From: TKeske@Comcast.net   
      
   JULY 14th   
      
   Let us go forth, this day of July 4   
   A day most patriotic   
   Let us try to explain Liberty   
   to a nation that is psychotic   
      
   In this land most proud, the American   
   Land of the Short Attention Span   
   A land of people, yearning to be Free   
   If only you could drag them, away from the TV   
      
   ***   
      
   I cringe every July 4 when the Boston Globe prints   
   the full text of the Declaration of Independence.   
   It might not have been so bad, if not for that clunker   
   of a statement about "the merciless Indian savages".   
      
   I have tried to explain my preoccupation with Indians,   
   a tough job even for a poet.  Today, I will even try to explain   
   something about France, which is even tougher, in these dark   
   days of Freedom Fries.   
      
   "The merciless Indian savages", huh?   Maybe they would   
   not have seemed quite so merciless if someone had not   
   been trying to grab their land.   Same as any hapless patriots   
   of Iraq who might be doing now exactly what any red-blooded   
   American would do for their own country- in their eyes, trying   
   to defend their country against an occupying force that is   
   really there for ulterior motives of economic self-interest.   
      
   For doing so, they are lumped in with"terrorists", and tortured.   
   A convenient play of words.   I imagine that they are   
   also assumed to be quite "merciless", which justifies their being   
   hooded, electro-shocked, exposed to snarling dogs,   
   raped, murdered.   How merciless they are, or how   
   clueless we are, or how merciless we are, or maybe   
   all of the above.   
      
   A husband of a niece of mine got back from Iraq, having   
   been injured in an explosion.  He had volunteered to go over there.   
   A cousin has a son there, and tells me how tough and brave   
   he is, and how "there are some good things happening, there."   
      
   You don't know what to say.  You don't want to offend them.   
   You politely smile and nod, later feeling guilty that you   
   should have tried to engage them a bit more, as useless   
   as it would have been.   
      
   You can see that they are fine people, just naive as all hell.   
      
   Good things happening in Iraq?   Let's see, what did he mean   
   by that?   Probably things like "free elections", not thousands   
   of dead civilians.   
      
   Maybe you could start a family feud by saying to them-   
   "Free elections?   Look, pal, we don't have free elections here   
   in Ohio, much less over there, in Iraq.   Do you *seriously* think   
   that the U.S. would allow an anti-American candidate to be elected,   
   do you?  I've got news for you- if there is only one possible outcome-   
   pro-American candidate 'A' or pro-American candidate 'B', then   
   it is not really a "free" election.   It is a sham, even worse than our   
   supposed free elections, here."   
      
   I know where this conversation would lead- sour looks, cold shoulders,   
   not a trace of acknowledgement, which is why I give my own sour   
   looks when I hear the rhetoric/propaganda that the American people   
   are really nice, well-meaning people who just don't understand what   
   their governments really do.   
      
   They do not *want* to know.   They hiss and spit when you try to   
   tell them.  Doesn't matter if you try to do it tactfully, or   
   sarcastically - you could never be diplomatic enough, that   
   it would make any difference.  It does have something to do with   
   their own character- the indifference, the self-love, the irrationality.   
      
   The best that could be said is that it is not a uniquely American   
   damnation.  It is a human-race damnation.   
      
   How many times has the U.S. overthrown democratically-elected   
   governments, only to replace them with murderous, torturing   
   dictators?    You try to tell Americans that thousands of people   
   were killed and tortured under their boy, Pinochet of Chile, or their boy,   
   the Shah of Iran- you will get most jaded and blase reactions.   
   What could that possibly have to do with the price of Rice-a-Roni   
   in any of their American Wall-Marts?   
      
   The victims could climb into the tens or hundreds of thousands-   
   same reaction- just a number.   But when a tiny fraction of that   
   scale, some 3000 Americans get killed - Oh, the world will *never*   
   be the same.  Everything is changed, forever.  Now, we have   
   justification to do anything and everything we want -   
   a justification not similarly accorded to anyone else who   
   has experienced things just as bad, or worse.   
      
   The comparative preciousness of American lives is a kind of   
   decadence.   Tell the American people about 30,000 civilian   
   deaths for their invasion (correction- "liberation"), and it   
   whistles through their ears like a fried egg gliding over a   
    butter-flavored, PAM-sprayed Teflon frying pan.   
      
   Hate-filled right-wingers will justify the global murderousness   
   over the decades by claiming that it was all necessary to defeat the   
   boogey-man Communism, which was *so* much worse.   
      
   A quarter or a third of a million Americans are never to blame   
   for the CIA-engineered coups and war-mongering right-wing   
   Presidents that the people seem consistently to love the most.   
   But everyone left-of-center on the planet is to blame for   
   everything that Joe Stalin did.   
      
   The truth is, those overthrown governments did not always   
   represent Joe Stalin.   They were guilty of things like improving   
   the education, or health-care, or the economic lot of the   
   poorest citizens.   What the American ruling elite really found   
   most threatening was an economic philosophy that redistributed   
   the pie in a way that was not so lop-sided in favor of wealthy   
   interests.   
      
   Patriotism is like religion- a descent into complete madness.   
   Rationality has nothing to do with beliefs that are taken for granted.   
      
   The word "decadence" to 99% of Americans would be mentally   
   associated a word like "homosexual", as sure as Pavlov's dog would   
   salivate at the sound of a bell.   
      
   Decadence- what is it?   Could a homosexual explain to America   
   what *real* decadence is?   
      
   Airline stocks being short-sold from within the World Trade   
   Center Towers, while an FBI critic is being conveniently   
   reassigned to the building, to his imminent death.   
   Planes hitting and people jumping to fiery death while a businessman   
    in the WTC is listening to the Howard Stern show's "Angry Midget"   
   and the President is reading "My Pet Goat", which is  just too interesting   
    to put down.   
      
      
   A pretty Barbie Doll Barbarian, right-wing pundit who announces   
   that we should poison a liberal Supreme Court Justice (ha ha ha)   
   and invade other countries, kill their leaders, and convert them   
   to Christianity (ha-ha-ha).   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)