Loving America... Under Bush, it's like a deathwatch.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

I just heard a recording of Ray Charles singing "America" on CNN and it reminded me of days when the song brought feelings of pride and comfort, feelings of excitement as I looked toward the future. Excitement as to what my children and grandchildren might see as the years unfolded.

I was a child when man first walked on the moon. John and Jackie lived in the Whitehouse and the future held more light than dark. We were twenty years past the second "war to end all wars" and the GI bill had helped the vets from both WWII & Korea set up house and attend colleges, MLK Jr. and Rosa Parks were bringing hopes of a more equal society... There was hope. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't all good, but it seemed that the good guys were ahead of the bad guys.

And then the skies darkened.

Martin, John and Bobbie were ripped from America.

The Viet Nam war escalated and the body counts skyrocketed.

Lyndon played with his dog and showed off his scars in a precursor of the buffoonery Texan Presidents are capable of. Let's not even talk about Nixon, I don't think the bandwidth could handle it.

The Military Industrial Complex that Ike warned Kennedy about was really beginning to flex its muscles and wealth was being realised by a few as "think tanks" like the Rand Corporation began jobs as feeders of the powerful (but even there, it turned out, was hope in the form of Daniel Ellsburg).

In a nutshell, America began feeding off of the middle class it created after WWII.

And it continued. The secret wars in SA, then the exercise in Granada, Iran-Contra, Panama, Gulf War I and now in a grand culmination of the efforts of a small cabal, America invaded a sovereign country that posed no threat other than economic.

Now, the civil rights once held sacred are being whittled away, our standing as a good world citizen is gone, health care is nothing but a dream for over 30% of Americans and the divide between Rich and Poor grows at an alarming rate.

My love, America, is being strangled, beaten and robbed by a few who are only doing it because they can. For greed and power and when she's dead, they'll leave the husk and go somewhere with green pastures. And, in time, they will spoil that land as well and then move on. We can only hope and pray that they are stopped.

I stand at the deathbed of America and I weep. I loved her and will always love what she was.

Peace and light a candle for her.

[flordehinojos]

1. i know and understand your grief ...it is shared by many of us.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

5. Listening to Ray Charles kind of brought it home...

Sad and haunting as if he knew where we were headed before we went there. More like a dirge than anything else.

[AuntiBush]

7. Haunting and Sad.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

12. Link to song...

http://www.knology.net/~rareandfirsts/America_The_Beautiful_Ray_Charles.mp3

Love the segue from the patriotic to the blues...



On edit....

Yes, goddamn it. Liberals are patriotic. Get over it, freeps. We just see more than you can. (not said to anyone here, just you freep lurkers)

[AuntiBush]

13. Those Songs Take Us Back...

those of us that lived that era, well, the songs truly were inspiring.

Tom, this DUer knows exactly how you're feeling right now. Ex-actly, sadly, sadly so.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

14. Thanks, Aunty...

Like our predecessors, our salad days were just that... We look back and see what we choose to remember (mostly, I remember the missile crisis as well. I was in Panama Beach, FL on vacation when it happened).

However, an objective view of history and current events has to lead on to the conclusion that the premise of America is being seriously damaged, hopefully not irreparably, by the cabal that has usurped it of late.







On edit: Thanks for helping me keep this kicked and recommended. I feel that it's important that we keep the conversation up for the new year.

[LaurenG]

2. What a wonderful piece

Thank you for sharing your gift in this dark night of the soul of our country.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

17. Thanks, OhioBlues...

Al we can do is hope that they aren't as dark as we think.

We are in dark times and the enemy is now us. It's going to take a concerted effort to wrest the reigns of power away from the cabal that holds them now.

Peace.

[madokie]

3. Reading this took me back to my youth, the missle crisis etc.

When clinton came along I thought, honestly thought it was all behind us now. Little did I know that little georgie and pals were planning a rain on our parade. I was so scared during the cuban encounter. I am scared shitless now. Our generation are going to have to do again what we have already done. Stop a War and kick a sleeze bag out of the Whitehouse. We must do it.

[MuseRider]

4. "Stop and war and kick a sleeze bag out of the Whitehouse"

As you said, we did it before and we must do it again.

The missle crisis was scary but I was in grade school and my parents never watched the news or followed politics so I was pretty unsure about it all.

THIS terrifies me. This sleeze bag is going to be harder. We have actually come a pretty long way when you look at how much we had to learn after 8 years of not paying as much attention. We really have come far and now, hopefully we get the pay off.

[madokie]

8. We can't wait for our children, we must lead the way

Our generation was special and we will always be seen as special, we were the generation that picked up the ball and ran with it too. If you think about it our parents were setting us up for this even though most didn't even realize it. :cry:

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

22. I wish I didn't remember that one...

I was frightened by it.

But the peaceful resolutions helped to set my (upuntilnow) paradigm that I believe can still work todauy.

I can still visualize Kruzchef beating the heal of his shoe on the desk.

[madokie]

23. like it was yesterday

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

26. That was fucking fear. This "terrorist" shit is for pussies.

(please don't alert me for the descriptor)

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

27. A lot of us felt that way...

But when the rumours and accusations started flying and they spent the tens of millions on investigating a blow job, you could smell the cordite in the air.

[AuntiBush]

6. Feeling You're Pain...

A repairman was talking about this very thing, today.

We literally comforted one another. In his mid-20's, his astute knowledge of everything my age-group did left him feeling bad that his generation wasn't living-up to all we had assumed to have accomplished.

His literally words were, "And after everything your generation did for our country. Now, you're going to have to do it again - but this time you won't be alone!" He asked me "When is the next March?" He and everyone he knows will be there, quoting this young, and very fed-up American. He's worried about his little girl's future, and teachers her every night about her rights and how American use to be.

Feeling you're pain. This will be a very solemn New Year's eve... but as the ole' adage goes, "Here we go again..."

[Batgirl]

9. you can see this feeling in the faces of strangers

I've noticed when out grocery shopping, how people seem to be more closed off from each other, not letting their eyes meet, not smiling. Standing in the long lines on the weekends, it's pretty silent except for the ambient background noise and the sounds of items being scanned into the register. People don't speak very much. They even seem to have less energy for yelling at their kids.

I've been saying for months that we are suffering from a mass depression. From being worried about so many things, our jobs, keeping warm this winter, gassing up our cars, keeping those battered vehicles running for yet another year because it's too scary to take out a new car loan. Wondering about those bright children whom we escorted to so many first-days-of-school, how we are ever going to be able to help them pursue a college education with money getting so tight. Even people who haven't discovered how to stay informed about the real news, manage to glean enough to know we're in darker times than we've ever seen. The MSM isn't completely effective at concealing this fact no matter now many times they revisit the Scott Peterson or Natalee Holloway cases.

I think overall people are very sad, and I think if they could articulate why it would sound a lot like what you said.

[handsignals4theblind]

10. Hyperbole and FEAR- your all suckers

When the media and your goverment constantly remind you of terrorism, but in reality you are more likely to die in a traffic accident or a natural disaster than WHY be a victim to the Culture of FEAR meant to get a REaction from you so you will ask them to provide a Solution!

Statistically terrorism peaked in 1988----and please tell me who has the higher body count the CIA or AL Queda?illegal codesmilie_remote(':scared:')

[Batgirl]

11. I don't think most of us spend much time being afraid of terrorism

Excepting the kind that emanates from the WH.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

20. Thanks. I had a hard time trying to ignore that one.

Like so many, they can't think beyond the moment...

MTV syndrome or ADD, I don't know.

[tavalon]

19. You might want to tell the Freepers

We're the ones who get what's going on.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

15. My love of country was killed at My-Lai and Kent State.

Followed by similar events around the world spurred by "patriotism", racism, religious and ethnic bigotry. America's decline is well underway. We are stewing in the poisen of our own rapacious and thoughtless greed. We have a government that is owned and run by representatives of our homegrown ruling class. The "democracy" that we love to advertise is a sham.

And, the fault is that of the citizenry that are too busy accumulating junk and worshipping celebrities to pay attention or give a damn. The Roman bosses bought off their citizenry with bread and circuses provided by their conquests and client states. We've been doing the same for decades. Now, the client states we've bought or conquered have grown weary of paying our bills.

To paraphrase someone else, "We've become a people who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

16. Wow.... well said.

I remember taking part in a "Calley Rally" way back then. One of the most vivid pictures kept in my mind was a truckload of "good god fearing americans" coming by shouting obscenities and shooting "birds" under a huge American flag then trying to beat the shit out of us.

I spent more than one night in jail because of my want for peace and a want to end needless death.

And I'd be proud to do it again.

[tavalon]

18. Yeah, there are times when I wish I weren't a patriot

Times when I think it might have been better to not know.

[cap]

21. wole solyinka and the climate of fear...

Here are some great BBC lectures given by the Nigerian playwright and Nobel Prize winner.

In his first lecture Wole Soyinka considers from his viewpoint as a poet and drawing on his personal experience as a political activist the changes since the Cold War in the nature of fear and its impact on individuals and society. Fear can be bearable, even a force for good, for example bringing a community together to fight a common threat from the natural world like a forest fire, "a kind of fear one can live with, shrug off, one that may actually be absorbed as a therapeutic incidence".

Other kinds of fear, though, are "downright degrading". Crucially, they involve a loss of human dignity and freedom to act. First we had the fear of nuclear war between the superpowers, now "the fear is one of furtive, invisible power, the power of the quasi state, one that is not open to any negotiating structure."

"It is the unstructured, the totally unpredictable, those that have repudiated the norm, refuse to to be bound by the code of formalised states that instil the greatest fear."

Wole Soyinka does not date this new climate of fear from the events of September 11. He detects its origin in an event over a decade earlier which the world and in particular the continent of Africa chose to ignore - the downing of a passenger plane over the Republic of Niger some months before the similar disaster at Lockerbie.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2004/lectures.shtml

[Clara T]

24. You are an excellent poster TYJoad

Rec'd

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

25. Thanks, Clara... I try to write

at least one thing worth reading a day. If I can bat 50% on that I am mire than pleased.


Love your graphic!