Hi readers. Thanks for the visit.
I dunno. It seems to me we’ve been had fairly badly, and we cooperated every step of the way, loving getting our buttons pushed. It probably began during the Vietnam War. Maybe further back than that. But when US National Guardsmen opened fire on protesting students [who might have been threatening them with injury, but certainly not their lives] at Kent State University it seems a turning point, to me.
LBJ and Nixon both loved their military adventure in Vietnam and both spent their terms in office doing everything in their power to polarize opinions about it, to stifle dissent by encouraging and inciting supporters for the war. Kent State was the first major manifestation of the one side enforcing their views with gunfire directed at the other.
A few years later during the latter years of the Carter Administration it’s been clearly established that the Reagan Campaign lackeys bargained with Iran to keep the Embassy hostage crisis going until after the election. Kept the daily news full of it. And bargained with the promise of weaponry that eventually became the Iran/Contra debacle.
Then came the War on Drugs because Reagan [whom I’d voted for] decided there was a drug crisis in the US, started the ball rolling for billions to be spent on new layers of law enforcement, prisons to fill up, a welfare program for lawyers, judges, cops, and private prisons invented to hold the perpetrators of victimless crimes. Buzzillions of bucks spent to prevent traffic in drugs still available even in prisons, on any street corner in a major city.
Ah. Then a new crisis. Militia! So scary Bill Clinton’s attorney general was sending federal troops to burn down and roast a hundred-or-so religious fanatics in Waco, sneaking up on Danny Weaver’s family at Ruby Ridge killing his teenage son, his wife and her baby. And various other such. Because the fear tactic for polarizing the population was that those silly-assed militia might take over this country, might overthrow the entire giant military establishment.
Then came 9/11 and it was Muslims we needed to hate, ‘terrorists’ we needed to spend billions to keep from potentially thousands of dollars worth of damage. While still keeping up the long-failed War on Drugs. More layers of law enforcement. Homeland Security. Fear and moneymoneymoneymoney. A new war in Iraq. Afghanistan. Moneymoneymoneymoney.
So now we’re down to pretending two identical political parties are at war with one another, got both sides believing the world’s going to end if the other wins the next election.
What fools we mortals be!
Old Jules
So Far From Heaven 