures to know how to do so.

       The wisest people in the past knew this to be the case. No one is to be trusted with vast amounts of power. It is not the man (or woman) but the position itself which corrupts, corrodes, and destroys their very souls. Trying to obtain that much power is weakening and suspect in itself, holding onto it for long is fatal to the goodness inherent within anyone.

       The stronger or more immune one is by office or social structure from the rules that govern others which do not apply to oneself, the longer one can go on making mistakes and not paying a price for them, the more people one can harm or destroy with lessening guilt, and literally the weightier the misdeeds grow, the more able one becomes to shrug them all off and deceive oneself more than it is possible to deceive others, no matter how great their “power”.

        That is the moral which has ceased to be passed on. It needs to be embodied in others, it needs to be played out endlessly from one generation to the next. It is in the cards so long as people defer to anyone. The greater the prostration, the greater the havoc wrecked by those who claim a title no one should hold, a sole decided, savior, judge, juror, and executioner.

       For awhile, America, for all its many many faults, did push back against this. The king and even the notion of a divine right of kings was overthrown, and the President was subservient in power to the legislature. This new model was held up to a world ruled by claimers of divine right to rule and pass on that right to their heirs or chosen heirs.

        Now this has reversed itself. America itself has asserted it has a divine right to rule given to it by God. Though it speaks of “democratizing” the world, the “democracy” it entails is one subservient to Washington more so than to its own people, and even the best PR firms of Madison Avenue cannot make the complete lack of legitimacy of the Iraq or the Palestinian governments to do what its people wish against American interests look “democratic” except to the most ardently mislead and uninformed about the reality on the ground. America has now permanently poisoned the very word “Democracy” for many all over the world, by such unthinkably flagrant and destructive misuse, far beyond any means to see it in any other way than intentionally. We are the ultimate bad Superman destroying our own reputation inestimably.

       Though many have rightly claimed that this destruction is not limited to this present Bush Administration, that it is merely continuing policies begun by both Democratic and Republican Presidents and Congresses, the idea of democracy, what vestige of it still remains at home, is that a change of administration can herald a change of direction. “That is not us anymore,” a new President is thought to be able to proclaim upon taking office. “I will undo these mistakes or at least try to make them right,” one can hope a new President will promise. The bad Superman has been vanquished. The good Superman has returned and we must look to the future and give back the trust.

        But the trust will not return. There was no bad Superman from an alternate Universe to blame our mistakes on. No Democratic candidate currently running is advocating anything drastic enough or different enough to justify belief in any significant course change to how the US has conducted itself these last 6 years. The lies will continue, either from a different Republican or Democratic white man or woman, or from a Black man or Hispanic President. Pre-emptive war will not be “off-the-table”, threats of regime change of countries that displease us will continue, arms races desired by the corporations which control both parties will increase for the state subsidized guaranteed profits they will generate, and the world will not have much more reason to trust us later than now.

       But they will have to, we think. Our musical chairs, feigned course changes or slight alternations deemed to give to our home population that hope that the future will get better, we think will still spill over to the rest of the world. We do spend countless billions to plant positive stories in foreign press about ourselves, and they get to watch our own propagandized channels and “entertainment” shows (which praise our armed services / CIA / Presidency, etc.) without cost to our government. It is inherent in people to want to hope though. They want to give us the benefit of the doubt that we will not be overthrown completely and plunge the world into a hellish power vacuum, though every day we are inching toward making more and more of the world think, “how could that possibly be worse that what we are offered now?”

       To much of the rest of the world though, they have it bad enough that that end, the end of American hedgmony, cannot come soon enough. Among the richest countries, though our image is tarnished, they remember how we took the heat and did the dirty deeds during the Cold War to keep their economies safe. They may not be grateful and they may realize more than our own citizens how we were getting rich off of that conflict through raping most of the developing world through puppet governments terrorizing their own publics, but they have much stake in keeping the US-based economic system healthy. They want to believe the myth if not the reality of the good Superman is not dead, or at least that a less psychotic one is on the way. Their continued positions as higher than the rest of the world in comforts and economic advantages depend on it. But to more and more of the rest of the world every year, they see only the benefits of our continued implosion.

        The problem is, and I have tried to emphasize this as much as the dangers of attacking Iran, the unpredictability of weapons development. New types of weapons are evolving in ways that will not only put current ones to shame, but will be cheaper and more widely available. Every system of government may soon come apart at the seams. Russia has recognized one avenue pending with trying to limit the availability of its major ethnicity's DNA, but that is simply impossible and even laughable with so many diasporate Russians. America, other than sort of having a “ruling class” of whites which its government might seek to protect, is less at risk, but China has both the greatest vulnerability and is the greatest threat for developing such ethnicity based DNA biological weapons, and also was the first to unlock the code of human DNA as well. Yet biologicals and other types of weapons we can name today are merely the tip of the iceberg of what is in the works for the next 50, 20, or even 10 years.

        Neo-Cons and generals unfortunately have deluded themselves enough to think that having enough weapons pointed at every corner of the earth, even from space can protect American hedgmony but that is beyond even the most wishful thinking. Other than mass liquidation of populations so massive that a word stronger than genocide will have to be formulated, in the end it will as now only create more hatred and more unacceptable risks to all but those profiting from making the weapons systems. Armistice, the most hated and feared word of those running America today, at the tops of BOTH political parties, is the ONLY course of survival that has even a negligible chance of long term success. The only question is how many will have to die before the real discussions begin.

What We Factually Stand For Now Like It Or Not, Face Up To It

"The Bush/Cheney White House, which told the American people in 2003 that the Iraqi invasion would be a three to six week affair, now tells us that the US occupation is permanent. Forever. ...In contrast, the insurgency in Iraq continues to rage and could expand dramatically if Shi'ites were to join the Sunnis in attacks on US forces. Most American military leaders no longer believe the insurgency can be defeated. Permanent occupation means permanent insurgency.

The neoconservative Bush regime has got away with more than I thought possible, perhaps because most of Congress and the American public cannot imagine the degree of insanity that lies behind the Bush administration. ... If Americans understood the enormity of the deception behind the invasion of Iraq (and Afghanistan) and the pending attack on Iran, Bush and Cheney would be impeached and turned over to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague, and AIPAC would be forced to register as a foreign agent.

The neoconservatives also believe that nuclear attack on Iran will isolate America in the world and, thereby, give the government control over the American people. The denunciations that will be hurled at Americans from every quarter will force the country to wrap itself in the flag and to treat domestic critics as foreign enemies. Not only free speech but also truth itself will disappear along with every civil liberty."

Paul Craig Roberts (6/12/2007)

"Allowing the President unilaterally to declare individuals to be "enemy combatants" with no meaningful review process means, by definition, that the President's power to imprison people for life is unchallengeable and unreviewable. No hyperbole is needed to describe that as a core tyrannical power, one of the defining attributes of dictatorial rule. How does that, by itself, not end the debate over whether this is something that ought to be done?

It is just self-evident that vesting the President with this power will result in inevitable and widespread abuse of that power. That is why our system of government does not recognize such a thing as unchecked power generally or executive imprisonment specifically. Those who advocate unilateral presidential imprisonment power willfully ignore that issue and simply pretend (or blindly trust) that the power will only be used against The Terrorists -- exactly the assumption our entire system of government was constructed to reject.

Anyone who believes that the President should have the power to order individuals inside the U.S. imprisoned forever with no charges and no process is someone who, by definition, simply does not believe in the political system of the United States."

Glenn Greenwald (6/13/2007)

         What is interesting about the above quotes is what "would happen" "if" without mentioning or sufficiently imploring that such is already the case. The fact is it is the official position of the government of the United States that says all of these "terrible" things they write about as if in hindsight or as if it can be avoided, is already the law of the land and is indisputably going on, and that no one has to fear arrest or accountability on doing or having done such things on behalf or the adminstration, ever. The US openly has stated the Geneva Conventions do not apply, and that while it does not "torture" or "kidnap" people, it does "alternative interrogations" and "extraordinarily renders" people for such treatment, (and sometimes to places where they can be "legally no mincing words about it"... tortured, though it is usually conveniently out of our hands at that point ("they promised they would not "torture" them" beyond somebody's definition of the word)). It is not that the President asking for such rights, legal or not, because they are ongoing, recognized as policy with the full sanctioning of the Justice Department and the Congress, and despite some rare exceptions, even the courts.

         The "political system" of the United States, with few squabbling and ineffectual protestations considered "partisan" really has no problems with these things. And the American public and the Military are getting used to it as well, for the more such things are exposed and nothing is done to stop it, the more "legal" it becomes, rightly or wrongly. The fact is the full weight of the US government will be in trying to appeal the Al-Marri decision, and it is the official position of the acting authorities that despite whatever misgivings this or that lower courts or even the Supreme Court may have, such things will continue, have continued, and will be continued no matter what the courts throw up as roadblocks. The only possible remedy to stop any of this from continuing which is the largest self-fulfilling prophecy ever by Congress that since it cannot happen, it will not be attempted, impeachment. THAT is the tacticit approval by Congress for not even giving a hearing to the only possible remedy for an unending pattern of lawlessness at upsurping the Constitution, the Separation of Powers, and countless laws completely ongoingly disregarded openly. The courts are treading on thin ice in venturing where they know Congress fears to tread. Every branch has capitulated simultaneously because the only way to prevent what has already happened from continuing to happen is for them to act in unison against it.

         One could argue, correctly in my opinion, that Congress has feared to consider impeachment under the countless reasons to think Bush would not recognize the legitimacy of Congress even being still able to hold such hearings "in a time of war" no matter how elective a war, or that would tip his hand toward doing the unthinkable, bombing Iran. It is a Mexican Standoff all over the place. Bush not only declared Congress passing into new hands as irrelevant in the long run, but that the elections "even went forward" in the first place was a sign of how willing he was to compromise. There is nothing to stop him from using any national emergency to send Congress packing, and with his new directives on what would happen in that event, have sole jurisdiction to reconstitute the government.

         In light of this possible intimidation of Congress present or recently passed, that Congress would literally fear for their continued positions were they to "take on" the President or even the Vice-President, or inadvertently set off the very Armageddon they might seek to prevent, under such circumstances, debate and democracy would already be dead. The Congressional hearings are nice entertainment, the coverage of the would be elections if Bush's magnaminity to allow them to take place continues, and should no possible excuse from a terrorist attack to a bad hurricane make them questionably subject to revisions. Even the head of the military recently predicted that he thought civil government in the US could not withstand another 9/11. Being the one who would make that call along with the President should inspire little confidence that the military would currently "allow" impeachment hearings to take place, or not cut them short should any crisis or development occur. The Constitutional framework that existed before is effectually now dead in practice.

         What we are left with is hoping that we will be allowed another election if the Democrats can alter their positions enough to be thought by the military, and other relevant corporations, sufficiently reasonable to deal with. And of course, that no reason in the Universe, and God only knows how little that reason could be, to have the whole thing aborted should things be not sufficiently going the way Bush would wish. Toward reversing this, getting an impeachment before an excuse occurs to make it impossible, or before Bush can launch an attack to make it unthinkable and his continuing in office or appointing a successor to take his place in the event of a World War he would be complicit in starting, nothing is there anymore to stop it, or even discourage it. Up until now the consistency has been absolute, if it can be done, if others will give ground, it has been attempted.

         Time is not with anyone on this. The Democrats have rapidly lost much of their credibility to take on Bush head on, and the war will drive Bush to make increasingly, if that is possible, even more rash decisions. An attack on Iran may be imminent, or impeachment hearings will soon go forward, and baby steps will doom it. Talk is cheap, and proving a case to a brain dead public told what to believe by their TV's without a consistent increasing urgency will allow the public to again tune out, and whoever takes the initiative first wins. This is a crisis which will not yield to election year politics or news cycles. Only impeachment in one form or another can stop or slow the rush to war anymore. A President under indictment by Congress would give the military time to digest and the "possibility" however slim that war of uncontainable and unconscionable consequences would not overshadow everything else. Don't write off Lieberman's urgency in bombing Iran. It is in the cards the Democrats, if not have dealt, yet again, doth not protest enough to make a damn's worth of difference.

Paul Craig Roberts Unglued: Dems Monster Too

Normally I look forward to Paul Craig Roberts articles as I mentioned before, as having shown courage, but now, I fear he is going senile. How old is he again? From Counterpunch.org June 8, 2007...

All of the leading Republican presidential candidates openly and nonchalantly endorsed using nuclear weapons against Iran unless Iran abandons its right to enrich uranium under the non-proliferation treaty, to which Iran is a signatory (unlike nuclear-armed Israel, India, and US puppet Pakistan).

What is moral degeneracy if it is not using nuclear weapons to murder masses of innocent civilians and spread deadly radioactivity over vast areas merely in order to force a country to do as we order? If this isn't barbarism, what is barbarism?

Do the American people realize that the frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination are monsters who want to murder people who have done us no harm?... how can Republicans cheer for candidates who preach a wider war and the use of nuclear weapons against defenseless people?

Is the approval lavished on Republican presidential candidates, who are willing to use nuclear weapons as means of terrorizing Muslim peoples, an indication that that the American people have morphed into inhuman monsters?

Has he so quickly forgotten the Democrats recent bending over backwards to show their less than lack of spine when it comes to our nations security? Yes, they may cave on just about every other issue, but when it comes to protecting America, they can get down, swing, and jump jive with any Red Stater. Hit it Boris...

I was working in the lab late one night, When my eyes beheld an eerie sight

And I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me -- they frighten me. When you have mainline (Democratic) candidates that turn around and say that there's nothing off the table with respect to Iran, that's code for using nukes, nuclear devices. (Democratic Debate 4/26/07)

For my monster from his slab began to rise and suddenly to my surprise

"we need to keep all options on the table."

He did the mash

"Let me reiterate—all options.” - John Edwards

He did the monster mash

"no option can be taken off the table." - Hillary Clinton

It caught on in a (nuclear) flash

"we should take no option ... off the table." - Barack Obama

They did the monster mash

"We need to use every tool about our disposal including … the threat and use of military force. " - Hillary Clinton

It was a graveyard smash

"Let me reiterate—all options.”

It's now the monster mash

"Nothings off the table except peaches" - Creator

(Sorry for the last bit. Thank you Bobby "Boris" Pickett for "The Monster Mash". Rest In Peace (4/25/07)(and hope we can learn to Live In Peace)

For Two Soldiers

1) The Dream (4/28/07):

I was on a boat. I went up to the bridge. “Is this boat going to Hawaii?” I asked someone in a uniform there.
“No,” he replied, “this boat is going to War!”
“But I am supposed to be going to Hawaii,” I answered back.
I walked around the ship and people were busying putting things into other things around the sides, things made of metal into bigger things made of metal in tube shapes.
Here and there, I would stop and say to people, “I am supposed to be in Hawaii right now.”
I remember seeing Corporal Klinger (Jamie Farr's character on M*A*S*H) and said to him, “I am not supposed to be here you know.” But he did not say anything. He just stood there in a dress and gave me a look that said, “Tell me about it! Look at me and I still can get out of here.”

         I know why I had the dream. While reading the local newspaper (something I almost never do) simply to find out what the rules were when the Dalai Lama was to speak (what you could bring, how early to get there, etc.) I had been confronted with an unwelcome bit of news. It turned out someone from my little town on my little island had been killed in Iraq during the April 'surge.' His funeral was that morning and I was conflicted about whether or not to go.

         I did not know him, so really I had no business being there. It is pretty obvious to many I disagree with the war, so some pro-war people would suggest, such people ought not to go. But if that were the case, there would be fewer and fewer people attending them at all. Since it was mentioned in the newspaper when the services would be, it would be open to the public, but it did not say specifically that anyone could attend. It is really a very small town, like I said, on a small island, so to me things were making me feel like I should go for some reason.

         Its not that I wanted to. I did not even go to my father's funeral and did not feel guilty about not going to that. It was not economically possible, many thousands of miles away without enough money for such a long trip, and he never liked funerals either and almost never went to any himself. Plus, you don't have to have been a fan of HBO's “Six Feet Under” to be a little creeped out by them, me no less than most.

         But it wasn't possible for me to go to this one here anyway, I thought. I was supposed to work that day. And if I had not even read that paper earlier in the week, I would not even had felt like there was anything different about that day than any other. Certainly nothing that depressing to think about doing or going to where I would have been probably intruding anyway. But when something like that even gets into your dreams, you have to think, maybe I should go.

         Though I did not go to it, more things happened that made me aware of it. It turned out I did not have to work and ended up nearby it. A lot of near misses and circumstances drawing me closer and closer to being at something which probably I might not have been welcomed to going to either. Like most others, I would pay my respects some other way without possibly intruding on anyone.

         But the dream weighed on me all day. How many others lives were being lost, and still are, everyday thinking they did not or do not belong there, that they belonged home with their families, back in their towns? We are told they are heroes, putting themselves on the line for our freedom. Not to disparage their bravery or manhood, but almost everyone knows or ought to by now that this war is not and never was about a threat to us so much as what our country hopes to gain from it, namely oil leases, permanent bases, and a launching pad for more wars, more oil leases, and more permanent bases in countries which will hate us more the more me bomb them to “free them” and give them “democracy” which if they don't want or like what we are doing to them or their countries, we can criticize them as we do Iraqis for being too “primitive” to understand the good we are doing to and for them. As we bomb them, keep them under a state of martial law, leave them without security, without electricity, safety, without a proper economy while our companies profit from their misery almost without end.

         But the soldiers really have no part in this. Yes, all this would not be possible without them, but few of them would say anymore that what they are doing there is what they signed up for. So many of them there now, supposedly overwhelmingly most or all, think we are not welcome there and not helping anyone by being there. If today's reports are correct, with constant operations going on for over 4 years, still shelling cities we have “liberated” long ago, yet we only control 1/3 of the capital city and almost none of the country.

         But even if we only controlled one building, the parliament, with lawmakers dependent upon our protection about to give us control of their countries resources for the next decades, coincidentally or not, how long Bush and Gates have said we intend to be there for, despite their Parliament asking us to leave, and their public overwhelmingly now seeing us as a hostile occupation force. We respect “democracies” so long as the “democracy” has nothing to do with what the public wants when inconvenient to what we want. If we only had bases in countries that wanted us there, how many countries would we have them in? My guess is it would be significantly less that the 110 or 120 countries we now have bases in, some quite pointedly asking us to leave, as if that mattered in the least.

         While I had that dream, fretted about going or not going to one funeral, many more ships were on their way to the Persian Gulf. The buildup for the War with Iran was underway then, as it is now, but of course, almost no one in our government, Democrat nor Republican, will say that was what the 'surge' was really about. Nor will they say Iran may or may not be interested in having nuclear weapons because we have attacked and invaded and now occupy with large armies countries on both sides of them, against international law, against the publics in those countries wishes (all the self-serving propaganda 'they will/did welcome us as liberators' bullshit notwithstanding), and have been threatening to do the same to them, and to nuke them no less if we feel like it.

         Many Americans are completely without reason on this point. It is so beyond the pale of what they can consider possible that they wander around in a dream-like state much as people in mental hospitals who shut out anything that is upsetting and live in their own dream world. “How dare Russia use energy to gain influence over countries!” This in regards to withholding subsidies and lower prices to countries they do not like and making them pay market prices. Now compare that to threating to invade, take over, conduct terrorist operations in, and if that doesn't work, to nuke them if necessary to prevent others from gaining weapons you not only have, but have thousands of, illegally because the very treaty you accuse them of breaking says you were supposed to be disarming and instead, you are openly talking about building thousands more! But hey, no irony there. Just put your fingers in your ears, and join up for Bush's delusional reality about how we are “saving” people by the same things others are advocating that will inevitably not only destroy our army but commit a genocide of the people we tell ourselves we are trying to help, but that will be another “accidental” genocide, unavoidable, and basically all their fault because they cannot understand “democracy” or how we are trying to “help” them.

         Since no doubt we have lost the ability to reason completely, our politicians quake with the fear that if they actually tried to stop what they are doing to our young people who do not belong there and know more than anyone else, how unwelcome they are there, that if they ended the insanity and brought them home, they would suffer criticism the cannot or would not successfully deflect of “not being supportive of the troops.” The truth is that any letup in the insanity would enable people to take note of where they are and where they are going, thus all the more reason we are likely to repeat our mistakes again and again as quickly and often as possible while Bush remains in office. Iran, Syria, Venezuela, take your pick.

        We, a country violating international laws left and right with more weapons of mass destruction than all of the rest of the world put together, invading and occupying countries against the will of their peoples because they theoretically might pose a threat to us someday gives us license to kill large numbers of their citizens today and are only seeking to 'defend' ourselves from a country that has not initiated a war or invaded anyone in centuries. And this because our people have been told how horrible it would be if they acquired a level of technology, because they are a Muslim country, that our “ally” Pakistan, another Muslim country already has, which already can be and has been exported by them to other countries without us threatening to bomb them, possibly because they could do something about it. Yet this is what we will 'save' the world from by taking out Iran, from a Muslim country getting the bomb. As if Iran could ever be a threat to us militarily. The point is that they would be able to defend themselves against us in a short while, and that is really what the new war and new rush to war is to silence.

         None will speak to this in our government. Our military, though they know better, hold to rules which say that it is not their province and must bow to 'civilian' governance even though that 'civilian' government is now more openly than ever talking about the conditions it would take, far from unusual or unexpected, to shut down the federal government completely and put it under executive control. As if that has not happened yet already. That war is already over except for the shouting.


2) The Gas Station (Summer 2006):

         I was having a bad day. My gas was very low and I had to go miles out of my way off the highway to get to a gas station to avoid running out completely. I was going to Boston for something, I don't remember what, but was in a hurry to get there.

         The credit card reader on the pump at the gas station was not working, so that meant I would have to go inside and pay for it there. Now I was really starting to get irked. I saw a line of people inside and I did not wish to have to wait but already had shut my car off.

         When I got inside, it took me a second or two to read the room. That is when you know you are getting old, or maybe it was just because I was agitated and distracted. At first I thought it might have been being robbed, a weird feeling, everyone was so uncomfortable, not afraid, but uneasy. There were a few people behind the register but no customers standing around were actively being waited on, though many were in line. The clerk closest to me, a teen male looked around nervously and would not make eye contact.

         A girl a few years older looked apologetic glancing around at different random spots in space but smiled politely though uncomfortably. Others in there were even more uneasy and were beginning to reach the level of frustration I had before I even walked in. The cause of it all was the last thing I hit upon, someone no doubt having a worse day than me.

         He looked like the crusty drill sergeant at the training camp in just about every war movie I ever saw. He was obviously new at this job, maybe his first day, and it was not going well. He was counting the drawer which is why no one was being waited on and could not until he was done. He kept making mistakes, getting more frustrated with himself, and kept having to start over. It was clear he was not used to doing that, and it seemed pretty clear he did not seem to be used to having only one arm to count the money with.

         There are lots of reasons one could be missing a limb. Cancer, a staff infection which causes a viral infection under the skin, a car accident, lots of things that have absolutely nothing to do with Iraq. I can't say why, but none of these seemed to apply to him. He looked so natural like a soldier, even over 40, that it was hard to see him in a different line of work, and it seemed like he would not have imagined it either, much less having to learn how to count a drawer with only one arm at his age.

         The proximity to the army base was one factor, maybe a cap or other insignia might have given me that impression as well. However correct or mistaken the impression was, like most people there (though some peoples patiences were wearing thin), I knew my being pissed off would have to wait awhile, because it was less important at the moment.

         But the natural questions when seeing someone who most probably, at least as I saw it at the time, had been to Iraq, kept popping into my head: “Did you support the war before,” “what do you think of what is going on there,” “Do you think what we are trying to do is worth it?” These are the natural questions any child would think to ask, but as adults, we never think to ask them. We keep our place, show our respect by not communicating and not asking what people, we think, would not wish to talk about.

         No doubt with the mood he was in, even if my presumptions were correct, he would not have wanted to talk about such things. Nor was I in a patient reflective mood myself at that moment. But on another day, under different circumstances, hopefully such questions could be asked delicately. People instinctively need to communicate what they have been through, what they have seen in their life, and what perspective from it they have gained.

         We honor such people who have made sacrifices, usually unintentionally, though often intentionally willing to put themselves in harms way for others, by keeping silent, not wanting to intrude. But that is not always what is best. We all, at one time or another, don't mind when someone asks us about our lives, even when it is something painful which at other times we would not wish to talk about. Those around us often can have more opportunities to catch us at those moments, but they also can and usually do fall most into patterns of behavior around us, acting in the same ways, almost habitual patterns of conversations. Those who can set people at ease, ask them to share something unique to them in a way they want to talk about it, they are good to have around, though not always welcomed.

         And not always is such questioning being nosy either. Life puts certain people around you at different points in your life to learn from them. You don't need to be a reporter to be curious about the people you see all around you, to wonder how they got to where they are, what they think about the things that have happened to them along the way there. Those people whose jobs it is to be curious, they have it easy, they have an opening while the rest of us must suppress most often that desire to know more about the uniqueness of appearance or experience of the people we pass by, usually without thinking of them at all.

         As I said, that was a bad time when little could have come of such conversations even had they been able to occur. The problem is, far too often they do not anyway. Television, society at large, so many factors make people think they know what people would or would not say or think about many things, often asking them seems superfluous or unnecessary. Worse yet is when we are so caught in believing in a culture's predispositions that we do not even question to ourselves what we really think about things because we think that there is no need. Its what we should think, we reflexively say when pressed by others, or instead of saying that, saying what that would or should be in such instances.

         So much we take for granted that we 'know' that we do not ever bother to ever again ask, not of others, not even sometimes of ourselves, and never reflect on why or how we came to settle into such perspectives unquestioningly in the first place, or never realize consciously we have done so. There is not enough time, rethinking would not be proper, not being a good this or a respectful that. Its what we should do or say without having to think what we should do or say. When we get caught up in that, we become blind to those standing right in front of us, and unfortunately only even notice those people whom cannot be pigeon-holed because we can tell their experiences or perspectives touch upon things we cannot readily say we know or understand, those are the only ones that stick out at all as being noteworthy or memorable.

         When this happens, when the unusual or unexpected cross our paths, when the time is right, they are the best means of growth we will ever get, not only to learn about something new, but reawaken that connection in yourself to asking the most basic of questions, “what happened to you,” “what did you think about it,” “how did you get here,” “what did you learn from it?” If not to tell you, believe it or not, they live to tell and communicate that to someone, and we honor them not by remaining silent, but by occasionally risking getting our heads bit off by letting them know whenever they are ready to tell us, that we are eager to hear that.

No Mercy: The Cheney Bush War Generation Graduates

        As I have written before here recently, words are an important measure to me as far as what we choose to think to say, but equally by what we choose not to say, what words we omit. Which words are the most important to us. While riding my bike in 2003, during the 'debate' in the run-up to the Iraq War, a local school here on Maui had large inspirational banners of single words for the children of values. COURAGE, STRENGTH, HONOR, etc. stood towering in giant-sized capital letters over the play area on banners painted by the students announcing to the world what the students or the school thought were the most important words. I saw instead what was missing. By omission, the banners I read were NO COMPASSION, NO FORGIVENESS, NO MERCY, and most glaringly absent of all, certainly NO PEACE!

       That was the only time in my life I wanted to complain to a school, “what are you teaching children?” In this time of impending war, when hatred and fear is being sowed, has peace as a goal, a value, become too political to be put up there as well?

       To no end I am disappointed that America has papered over Armistice Day, a day to celebrate Peace, a day to contemplate as a goal the end of wars, what one of our past generations sought to enshrine with a national holiday, and had later successfully removed it and replaced it with a second holiday dedicated to our warriors, Veterans Day. The argument was, if Memorial Day was to honor those who died in War, surely those who fought in War and came home deserved a day of tribute.

        But telling most of all to me was, not only because our country is cheap in its allocation of national holidays, but that it came at the cost of the only day we had meant to contemplate and recognize the right to pursue peace, and world peace at that, as if the notion had become sacrilegious to our national discourse.

        I was reminded of those banners again as well by a picture in todays newspaper, 4 years later, of what that generation decided to put on signs themselves for their graduation day. Many had made posters of slogans, motos, which were all held up or beside them shown to a newspaper reporter or school photographer to encapsulate that day. Some had their names, designs, but I saw instead what was missing.

       Out of dozens of placards, there were no doves, no peace signs, nothing to show that these high school graduates had any awareness or a position on the wars going on in their name or for their benefit, except one. The only reference that this is not a happy joyous time, a time of a perfect world of peace which in which peace is so enshrined, so secure, it needs not even be mentioned at all, was a reference to a recent casualty of that war who had recently graduated from that school. He was victim of the April Surge, the worst month of casualties yet of Americans thus far killed in Iraq, surpassed only by this month of May ending today which immediately followed it.

        There are no official casuality counts of how many Iraqis are dying every month. There were no school placards about that, none about the war at all, and none about a desire for peace. Now I know what many would say to this, the school may have said not to put political messages on them. They might say how vocal young people are in the movement for peace in this country. How outraged they are that people their own age are dying in a war they are disillusioned with.

        That may be a valid argument. It may be that they were told such messages are still inappropriate in this time of war where even a peace symbol is deemed an inappropriate symbol on something you are allowed to make yourself to put on your own poster to symbolize your own values on your own graduation day. It is entirely possible, sadly, that they had been encouraged to be that self-censored, or that the school itself would be that censored in whose signs were allowed to be shown in the photo in the newspaper. And it would not be a new idea to me.

        When I was in the 4th grade, a teacher tried to have me punished for refusing to take off a peace symbol in class. It was after the Vietnam War, unlike now, a time when we were not at war with anyone, much less potentially anyone. I had been taught in that very school that being allowed to wear that was my right. Unlike now, there was no dress codes then, no mandatory drug tests, no censoring what kids were allowed to wear as symbols, and I was certainly not going to simply be told by anyone in authority that I could not wear a symbol of peace around my neck if I so choose.

       It was one of those times I picked the right battle at the right time for after trying to punish me at the Principal's Office, it was determined I had that right and she had to back down and allow me to wear it in class. There was no being dragged off in hand-cuffs and charging a child with disruption of the peace for wearing a symbol of peace, no need for lawsuits, no suspension needing to be appealed to the Supreme Court. I had rights then. I had the right state Peace was a better path than War, and I had a right to wear it proudly around my neck at school if I so chose, and no one, at least at that time, could take that away from me, at least not succeed in that attempt.

        Times have changed no doubt. The President of the United States of America himself had no compunction against going on national television and telling people they ought to be careful what they say in public from on now. Those who publicly question an illegal war of aggression, even great-grandmothers carrying posters of peace symbols, are monitored by the police, and if one is in the army, one can be suspended or imprisoned for speaking out against even an illegal war. There is no one backing up those who choose to rebel in the name of peace today, at least not at the highest levels. The higher up you go now, the more insanity and suspicion and fear rule the day and the minds of the new 'deciders' on what is and is not proper self-expression these days.

        Perhaps I was hoping for someone, if that was the case, if they are not so apolitical to not even think, to every last man and woman or boy and girl, to make a symbol of peace on their own poster or placard on their own graduation day of their own values, maybe just one might have tried to sneak one into the picture. Or spontaneous peace signs of the fingers if that was not possible before each and every picture was taken. But I fear that that has been taught out of them, or not taught to them. It is more likely they could have made such symbols, and simply thought not to, or even more likely, did not think of it at all.

       There was likely no state repression of self-expression, at least in this instance, needing to be rebelled against, just another glaring banner or poster of omission. No desire to speak out. Nothing seen as needing by them to be spoken out against. No mercy lacking. No compassion missing. No peace goal needing to be sought after. No word banners missing to them. The invisible banners, the unspoken words, peace, mercy, compassion, fading for good like the Cheshire Cat, with only Dick Cheney's grin remaining in its place.