THE DANCE OF THE TOREADORS

Bush’s religious tolerance for the drug of violence was strengthened last night in his speech when he authorized our military’s use of all necessary violence to end the violence in Iraq. Bush’s current use of violence is the result of the violence of war (and occupation) against the violent dictator who the violence of Republican presidents propped up and supported and armed for violence all these years until our violence tired of the violence of the violent man whose violence we aided and abetted for violent decades... ad infinitum.

Roses are red,
Violence are blue.
Many are dead.
How about you?

"Old soldiers never die, just young ones." —graffito


HOW LONG WILL OUR TROOPS BE AT THE DANCE?

Decades... if not centuries... if not millennia....


CHECK YOUR NEW'S SOURCE AT THE DOOR

Now would be a good time to check out the validity of your new's sources. If they prepared you for everything that has happened inside Iraq, then they can be trusted. If they didn’t, I’d find another new's source. Yours can’t be very good at their job. Ask yourself:

Have you had any surprises about anything that has gone on in Iraq? Did you know that the director of Fox’s new’s department is an old hand in Republican party propaganda? Did you believe that we’d find weapons of mass destruction? Did you believe we’d find close ties to religious terrorists like Osama? (Never mind now. I mean before the war created a place for terrorists to get a foothold in Iraq.) Did you believe the plutonium rumors? Did you not know that Moslem religious extremists like al-Sadr would eventually rise up to oppose the religious extremism of fundamentalist Christian George Bush’s occupation of their Moslem country? Did you think Moslems in Iraq would not notice the way American soldiers kneel down on one knee to pray over fallen comrades and the crosses around their necks as compared to the way Moslems get down on a prayer rug and bow toward Mecca several times a day? Did you not know that they’d feel some sort of religious undertones to their occupation and also slop that feeling over onto democracy itself? Were you surprised to find out that all Cheney/George’s Texas oil buddies at Haliburton are getting rich off this war? Were you surprised to find out that most of Saddam’s weapons came by way of past Republican administrations? If you had any surprises about these or other issues, then you need to ask your new's sources why they weren’t doing their job of informing you.

My new's sources prepared me for most everything that’s happening by giving me balanced, well researched, wide ranging views of what was happening all through the lead-in to Bush’s war so that I could make up my own mind. My sources didn’t do a one sided, rah rah sort of journalism which is good for ratings but poor for informing citizens about things they need to know. My sources did their job of giving me the unbiased news (their job when its done right) so that I could make an unbiased decision about the issues and wasn’t blind sided by the facts when they came down.

Can you say the same for your new's source? Were your sources a sort of private propaganda machine for the religious right and for Bush’s actions? Did they operate like a government Pravda under the Russian government? Did they manipulate your patriotism in order to make you a repeat listener or reader or did they challenge you and make you uncomfortable so you’d have to think rather than react? Only you can answer the questions.

The new's sources which prepared me to be an informed citizen were Newsweek, public radio’s “All Things Considered” and many other of Public Broadcasting’s news shows on TV and radio. They even included the “news pages” of my local paper the Spokesman Review—not their editorial pages, but their new's pages.

Of course, I’m also an old fart who reads a lot of history and biography and who reads newspapers of any type, and I’ve seen enough American history in my life to have a wider view than someone younger who doesn’t read much and who is sort of history deficient. Now don’t blame me for pointing up your failings. If you fell for poor journalism, that’s your responsibility. You know if you’re well informed or not and how much effort you put into your life to improve the quality of that muscle your brain and your ability to think clearly and logically. Don’t call me an elitist if the fault lies within you, Horatio. If you’re an elitist dummy, take responsibility and become more literate. It’s not high school anymore. You can’t continue to beat up people who still get better grades than you! That's not good for you or your country. Time to grow up and smarten up too.