Defensive Wounds

 

“I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.”
   - J.B. Books, The Shootist, 1976

 

You ever date somebody who takes out every bad relationship they ever had on you?

Somebody, somewhere, done them wrong.

So they’ve decided to get even by making you pay?

You entered into a relationship with what you thought was a whole person, and then without warning, whammo, you get run over by the baggage train? Toot Toot POW! and you’re laying on the pavement dazed and bleeding and wondering, “what the hell?”

That ever happen to you?

It happened to me. Once or twice. Maybe three times.

Maybe four.

Okay, maybe I’m a slow learner.

Way, way back when, I dated this girl who, according to her, had been cheated on repeatedly, verbally abused, mentally abused, physically abused, disrespected, talked down to, unloving distant mom, absent dad, didn’t get a pony, yadda yadda and so on and so forth. 

According to her, all of her previous relationships were with cheating, lying scumbags.

And she was bound and determined to make me pay for each and every one of those jerks.

Needless to say, it didn’t last long, that relationship.

But it lasted way longer than it should have.

And that was my fault.

After repeatedly apologizing for all men everywhere and after pointing out, repeatedly and with greater and greater degrees of stridency, that I was not any of those guys, that I hadn’t treated her badly in any way whatsoever, I finally realized that it didn’t matter. It just didn’t matter what I said or did. It didn’t matter how many times I apologized for my gender, for all of us men, everywhere. There was no defense. Everything was an admission of guilt, because, well, I was a man and therefore guilty by association. There was no way I’d ever be anything but a punching bag for this woman. She was an emotional vampire, a voracious and insatiable taker, so committed to being miserable that she couldn’t be anything else. Misery had become a reflex with her. No amount of apologizing, no amount of patience, no amount of logic, no amount of nurture would ever be enough. She was angry and damaged and dripping pus from festering self-inflected mental wounds and she was determined to get revenge and it just didn’t matter who the target was so long as they were equipped with a penis.

She collected bad relationships like trophies in the Men Are Scum Derby and proudly displayed them to anybody who would validate her damaged worldview.

Defensive wounds. That’s what forensic pathologists call it when they find cuts and contusions on a stabbing victim’s forearms.  Defensive wounds, where they tried to ward off the blows while being hacked to death.  The emotional equivalent of that is when you find that your side of the relationship consists almost entirely of screaming, “Goddamnit! I’m not that guy! I didn’t do this to you, stop taking it out on me! I’m not that guy!” over and over.

At that point, you’ve got two options, bleed to death or walk away.

Now look, don’t get me wrong here. Some men are cheating lying scumbags and they deserve every bit of scorn and contempt heaped upon them. But I’m not that guy. Not now. Not ever.

And so I bluntly explained to her in clear and unambiguous terms that she was a fucking psycho.

I looked her in the eye and told her that it was not me, it was all her. All of it. Every damned bit of it. And that the one single constant throughout every one of her shitty terrible relationships was, wait for it, her. Her. Her. And Her. Goodbye and you’re welcome to slam the door on your way out.

Later I heard through the grapevine that I’d been added to the long, long, long list of guys who’d done her wrong – which makes me wonder about the other men on that list, and just how egregious were their offenses really?

I didn’t lose any sleep over it.

In fact, that incident changed my life.  Up to then I’d had my own string of bad relationships.  You name it, I dated it. A drunk, faithless cheaters (several), a pathological liar (no really, like clinically diagnosed and everything. And yeah, that was an adventure into crazyland), a raving hypochondriac (no, really, like clinically diagnosed by actual doctors), a nymphomaniac (not nearly as fun as it sounds, after the first week), a woman who stole my entire bank account on the way out the door, and I could go on but you get the idea.  But I stayed on, every time, until they tired of me and left.  Until that one day, that one day when the psycho women had torn me open yet again, when I’d finally had enough. When I’d finally been pushed as far as I would go and would go no further. When the light-bulb finally came on for me.

That, right there, is when I finally realized that the one constant in all of those lousy relationships was, wait for it, yep, me. 

And that, right there, is where I drew the line.

And, My God, talk about liberating. That’s what it is to achieve emotional maturity, liberating.

That was the moment I decided that I wouldn’t be held accountable for every jerk on the planet, that I was done with cleaning up their messes. That was the moment I stopped being an emotional punching bag for other people. That was the moment I stopped allowing myself to be held hostage to miserable damaged people bent on revenge.

And that changed everything. 

I finally, finally, understood what a healthy adult relationship was supposed to look like.

Now, I admit that I’ve only had one relationship since that moment … but so far it’s lasted more than 22 years.

 

You’ve heard me say this before, likely you’ll hear me say it again and again: You cannot, can not, reason with unreasonable people.

 

You cannot reason with people who are bound and determined to convict you of crimes somebody else committed.

You cannot reason with a lynch mob.

Saturday was my birthday.

It got me thinking about certain things, about my past, about all the people who encouraged me, but also about all of those sons of bitches who told me over and over who and what I could be, who attempted to force me into a box, who kept trying to slap a label on me and tell me who I was.

As always when I get to thinking about things, I write about it.

It’s nothing special, Saturday’s post, just your basic Hi, I’m 52 and I’m alright with that. No great insight, no pithy middle-aged wisdom, just: you get out of life what you put into it. If you let people label you, you’ll be their slave forever.

Somewhere in the middle of the post I returned to a common theme, that is: There is only one truly inalienable right and that is the right to define yourself.

Nobody can take the right to define yourself away from you, only you can decide to give it up. So don’t. And I believe that. I’m proof of it. And so are many, many others.

You can be beat on and beat down. They can take away your name. They can take away everything you own and everything you love. They can push your face into the toilet and rip out your guts day after day. They can take away your life, your liberty, and any chance at happiness, oh yes they can and there’s often not a damned thing you can do about it.  They can put you in chains. They can force their throbbing politics and their raging religion and their rampant jingoism down your throat. But inside, down where it counts, they can’t tell you who you are – unless you let them.

So don’t.

There is only one truly inalienable right that can’t be taken away by gods nor governments nor men, and that is the right to define yourself.

Gods nor government nor men.

I like that line.

As a writer, I like that line. I’m proud of it. It rings like a bell.

As a guy who spent his whole damned life ignoring those who kept trying to tell me who I am, I like that line.

Now, I often post lines from my essays, ones that I like and that I think stand well on their own, as pull-quotes on Twitter.

And that’s what I did this time, I posted:

There is only one truly inalienable right that can’t be taken away by gods or governments or men, and that is the right to define yourself.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that somebody, somewhere, will always find a way to be offended over something I said.  No matter what. I post a humorous story on Facebook, told from a male perspective (because, and try to keep up here, I’m male and that’s pretty much how I naturally see the goddamned world), and I am guaranteed to get comments about sexism because I didn’t keep it gender neutral.  I’m tired of having to unfriend people who are offended that I happen to be unapologetically endowed with a Y chromosome – and in fact, seem to think that I should have to apologize for my gender on a daily basis. I’m tired of having to unfriend these people, but I’ll keep right on doing so until they get the goddamned message that they don’t get to label me. 

Hell, it doesn’t matter what I post, it could be a picture of a fluffy kitten chasing after a butterfly among the petunias, and somebody, somewhere, will be offended.

And sure enough, somebody was.

@Stonekettle Didn't need the user icon to know you're white and male…

White and male.

Ah, yes. Of course. White and male.

Didn’t need to even look at my picture.

Because, obviously, no black woman, no Asian, no Latina, no Native American, would ever suggest that she has a right to define herself, see? Nope, just a white guy. Don’t even need to look at the picture.

We’ve never met. I don’t know this person, other than by her reputation. She for damned sure doesn’t know me. But yeah, why don’t you just lead with my race and sex? Sure, Lady, that’s not stereotyping what with your contemptuous little assumption of genderfail, oh no, not at all.

Only a white male would say something so racist and sexist as “You have the right to define yourself.”

Yes, obviously, I must be white and male. A member of the oppressor class. That’s me. Because, hey, you know what’s good for bigotry? Stereotyping!  So, on behalf of white men everywhere, allow me to apologize for every white male who ever did you wrong by being white and male.  And as a white male I hereby promise to only post pictures of fluffy kitties and selfies of me lighting myself on fire. You’re welcome.

What?

What’s that?  She didn’t really accuse me of being a misogynistic racist?

Wrong, that’s precisely what she accused me of. Didn’t need to see your picture to know you’re white and male. This woman happens to be a professional wordsmith, she knows exactly what she’s saying, it didn’t happen by accident. Oh, and just because she went with stereotyping and didn’t bother to actually read my comment in context doesn’t mean I engage in the same bad habit, I read her comments all the way back to the Super Bowl. She didn’t have a problem with the blatant in your face sexism, racism, and homophobia that flooded Twitter then. But me saying you have the right to define yourself? Yeah, that deserved a snide swipe from her majesty. 

Imagine if I’d posted a public response on Twitter that consisted of something, oh, say, like this:

Gee, I didn’t need to see your picture to know you’re an angry feminist with a chip on your shoulder.

That would be sexist, right? Just another nasty comment from misogynistic asshole.  But it’s okay for a woman to casually dismiss me as a sexist and a racist based solely on my race and gender. You can see the hypocrisy, the logical fallacy, right? I don’t have to spell it out for you.

This nonsense pisses me off.

No, wait, pissed off isn’t right, rather it immediately fills me with seething rage.

I don’t appreciate being called a racist and a sexist, particularly in public without a chance to defend myself.  And I said so in a particularly snarky comment, one that might not make much sense to the average reader but this particular woman should have no trouble understanding.

At which point a couple of folks pointed out in so many words that being white and male I have no right to be defensive about being labeled a sexist and a racist in a public forum.

Things went rapidly downhill after that and I ended up going to bed angry and pissed off and woke up angry and pissed off and today I’m still angry and pissed off about it. You goddamned right I’m pissed off about it.  [Edit] And I got more pissed off today when I started getting messages from people who got treated the same way by this very woman, and in fact by the time they’d gotten to this part of my post they’d already begun to suspect exactly who I was talking about.  Then I did some checking around, sure enough, this is her MO. Drive by, toss out a bigotry accusation. Drive on and never look back. [end edit]

So, yeah, I’m still angry about this.

And why shouldn’t I be?  Because there it is, right now, sitting there in public two days later like a turd in the punch bowl.

Two thousand people follow this woman on Twitter, and every one of them is now left with the impression that I’m just another hairy Neanderthal, grunting and scratching my ass and bonking women over the head with my club so’s I can drag them back to my cave.  Because the person who posted that comment is a famous science fiction editor for a famous science fiction publishing house who runs a famous science fiction blog, people noticed, and they retweeted her comment. But, of course, I shouldn’t be defensive about that either.

A couple of nice people offered to, what’s the word? Femsplain it to me – hopefully using simple one-syllable words and grunts so my dull ball-scratching hairy man-brain might understand.  Because, obviously, I don’t have access to, oh, say, a strong willed, confident, self-defined, professional woman who is employed at the executive level that I might, you know, have been married to for the last two decades. And who drops on me like a bag of hammers when I say something stupidly sexist.

I ended up on Twitter futilely shouting the equivalent of, “I’m not that guy! I’m not that guy!”

But, of course, you are that guy. Once somebody, especially somebody in a position of authority, accuses you of bigotry in public, even though they didn’t actually bother to read what you actually wrote in the context of where you wrote it, there’s nothing you can say to defend yourself.

And I’ve been here before. Right here.

Years ago, I used to hang out on a famous science fiction writer’s blog. He always seemed like a decent and reasonable fellow and he ran his blog much the same way I run this one – a bit more free wheeling in the comments section, but we’ll come back to that in a minute. This guy was, and still is, a force in the science fiction community, which if you’re not familiar with it, is a form of fanaticism you’d have to see to believe – usually it’s a benign nerdy fanaticism, but not always. Now, I really, really, enjoyed that place. I admired that writer, I thought he had character and integrity.  And the science fiction community, well, they’re mostly a bunch of friendly harmless geeks who spent a lot of their early lives getting beat up for being bad at sports and for liking “that Buck Rogers stuff,” so they make this big deal of being open and diverse and accepting of anybody – only that’s a lie, they’re as vile and vicious as any other mob, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

One day, this writer, he posted a short bit about a group of science fiction nerds, pudgy little dweebs in ill-fitting Starfleet uniforms tucked away in some basement somewhere cranking out a fan-magazine wherein they’d expressed their opinion that smelly girls were “destroying” the science fiction genre (I’m not sure if this particular bunch were Chuck Lorre’s actual inspiration for The Big Bang Theory or not, you’d have to ask him).  This outfit actually suggested that girls be banned from science fiction conventions like Comic-Con – where it’s common practice for attractive women to dress up in comic book costumes (also, turns out there are a lot of female types who just like comic books and scifi, go figure, right?). 

Now, naturally this famous science fiction writer, being all morally superior and a force for Truth, Justice, and the American way, he was appalled and set to snarking about the situation. The gist of his post was, hey, look at how stupid these girl-hating little Klingon-heads are, let’s us point and laugh at them until they crawl away and die of shame hah hah ah hah hah ha. Which, personally, I thought was an entirely appropriate idea.

So, in the comments of this place where I felt welcome and comfortable, I made a joke.  Because, you know, the host said, hey, let’s make jokes about this nonsense. Because one of the ways to fight ignorance and intolerance is with, you know, humor.

Look, the people on that forum were supposed to be smart people. Smart people well versed in popular culture – it’s sort of their thing. These are people who carry on entire conversations in cartoon quotes.  Who speak fluent Klingon. Who pride themselves on being a cut above the knuckle-draggers, socially and intellectually. 

So, I made a joke. 

I couched it in the voice of Foghorn Leghorn, you know, the pompous loud-mouthed self-involved misogynist Rooster from the Looney Tunes cartoons:

Wait, if they ban girls from Science Fiction conventions, who, I say who, will wear the Leia Bikini? 

Now honestly, how can you not get the joke? It’s not exactly subtle. How could you possibly be offended? Especially in the context of a forum specifically about making fun of clueless jerks? It’s cartoon sexism, obvious cartoon sexism. It’s cartoon bigotry for the same reason Foghorn Leghorn is a  clueless cartoon bigot, because that kind of idiotic bigotry is so damned stupid that even a fucking child can see it. 

But not getting the joke is a habit with certain people who are reflexively offended by anything and everything and it wasn’t long before I was accused of sexism, i.e. how dare I suggest that women were only good for eye-candy at science fiction conventions?

No, no, ha ha, you’re not getting the sarcasm, I replied, see Foghorn is …

At which point other folks, mostly women, but some men whom I can only assume were trying to get laid, began to shrilly chime in that I, as a man, was not allowed to make jokes about sexism – on a forum, started by a man, that joked about sexism in science fiction. Because I was a man and thereby guilty of “male privilege.” And I was apparently attempting to “man ‘splain” my joke to a woman, which is condescending see, because, well, I’m a man.

So, to recap, apparently it’s okay to limit another’s participation based on gender in a conversation about gender, so long as that gender is male.  Which is, of course, not at all like how women were excluded from congressional conversations on reproductive rights by a roundtable of male religious leaders. It’s totally different so long as you toss in an angry contemptuous reference to my supposed privilege. See, because attacking exclusion with more exclusion isn’t a logical fallacy at all (if you’re missing the sarcasm in that last bit, I say, I say try rereading it in Foghorn Leghorn’s voice).

I watched this happen with an increasing degree of amazement and horrified frustration.

And then – and then, because the situation wasn’t already ridiculous enough – somebody decided that I must be homophobic.

Yes, that’s correct.

Homophobic.

Because, you see, apparently some men, supposedly of the gay persuasion, wear Leia Bikinis to Science Fiction conventions.

Oh, you didn’t know that?

Yeah, me neither.

You don’t see how that makes a difference anyway?

Yeah, me neither.

I protested that I hadn’t been to a convention in years and I wasn’t aware that men, supposedly gay, were wearing Star Wars bikinis at Science Fiction conventions, and that’s when I was told my ignorance was, of course, Straight White Male Privilege.

Naturally because I was white, straight, and male I was ipso facto, a racist, a sexist, and homophobic. You only had to look at my picture to see evidence of that. It’s obvious (Sort of how if you look at a picture of Trayvon Martin, you just know he’s a thug, right? Because, well, of course, you can judge a book by its cover, so long as you shout “privilege!” first). Apparently White Male Privilege is that thing where as a white male if you are unaware of something that you couldn’t possibly have any knowledge of and that has absolutely nothing to do with race or sex or any of the other bullshit labels we like to slap on each other, you’re still held to account for it anyway. Sort of like dating a crazy person. If they could have worked in anti-Semitic they could have yelled Gin! and declared victory.

Look, just to be absolutely clear here, I am not saying that privilege and inequality doesn’t exist, hell, far from it. I’m not even attempting to suggest that I, as a straight white American male, don’t benefit from that privilege, because I most certainly do. And I’ve written about it endlessly, about how it’s bullshit, about how we won’t any of us be free until we are all equal and that, right there, that was the entire point of Saturday’s post and my statement on Twitter:

There is only one truly inalienable right that can’t be taken away by gods nor governments nor men, and that is the right to define yourself.

People like Rosa Parks, she got tired of being defined by other people, so instead she chose to define herself on her own terms – no matter that it was goddamned hard. And that, that one act, changed everything. That, right there, is how the world changes.

The blog host, that famous science fiction writer, who I expected to shut this nonsense down and who spares no chance to brag about how he went to some elite fancy debating school and how he knows a logical fallacy when he sees one, instead pulled a John Boehner Birther Denial Non-Denial on me: Well, Jim, I don’t really know you and I don’t have any reason to believe you’re a sexist pig and a gay-hater, but…” and that’s all it took for his fanatical minions to pile on. Eventually the comments reached more than four hundred and it was decided that I was a sexist, a racist, a homophobe, and just an all around asshole. I gave up, there was no defense possible. Every single thing I said was proof of my bigotry. Defensive wounds. It was like being tried by the religious fanatics of the Inquisition, no matter what you say, you’re going to get burnt at the stake. I quit the forum then and there, but that wasn’t enough for them, they followed me home and continued to rain bile and vitriol on me for weeks afterward. I haven’t been back since and the only time I wouldn’t piss on this famous science fiction writer is if he was fully engulfed in flames. If we’re ever in the same room together I’m very, very likely to loosen a couple of his teeth for him.

The editor in question, the one that snidely drove past my Twitter feed on Saturday and lobbed in the bigotry bomb from her little baggage train? She’s cut right out the same self-righteous cloth. She and the famous writer are pals. These people soured me on the entire science fiction community. They are damaged people who toss about casual accusations of racism and sexism and homophobia. They have no idea whatsoever of the carnage they leave in their respective wakes, the people they casually damage and toss aside in order that they can puff up their chests and feel smugly superior, so that they can take revenge on the rest of us because somebody somewhere who happens to look like me treated them poorly.

But I learned something from them, I did.

That incident is why I won’t, will not under any circumstances, allow that kind of nonsense to go on here.  I will not allow any commenter, even the trolls, to be set upon. I’ll deal with them myself if necessary, because it’s my responsibility as your host, but I won’t allow lynch mobs. Period. This is non-negotiable. This, this incident, is the primary reason I enforce my commenting rules with an iron fist, because I’ve been on the receiving end of the torches and pitchforks and I know exactly what it feels like when the host lacks the moral courage to live up to his or her responsibilities. 

You have my word that while I might boot you off the forum for acting like a jerk, I won’t allow you to be set upon by the blood maddened mob.

And I will not, under any circumstances allow somebody else to define who and what I am.

They can choose to wallow in their own victimhood if they’re so inclined, but I refuse to accept the role of their abuser.

I am not that guy. 

I will not be shamed into apologizing for who I am. I won’t be made to feel defensive because I was born white and straight and male and in America. I won’t be lectured on it. I won’t be bullied or badgered. I won’t be made to hate myself so you can feel better about yourself. I know that I unfairly benefit from this society, I don’t need you to lecture me on it. I’ve written about equality and diversity endlessly. More I’ve busted my ass out in the real world to make it a better place. I don’t claim to be perfect, far from it in point of fact, or without bias or up on some goddamned pedestal, but I’m doing the best I can and you’re not going to get any more than that.

My post Saturday was about labels, about defining yourself, about not allowing others to define who you are and I meant what I said – which is why I will not allow this woman’s comment to go by unchallenged.

There is only one truly inalienable right that can’t be taken away by gods nor governments nor men, and that is the right to define yourself.

And yes, it’s unfairly tougher for some than for others. No kidding it’s unfair, you damned right it is. That was my entire point.

It’s tough, it is that. But, if you choose not to exercise your right, well, then that’s on you.

And you’re not going to pin it on me.

I. Am. Not. That. Guy.

 

---

Note: Now, I know exactly what kind of shitstorm this essay will attract. So, comment moderation is on and will remain so. I’m not going to bother to issue the usual warning. You want your comment to post? Then act like a rational adult. You mention privilege in any fashion, tread lightly. // Jim

Un-American Activities, The More Things Change…

McCarthyism: demagogic, reckless, hysterical, deliberate, and typically unsubstantiated public accusations and/or personal attacks on the character, loyalty, patriotism, and beliefs of an individual opponent or group. Usually for political gain in the guise of patriotism and/or “national security.” Normally based on widespread racial, political, religious, ethnic, and/or sexual prejudices. Can often lead to persecution, disenfranchisement, mass hysteria, and violent mob behavior. Particularly common during periods of conflict, political unrest, migration, and economic uncertainty.

In 1950 a minor freshman Senator gave a speech in West Virginia.

A conservative from Wisconsin, he spoke before a chapter of the Republican Women’s Club.

Despite being widely disliked by his fellow congressmen for being volatile and easily enraged, and despite having recently been voted “the worst U.S. Senator currently in office” by the Senate Press Corps, the senator was regarded as charming and gregarious by those who met him in social settings. He was an accomplished and popular speaker and was invited to talk in front of many different organizations, such as the aforementioned Wheeling, WV, Republican Women’s Club – and since he was nobody important, he was usually available.

Up until that day, February 9th, 1950, with the exception of his temper, Senator Joseph McCarthy was mostly an unremarkable little blowhard.

But his speech before a small group of conservative women on that cold West Virginia day would change the very face of America and make a paranoid insecure cowardly weasel of a man famous and powerful and, above all, feared.

His speech followed predictable lines, right up until it reached this proclamation:

The State Department is infested with communists! I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five. A list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.

Communism was the bogeyman of the mid 20th Century, you better believe those women sat up and took notice. And then, after the speech, they went home and told their husbands what an actual US Senator had said: Communists, in the State Department.

McCarthy’s exact words were not recorded, but the quote above is widely regarded by historians and those who were there as accurate. There is some dispute as to whether McCarthy really claimed his list contained two hundred names or whether he actually said there were fifty-seven.  Witnesses said two hundred and five. They were quite explicit about it. McCarty said when questioned for the record that it was fifty-seven but he used both figures in later speeches and official records. 

Two hundred communists in the State Department or fifty, it didn’t take McCarthy’s startling accusation long to attract attention.

And why shouldn’t it have?

Joe McCarthy was a hero. 

Sure he was. That’s how he got elected in the first place. That’s why people wanted him to come talk to their little clubs and parties and organizations. Joe was a real live genuine war hero.

When World War II broke out, McCarthy had given up a career as a district circuit court Judge and enlisted in the Marines as a buck private. He quickly distinguished himself and rose to the rank of Captain, serving as an intelligence officer and earned himself the Distinguished Flying Cross, a Letter of Commendation from Chester Nimitz himself, and the nickname “Tail Gunner Joe” while flying thirty-two combat missions in the Solomon Islands and over Bougainville. He’d been wounded in either an airplane crash or by anti-aircraft fire (he was too modest to say which) and so why the hell shouldn’t those nice ladies take a patriotic American war hero like Senator Joe McCarthy at his word?

If Tail Gunner Joe said there were commies in the State Department, well, Sir, there were commies in the State Department and probably the White House too.

And so McCarthy’s sensational claims went the 1950s version of viral and all of a sudden the obscure bombastic senator from Wisconsin was somebody. 

He gave the speech again, polishing and embellishing and amplifying and exaggerating the threat against the United States.

In Salt Lake City he once again cited fifty-seven as the number of communists working their subversive evil within the State Department and that time it was recorded. A week later McCarthy stood before a packed Senate Chamber and in a five hour speech presented a detailed analysis of eighty-one “loyalty risks” within the US Government. As a result of McCarthy’s warning, Congress convened the Tydings Committee, a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, to conduct further official investigations into allegations of communists in the State Department. When the committee found little substance to McCarthy’s accusations it didn’t take long for Ol’ Tail Gunner Joe to start accusing the Tydings Committee itself of communist sympathies. And just like that, McCarthy had moved from vague allegations to the naming of names, going so far as to publically accuse specific government employees, one after the other, of being actual Soviet spies, traitors, and enemies of the United States of America.

This being 1950, the Red Scare was just getting into full feverish swing but hadn’t quite achieved critical mass among the civilian population. McCarthy’s sensational accusations changed all of that and directly propelled the population into full blown panic. Sixty years on and it’s difficult for us to grasp just how close to outright insanity the United States was at that point, it is only by the slimmest of margins that we are not a police state today (I know, I know, but really, we’re not. I’ve visited police states, we’re not even close).

It didn’t take long for McCarthy and his supporters in both the Senate and the House to start seeing commies everywhere. In the Department of State and Defense. In the Army. In the White House. McCarthy actually accused President Truman and the entire Democratic Party of being in league with “The Communists.” Congress, both in the House and the Senate, disintegrated into wild accusations and sometimes fist fights. Conservatives accused liberals of being socialists and soviets and commies (boy, does this sound familiar or what?). Liberals accused McCarthy of being a closeted homosexual, the papers wouldn’t print that accusation and there’s no proof that is was anything except slander but the rumor persists to this day nonetheless. In retaliation, McCarthy publically and vocally and persistently accused Secretary of Defense, George C. Marshall (he of the Marshall Plan, one of America’s most highly respected military commanders and statesmen) of communism and high treason. In fact, McCarthy went so far as to say of Marshall that he deliberately lost China to the communists and was engaged in a “conspiracy so immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any previous venture in the history of man."

And it got worse.

Much worse.

Marshall had friends in high places. He was safe. Other citizens weren’t so lucky.

Americans, inspired by the increasingly paranoid insanity of their elected leaders and convinced by those same leaders that the end of the world could arrive via Soviet nuclear bomber at any moment (Any moment! Any Moment!), devolved into full on mass hysteria.  Soviet spies were everywhere, they could be your neighbor, your teacher, your parents, your children, your mayor, your garbage man or your city dog catcher.  The unions were full of them, so were the colleges, blue collar workers and students especially were not to be trusted. You could never be too careful. Patriotic citizens, when they weren’t busy building backyard fallout shelters, started reporting activity deemed un-American, any person out of the ordinary, any person too smart for their own good, or too educated, any non-Christian, anybody with a funny accent or dark skin, anybody different in any way. In panic and fear, laws were passed at the local, state, and federal level implementing loyalty oaths and background checks and massive new secret security organizations (Truman vetoed the McCarran Internal Security Act, declaring it a mockery of the Bill of Rights, but congress overrode him and the bill become law anyway – and McCarthy again accused Truman of communist sympathies and being un-American. Later, after the insanity had passed, almost all of the law was sheepishly struck down or quietly repealed).

Déjà vu, all over again, eh?

The fear became so pervasive and so entrenched that the Soviets were granted evil superpowers.

Americans were told that without unending vigilance the communists could literally take over their minds from the inside.

Popular movies of the time such as The Thing From Another World and (late to the party in 1957) Invasion of the Body Snatchers were thinly disguised lessons in the dangers of infiltration, subversion, invasion, mind control, and the fact that nobody, nobody, could be trusted – especially those who questioned the wisdom of pouring billions into nuclear bombs and secret weapons and the smoldering Cold War.  Even John Wayne got into the act, playing a heroic extra-constitutional investigator for the House Un-American Activities Committee rooting out commies in Hawaii as Big Jim McClain (He’s a Go-Get-‘Em Guy for the USA on a Treason Trail that leads Half-A-World Away!  No really. If you’ve never seen this propagandistic stinker, it’s a damned painful 90 minutes).  The Duke might have been True Blue, but much of Hollywood wasn’t patriotic or conservative enough to suit the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and many actors, directors, and producers were blacklisted as suspected communists. And like Jews on the streets of Germany twenty years before, half of Hollywood suddenly found themselves despised enemies in their own country – and a bitter irony that, given that many of them were Jews.

The FBI and the HUAC investigated everyone and anyone (including each other), nobody was above suspicion. The insanity became so deep and so wide that even the faintest, most tenuous, hint of communism was enough to see you detained, questioned, investigated, blacklisted, or made a pariah – for example a baseball team, the Cincinnati Reds, the oldest major league team in the country, was forced to change their name to the Redlegs or go out of business just because their name, Reds (a name adopted in 1881, long before there even were any communists) led to accusations that they were secretly baseball playing commies.

It wasn’t conservatives versus liberals or Republicans arrayed against Democrats, at least not entirely – though the battlefront was drawn along fairly predictable and familiar lines. American Catholics for example, though mostly Democrats at the time, lined up behind McCarthy en mass – including America’s most famous Catholics, the Kennedy family. Tail Gunner Joe was a frequent guest at Hyannis Port and even dated Pat and Eunice Kennedy (supposedly not at the same time, though you never really know with the Kennedys). Moderate and sane Republicans tried to distance themselves from McCarthy – especially Dwight Eisenhower.  Eisenhower needed McCarthy to win Wisconsin during the 1952 presidential election, but once in office Ike kicked McCarthy to the curb. This enraged McCarthy and he began accusing the Eisenhower Administration of communism and treason.  McCarthy had referred to the previous two decades of Democrats in the White House as “Twenty-years of treason.” When Ike wouldn’t bow to McCarthy’s agenda, McCarthy updated his catchphrase to “Twenty-one years of treason.”

Again, this tune sure sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

McCarthy eventually ended up in charge of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, which was also responsible for a little known outfit called the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (SPSI). McCarthy turned this organ into something very similar to the Gestapo in all but name.  Led by McCarthy the SPSI went after public radio including the Voice of America, writers, actors, newspapers, and libraries – resulting in actual book burnings of volumes deemed subversive or questionable.  They investigated churches, calling protestant clergymen the “largest single group supporting the communist apparatus” (ironically, evangelicals being protestants and all, you’d think they would remember this kind of crap, but we’ll come back to that in a minute, or rather back to one specific evangelical in particular). The committee went after the Army with a vengeance, convinced that the ranks were chock-a-block with comrades and Soviet infiltrators – McCarthy even cut short his honeymoon to open the investigation. McCarthy verbal flogged generals and the Secretary of the Army himself. All of this and more occurred in public hearings, much of which was broadcast on the primitive electronic media of the time and via the printed press.

It was all bullshit, of course.

Oh, there were communists alright, even spies, certainly.

And a small few of the thousands of accusations made by the HUAC and the SPSI might even have been legitimate. But overwhelmingly, McCarthy’s fear of suspected communists was about as valid as Salem’s fear of witches had been three hundred years before. The vast, vast majority of the accusations leveled by Senator McCarthy, the SPSI, and the HUAC turned out to be utterly baseless. The majority of accusations were the result of outright lies, deliberate hysteria, political agendas, and mean spirited revenge – just as they had been at Salem.

Eventually McCarthy was brought down in large part by the journalist Edward R. Murrow, one of the very few people left in the United States by that point with the guts, integrity, and determination to take on Tail Gunner Joe and expose the louse for what he was, a petty small minded hateful paranoid fraud who had gone mad with power. 

McCarthy was no hero, he was never a “Buck Private” or worked his way up through the ranks as he had repeatedly claimed. He’d been commissioned into the Marines as a 2nd Lieutenant based on his education as a lawyer. He did serve as a minor intelligence office, or more specifically as a briefing officer, for a USMC dive bomber squadron based in the South Pacific. He told his cronies that he had joined the Marines not out of patriotism but specifically because he believed that branch of the military would serve him best in his future political career – and he in fact, first ran for the Senate while still in uniform. He flew eight missions, not the thirty-two he claimed, and somewhere in there he started calling himself Tail Gunner Joe (reportedly his squadron mates referred to him as “Low Down Joe,” oddly he never mentioned that after the war). 

That Distinguished Flying Cross? He put himself in for that in 1952, that’s why he exaggerated his record to thirty two missions, eight wouldn’t have gotten him a cup of coffee let alone the DFC.

The Letter of Commendation from Chester Nimitz? McCarthy wrote that himself. 

The war wound? Like the letter, he just made that up. 

He got himself elected to Congress by claiming his opponent was a draft dodger and a war profiteer, when in fact the opponent in question, Robert La Follette, was nearly fifty when the war broke out and ineligible for service. As to profiteering, La Follette had invested in a radio station before the war which made him about $23,000 a year for about two years, hardly what you’d call “war profiteering” (McCarthy meanwhile had invested in the stock market and made $43,000 during the same period).

And it turns out that McCarthy was a chronic untreated alcoholic, though what few friends he had left continued to deny McCarthy’s addiction – right up until drinking killed him.

After hemming and hawing and fiddling around for more than two years, the Senate finally decided to condemn McCarthy for damned near destroying the country. Note that McCarthy wasn’t given a formal censure, but rather a weak and watered down “condemnation.”

He stuck around for another couple of years, but he was a ruined man. McCarthy was mostly ignored while the House and Senate and all his previous rabid supporters, including John Wayne, shamefacedly pretended like they hadn’t actually gone right along with McCarthyism – which Eisenhower started calling McCarthywasm.

And there there wasn’t much question that McCarthy was history, he died in Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 2, 1957 at the age of forty-eight from hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver.

And good goddamned riddance to Joseph McCarthy.

Though many of the abuses of the House Un-American Activities Committee were already known, the full extent of the Senate’s appalling excesses and blatant disregard for the law and Constitution only came to light in 2004, which prompted Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Carl Levin (D-MI) to issue a joint statement:

Senator McCarthy’s zeal to uncover subversion and espionage led to disturbing excesses. His browbeating tactics destroyed careers of people who were not involved in the infiltration of our government. His freewheeling style caused both the Senate and the Subcommittee to revise the rules governing future investigations, and prompted the courts to act to protect the Constitutional rights of witnesses at Congressional hearings . These hearings are a part of our national past that we can neither afford to forget nor permit to reoccur.

These hearings are a part of our national past that we can neither afford to forget nor permit to reoccur.

Yes, that is exactly correct. 

We are still feeling the effects of McCarthyism sixty years and a new century later. Much of the partisan rancor we now face can be traced directly back to Tail Gunner Joe and McCarthyism – hell, even the words are the same, commie, fascist, Nazi, un-American, traitor.

We must never allow this type of un-American persecution to reoccur. Ever again.

 

There are many ways to be an American, McCarthyism isn’t one of them.

 

Any elected official engaged in such truly un-American activities must be called out and called to account, forcefully, immediately.

If the accusations are found to be baseless, or especially if they are found to be part of a political agenda or issued for the purpose of personal gain or for inciting public hysteria and/or deliberately diverting precious resources into a witch hunt, then Congress has a duty and obligation to the people of the United States, along with the Executive, to move for immediate formal censure, if not impeachment, of any member engaged in such baseless and paranoid ravings.

Actions such as those described above are contrary to everything this country stands for. They are contrary to the Constitution and the ideals of our founders.

This type of baseless hysteria, this turning of brother against brother for nothing more than political gain, nearly destroyed us once. It must never be permitted to happen again.

It is not enough to condemn such actions on the floor of the Senate.

It is not enough to protest such witch hunts in the press.

It must be done as a formal action of the Legislature. And it must be done immediately and with alacrity.

Representative Michelle Bachmann, along with her cronies in Congress, Representatives Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Tom Rooney, and Lynn Westmoreland need to pony up detailed public proof of their insidious and paranoid allegations against their fellow Americans or face immediate and significant consequences.

In letters to the Inspectors General of the Department of State, Defense, and Homeland Security, Bachmann and her Lieutenants accused American citizens of un-American activities and demanded an investigation:

“It appears that there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood has been found to be an unindicted co-conspirator on terrorism cases and yet it appears that there are individuals who are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood who have positions, very sensitive positions, in our Department of Justice, our Department of Homeland Security, potentially even in the National Intelligence Agency.”

That statement from Bachmann is nearly indistinguishable from the words of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

“We seek answers through these letters because we will not tolerate this group and its affiliates holding positions of power in our government or influencing our nation’s leaders."

And in the wretched miserable spirit of McCarthyism, Bachmann doubled down and personally accused Huma Abedin, top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, of no less than outright treason – and, of course, by implication that would make Clinton and President Obama guilty too.

Bachmann, in cowardly predictably fashion after being condemned by both her fellow Republicans and by Democrats and pilloried in the press, claims her words are being taken out of context.  She also claims she is privy to secret information that substantiates her accusation – information she’s not at liberty to share with the rest of us, just like the accusations of Joseph McCarthy and his cronies. She doesn’t bother to explain how Abedin managed to spoof her security background check (something I have personal and intimate and extensive experience with, it is quite unlikely in this post-911 world that any association with known terrorists would go unnoticed). Note that Abedin is a naturally born American who has never displayed anything other than the highest level of integrity, patriotism, and loyalty to the United States. Bachmann apparently believes that Abedin is so dedicated to her secret radical Muslim mission to infiltrate the US government that she would marry a Jew and have a child with him to further her agenda (Abedin is married to disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner).  What’s next? Body snatching?

Of course, this hysterical nonsense is being pitched by a Birther, so I suppose secret Muslims stealing our souls and precious bodily fluids isn’t that big of stretch for this batshit crazy loon.

Bottom line, any accusation of treason, especially from a sitting member of Congress, and especially directed at a person in Abedin’s position must be immediately met with a formal demand for public proof.

Abedin and the others who stand accused, as Americans, have a right to face their accuser directly, in public and demand satisfaction.

This isn’t Salem.

This isn’t Tail Gunner Joe’s personal Subcommittee for Investigations.

This isn’t the Soviet Union and we’re emphatically not the goddamned communists.

This is the United States of America and a petty small minded hateful power mad fraud like Michele Bachmann must be held to account for her baseless and hateful and un-American actions.

Letters to my own Senators and my Representative have already gone out.

If you value your freedoms, if you value the country you live in, if you value the ideals we veterans put our lives on the line for, if you remember all those lives ruined and destroyed by the likes of Senator Joseph McCarthy, if you believe that you have the power to hold back the darkness, then stop what you’re doing right now and contact your own representatives and demand that Michele Bachmann be held to account before the American people. She needs to show proof, not vague accusation and insinuation, but proof, solid and irrefutable – or she needs to be censured and relieved of her duties on any House Committee.  And there needs to be a public polling of the House and Senate, we as Americans have the right, no the duty, to know who stands with her and who does not.

Now. Not later. Not after the election. Now.

This isn’t about Left or Right.

This isn’t about Republican or Democrat.

This isn’t about Liberal or Conservative.

This is about a malignant cancer.

A festering pustulent rot.

A deadly disease that we stamped out once, but now it’s back and it needs to be dragged into the daylight before it spreads any further.

We’ve faced this shame once before, we should never have to do it again.

McCarthy, Bachmann, Franks, Gohmert, Rooney, Westmoreland, and their cowardly cronies are a far, far greater threat to your liberty and the freedom of all Americans than any Muslim Brotherhood could ever hope to be.

Act.

Do it now.

 

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Note: Previous versions of this post listed Representative Michele Bachmann as a Senator.  I have some kind of mental block about this. I know she’s a Representative and yet I still almost always manage to type “Senator” in front of her name.  Sigh. It’s fixed. I think // Jim

An Open Letter To The Lady In the Center Lane

Dear fellow driver,

Question:

What’s it going to take?

No, seriously, how bad does it have to be?

Just how outright silly stupid dangerous do things have to get before you put down your cell phone and pay attention to the road?

I left Anchorage last evening, headed for the Valley on the Glenn Highway. 

I suppose that requires some additional description for those of you who don’t, in fact, live in South Central Alaska.  See, it was about 4 PM, the sun had set and the sky was turning pitch dark.  It was snowing. No, strike that, it was snowing like a bitch with intermittent whiteout conditions driven by strong winds along the highway. In fact, it had been snowing all day in your standard issue Alaskan blizzard. The road itself was coated in an uneven, two to three inch thick, layer of packed snow interspersed between patches of black ice – because apparently ADOT no longer feels the need to actually get off their fat asses and do the job we pay them for, i.e. clearing the damned roads and putting down some sand.   It was rush hour and despite the horrible conditions, homeward bound commuters were moving along between fifty and sixty miles per hour, which of course, caused even more blowing snow and reduced visibility even further.

Then there was you.

You were doing about thirty in the middle lane, drifting back and forth from side to side.

Cars were piled up behind you for a hundred yards. 

Angry and frustrated drivers were recklessly swerving into both the inner and outer lanes trying to avoid the backup you were causing. 

As I came up the inner lane, cautiously watching out for drivers dodging out from behind you and in front of me while fishtailing on the icy roads, I thought perhaps you were having trouble handling the conditions. I thought maybe you were one of the those idiots who doesn’t bother with winter tires, or maybe you were like the guy I saw the other day at the intersection of the Parks and Glenn Highways with three “limper tires” and one headlight. I realized that I was being uncharitable.  Maybe, I thought, you were old, or had poor eyesight and maybe you were scared of the horrible conditions and simply being cautious.  Less charitably, I thought that despite your (presumed) justifiable caution, you like most Alaskan drivers were pathologically incapable of understanding Left Lane Fast, Right Lane Slow or simply didn’t care that you were making an already dangerous situation worse. 

But, of course, it wasn’t because you were being cautious. Was it?

No, you were texting.

As I pulled alongside your 4x4 SUV, I could see you staring intently down at your steering wheel oblivious to the road, the blizzard, and the traffic piled up behind you.  You face was under-lit by the white glow of your phone.  Your thumbs were moving madly back and forth over the screen like a kid caught in a Chinese finger puzzle.

Perhaps you remember me?  I’m the guy in the green truck. The one that blew his horn at you when you began to drift into my lane. 

Or perhaps not, since you just jerked the wheel to the right and never bothered to glance up.

So, back to my question.

How dangerous does it have to get? 

Icy roads. Darkness. Blizzard. Three lanes of rush hour traffic. Even combined, that wasn’t enough to make you put down your phone and pay attention to the road.

How many lives do you have to endanger before you start paying attention?

You own life obviously isn’t worth it.

Nor was the life of the small toddler you had strapped into the child seat behind you.  And indeed there might have been two kids back there, I couldn’t see the entire back seat clearly, just the one small hand drawing patterns on the fogged window facing me.

Nor was my life worth it to you.  Nor the other twenty or so lives within your immediate vicinity.

So, one life isn’t enough. Twenty lives aren’t enough.  So, how many lives do you have to endanger before you start paying attention? Thirty? A hundred?  Is there a number that matters to you more than whoever it was that you were chatting with online?

Ice, snow, whiteout conditions. None of these things seem to be important enough to make you pay attention to the road. What would? An erupting volcano maybe? A forest fire.  The return of Bearded Angry Jesus? A herd of enraged charging elephants ridden by crazed robot polar bears armed with machine gun lasers?  What?

I noticed that your tailgate had two stickers on it. 

One said, ironically, Watch For Motorcycles.  Where? On YouTube?

The other one, even more ironically said, Abortion Is Murder.  Let me ask you something.  What do you call it when a clueless idiot like yourself kills her kids because she was driving through a fucking blizzard on a dark icy highway while staring at her goddamned phone?  Would you call that murder too? Or just negligent homicide? What if you kill yourself and your kids, is that murder/suicide?  How about if you kill me, would I be just collateral damage? How about if you killed twenty of us in a massive pileup? Serial murder, or would that be genocide?

You are a danger to everyone around you.  You don’t deserve to have a drivers license.  And if it was up to me, I’d take away your goddamned kids and charge you with reckless endangerment. If I could have gotten your license plate I would have filed charges against you for endangering my life. If I had been facing you on the side of the road I would have kicked your fucking ass. The fact that you are a woman bothers me not all, you deserve a good and thorough ass kicking – because there is apparently nothing else, short of cutting off your goddamned thumbs, that will get through to you.

You’re an asshole, a selfish, ignorant, stupid fucking asshole. 

Sincerely,

Jim

 

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This country needs to implement a Federal law making texting while driving a felony on par with Reckless Endangerment and subject to severe penalty. The states are too damned stupid to get it done. It needs to happen at the Federal level, and it needs to happen right now.  I’m talking immediate loss of license, substantial fine, and jail time for starters.  I’m getting damned sick and tired of having my life and the lives of my loved ones endangered by these jackasses.

If This Goes On

Note:  I had most of this post done and was conducting my usual futile pre-posting search for typos when Congress announced that they’d finally struck a deal on the payroll tax holiday extension.  Which, of course, required that I rewrite some of the post.  I’m pretty sure they did it on purpose. Because they are dicks.

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Remember the Cold War?

Sure you do.

You know, the Cold War, the fifty year long battle over ideology that damned near ended the world?

Basically the Cold War was a big pissing contest between the United States and the former Soviet Union.  The best summation of which was probably the so-called Space Race.  For thirty years the US and the Soviets tried to one up each other. Both spent vast, staggeringly unbelievably vast, fortunes in blood and treasure to be first in space.  First satellite. First dog in space. First monkey in Space. First man in space. First woman in space. First into space twice. First old guy. First left handed guy.  First to eat in space. First to piss in space. First to sleep in space. First to die. First to orbit. First to make a hundred obits. First to make a hundred and one. First rendezvous. First docking. First around the moon. First unmanned lunar landing. First manned landing. First probe to Mars, Venus, Jupiter.  First space station.  First this and first that. First!

Oh, yes, we – both the Russians and the Americans – cheered every first, no matter how small, by our own respective teams and booed the other side and called them cheaters.

The Russian beat us to orbit.  They were first with their Sputnik and then first with their cosmonauts.

We caught up. Then we blew up and they took the lead.

Then they burned up on reentry and we took the lead back.

In the end we beat them to the moon and so we won.  Yah! Yes, that’s right, America won. Ha! In your face, Soviet Bastards! In your face!

Except, well, what did it get us?  What did we win? Really?

What was the prize? Bragging rights?

Four decades later and who cares? I mean who really cares who was first? Russians were first to orbit. Boo! Americans were first to the moon. Whoopie! And then what? How many of the current generation do you see wandering around with an “Apollo XI, We’re Number One!” sweatshirt on?  By 1972 and Apollo XVII we’d already lost interest. To the current generation, the whole Space Race is little more than a not very interesting historical footnote and some ancient primitive hardware gathering dust in a museum somewhere.  See, the thing is, neither country got a sustainable space program out of all those trillions of dollars and rubles, out of all those lives, out of all those firsts.   Sure, both societies benefitted from the technology and the science, and we still do, every day, but after all of that, after all of those lives and all of that expense and all of that effort and all of the tears and all of the cheering, after all of the chest beating and flag waving and dick waggling and bragging rights, well, after all of that, twelve men walked on the moon forty years ago and we couldn’t go back now even if we actually wanted to. We never made it to Mars, or the moons of Jupiter, and the dreams of living among the stars that I grew up with are mostly dead in this the newest generation.  We went, we came back. Whoop Tee Doo, put that in the history books next to Kitty Hawk – if they still teach Kitty Hawk in history class anymore. I haven’t checked lately, more than likely the Texas Board of Creationism has substituted angels and Ezekiel's Wheel for Orville and Wilbur by now.

And yet, if you step outside right now and look up at the night sky in just the right place and at just the right time, you’ll see a space station.  The International Space Station.  The largest, most complex, most technologically advanced, and most successful sustained long duration mission ever lofted by the hand of man.  Americans didn’t do that.  The Russians didn’t do that. The Europeans didn’t do that.  We did it.  We did it, Americans, Russians, Canadians, Europeans, Japanese, Israelis, Indians, all of us working together.

We don’t cheer now when Americans go into orbit. But neither do we cheer when the Russians fail or have a setback. And the same is true with them.  We’re in this together.  Americans ride Russian rockets into orbit, Russians live in Japanese built modules lifted into space in the bellies of American built Shuttles and assembled with a robot arm made in Canada.  American ground control oversees the mission in conjunction with their counterparts in Kazakhstan. Russians and Americans take turns commanding the station. The first billionaire tourists have bought their way aboard that station in a Russian capitalist venture, and within a year a civilian rocket lofted by an American company will dock with the station.  And you know what? That’s a good thing. A damned good thing. Because it demonstrates very, very clearly that we, all of us, can work together if we want to.  And the more we work together, the more we understand each other, the more we speak each other’s language. 

When I was growing up, during the Cold War, the Russians were the enemy. There was a time when our differences almost ended the world for all time. Now? Now they are the people we build space stations with.

Sure, we’ve got our differences.

So?

Sure trust is sometimes hard to come by.  Sure there are fights and bickering and bad days and sometimes we don’t know how we’re going to pay for things. Again, so? So what?  This generation? The one growing up right now? They have a pretty good chance of not dying in nuclear fire. Tell me that’s not a good thing. Tell me that’s not what matters.  The more we work together, the more we realize the things we have in common, the more we accomplish. You have only to step outside on a clear night and look up to see it.  And no sane person, Russian or American, wants it to go back to the way it was.

One day, if we keep on like this, we will go back to the moon and to Mars and maybe even further, and we’ll do it together. 

 

It’s ironic, then, don’t you think?

Ironic that we Americans can work with our former mortal enemies easier than with other Americans?

Funny how we can compromise when it comes to building a trillion dollar space station with people we once called “the Evil Empire.” Funny how we can work to build a future for our kids with people we spent the better put of a century locked into a mutual murder/suicide pact with, isn’t it? 

Funny how we, Americans, can’t seem to find that same spirit of compromise and teamwork when it comes to working with Americans.

Funny sad, funny stupid, not funny ha ha.

Sad and stupid that we can’t seem to work together when it comes to something simple, something we all agree needs to be done, something that we all want.

I am, of course, talking about the mess in Congress.

You know it’s not about the tax breaks.

It’s not about class warfare. It’s not about the rich and not about the poor and most certainly not about the middle class.

It’s not about the economy, or jobs, or the national debt.

It’s not about the upcoming presidential election, well not totally anyway.

It’s not even about ideology.

It’s about face.

It’s about hubris.

It’s about bluster, and chest beating, and who can piss furthest into the wind. It’s about pride.

This latest congressional deadlock over extending the payroll tax holiday was about one thing and one thing only. It was about dicks – and like most matters of this nature, this entire adolescent pissing contest is nothing but locker-room theater by a bunch of spoiled selfish arrogant immature pricks who are worried that somebody, somewhere, somehow, might think that they have a wee little one.

Here’s the bald simple truth of the matter:   This congressional Cold War? It’s all a farce.

There was never any doubt that Congress would pass the payroll tax holiday extension, or that the president would sign it

Anything else would have been political suicide.

The Speaker of the House knows this, you bet he does.

John Boehner painted himself into a corner. As a result, he had to bend over and take it right up the poop chute. He knew it.  And he’s got nobody to blame but his own lousy leadership. Boehner has spent the last year showing us what he is, this last week he was just haggling over the price. 

The House deserves no credit for reaching a deal. None. It’s not an accomplishment to dodge a rubber bullet you fired at your own self.

Here’s the thing, the economy is in the toilet.  It may not be circling the drain anymore, it may have crawled out of the dirty water and may be inching its way up the filthy stained porcelain, but the economy is still in the crapper. You know it, I know it, and every single voter in America knows it.  So do the politicians.  Americans are pissed off. They’re tired of this bullshit, most of them anyway. They want this endless bickering to stop. They want congress to stop acting like children and start doing the job they get paid handsomely for. Americans, most of them, have had just about enough of this nonsense.  They’re out in the street. They’re out of work. They’re out of money. Half of them are out of their damned minds. They’re a year out from a major election. And they’re out of patience.

As a result, it’s a damned dangerous time to be a politician.

Luckily, for these preening jackasses, the worst thing that is likely to happen is that they’ll get voted out of power – instead of being dragged from their ivory towers and stood against a wall.  On a side note, a number of these congressmen, including the most intransigent of the current bunch of strident obstructionists, would do well to remember that they are the primary reason so many very angry Americans are heavily armed and equipped for violent revolution. But as usual, I ironically digress.

If congress allowed taxes to go up on the poor and middle class, especially going into an election year, they’d be cutting their own throats.

And they know it.

Boehner and his Tea Party masters have been trying to sell this as a war of ideology, the political Cold War version of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Nobody wants taxes to go up, they claim.  But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t let it happen if they could somehow be sure that the blame would fall squarely and unambiguously on the President and the other guys.  But they can’t guarantee that.  Voters are fickle.  They may be unhappy with Obama, but you raise their taxes by $150 per month and let unemployment benefits expire in this economy and see what happens.   Instead of the Cuban Missile Crisis, House conservatives would have been looking right down the barrel at the political equivalent of the Bay of Pigs.  

And they know it.

And so, after much bluster and chest beating and dick waggling, they signed the Senate version of the tax holiday extension plan. 

And there was never any doubt that they would.

Because, see, this really isn’t about ideology, or doing the right thing, and it sure as pluperfect hell isn’t about us, you and me, the insignificant middle class getting dirty-dicked by these arrogant pricks. Because if it really was about ideology, if it was about principle, if they really thought that they were right – then they would have let taxes go up and damn the consequences.

But it isn’t about that.

It’s about face.

Everybody has already agreed to the basics. The tax holiday must be extended. Ditto entitlements (long term unemployment benefits included).  The only argument is how to pay for that.  Tax the rich? Or cut something else out of the budget. Or a little of both?  The senate hammered out a deal with broad bipartisan support – over ninety percent of the forum approved the bill. 

A two month extension gives both the House and the Senate time to work out a permanent long-term deal.

John Boehner himself initially agreed to this deal.

Yet, House conservatives balked - and Boehner folded like a cheap suit when his Tea Party masters yanked sharply on his choker chain.

House Conservatives suddenly swore that they couldn’t agree to a two month extension, they wanted a longer deal.   Really?  Then why in the hell didn’t they complete a bill and forward it to the Senate a month ago?  It’s not like expiration of the payroll tax holiday was a surprise.  It’s not like we didn’t know that long term unemployment benefits were due to expire on December 31st.  If this was really about a long term deal, then they should have done their goddamned jobs two months ago. Instead, they deliberately let it come down to the wire, and they did that specifically because they thought they could use this issue to make Obama look bad and for no other reason.  They weren’t expecting conservatives in the Senate to show common sense and put the needs of the country over politics. 

They gambled, and they lost.  That’s what happens when you bluff, sometimes you get called.

But instead of manning up and taking their lumps, they’d acted like petulant children and tried to hold onto the pot.

Ever try to reason with a mad child?

Same thing. 

Unfortunately, we can’t send these brats to their room for a timeout.

This morning, House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor (R-VA), insisted that the differences between competing House and Senate 12-month plans could be resolved “within an hour.”  Really? Then why the fuck wasn’t that done two weeks ago?  I’ll tell you why, because Cantor and his pals are a bunch of spoiled privileged childish dicks.  That’s why.  He’s exactly the kind of guy who would play poker in a game where the stakes are the lives of one hundred and eighty million Americans.  And he’d do it solely in order to advance his own political agenda and for no other reason.

Think about this for a minute.  For whatever reason, these sons of bitches waited until the last minute. Now we’re talking about taxes and budgets and entitlements (and an oil pipeline for fuck’s sake, which is included in this mess for some stupid assed reason that makes no sense whatsoever).  There’s about five working days left to go.  What kind of bill do you think you’re going to get? Seriously? Two days before the holiday break?  A week and half before the deadline? A bunch of political hacks all pissed off and panicked and worried about if people will think they have a little dick?

Honestly, do you really want to live with whatever they managed to throw together at the last damned minute?

Here’s a thought, wouldn’t it make more sense to sign a quick two month extension, make sure Americans have some breathing space (You know, the people you’re supposed to be looking out for) and then take that time to sit down and deliberately hammer out something we can all live with? I mean, wouldn’t that make sense considering that they screwed around playing politics instead of doing the job and now it’s a thing?

Well, yes, of course that would make more sense. And yes, sure, we could do that.  Sure. But …

We could do that but the payroll accounting software most companies use isn’t designed for two month increments. 

No, seriously, that was the argument.  Payroll accounting software is designed for quarterly adjustments to taxes and withholdings and etcetera and so on.  So? Think about that for a minute.  Why bring this up at all?  No, really, why bring that up at all?  Unless somebody is actually thinking about raising our taxes.  Funny thing, nobody has mentioned that, and what passes for journalism in this country hasn’t bothered to actually ask. So, what’s the deal?  This is only an issue if House Republicans are thinking that they might be raising your taxes in two months (or lowering them, I suppose, if you’re a millionaire).

Next, of course, was the standard GOP canard, i.e. a two month extension raises uncertainty for businesses and thus they won’t create jobs and invest in America and the sky, you know, it will fall. Oh noes, not uncertainty! Let’s just say that’s true, and not the same old tired Chicken Little bullshit excuse that has allowed these same businesses to go on for ten years now without creating any jobs despite tax breaks and huge piles of bailout money.  There’s an easy fix.  It’s called leadership. Sign the two month extension, then House, Senate, and Executive all stand together on neutral ground and sign a fucking pledge to the American people guaranteeing that they will hammer out a deal by February that doesn’t change the tax and entitlement rates that exist right now.  Period.

House Republicans should have no problem with this idea, since according to their leader, Eric Cantor, it’ll only take an hour or so to work out the differences between existing plans.

That should give business the assurance they need to invest in the future and create all those jobs they keep promising us in exchange for our tax money. Tell you what, while they’re at it, how about Congress pledge to raise taxes on Corporations who don’t start hiring Americans – and by Americans, I mean people in this country.  And if they don’t, then they can not only start paying taxes, they can pay back all those tax breaks and bailout dollars they’ve taken from us – that ought to pay for extending the payroll tax holiday. Conservatives love pledges, this should be a natural for them – though, of course, making a pledge to the American people instead of a rich lobbyist would be something new. Hell, they can even sign it in Grover Norquist’s blood if it will make them happy. 

Well, sure, we could do that, but …

If there’s one maggot in the GOP apple that I detest over all others, it would have to be that pale flaccid worm, Karl Rove. Yet, I was forced to agree with him when even he said House conservatives needed to sign the extension.  And of course, wherever the slimy trail left by Rove goes, the rest of the conservatives follow. Most of them anyway.  Hell, even the king of obstructionist partisan politics, Mitch McConnell could see which way the wind was blowing by squinting through his Coke bottle glasses.

So, what was the hold up?

Dicks.

Cantor and the rest of these self-centered children didn’t want to agree because they were afraid that it would be a “win” for Obama. 

Of all the childish, stupid, moronic nonsense.

They don’t give a damn if one hundred and eighty million of their fellow Americans lose, so long as Obama doesn’t “win.”   This should be no surprise to anybody, this is the same math plugged into the same equation that these Creationist peckerwoods use for everything of importance. These are the same selfish bastards who would let forty million women and children go without health insurance or medical care so that one poor woman doesn’t get an abortion on the government dime.   These are the same sons of bitches who would let a hundred million people die of AIDS in order to prevent one woman from using a condom.  These are the same ignorant fuckers who would cut funding for millions of textbooks and school lunches and science program, so that they can continue to fund high school football in Texas and failed abstinence-only faith-based bullshit. 

This is about dicks and nothing more.

Frankly, if it was up to me, I’d line them all up and have them drop trousers.  Then we can get out a ruler and … smack them right in their useless shriveled nuts.

What?

Oh, you thought I was going to say measure up and settle the issue once and for all?  Wrong. I don’t care who has the bigger dick. This isn’t about congressional dick. This is about doing the right thing, because it’s the right thing.  It’s about not reliving the stupid Cold War in our own back yard.  If these people really cared about the economy and business and the people who elected them, then they’d start working together.

Forty years from now, nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to give a damn one way or the other.  Like the Cold War and the Space Race and the first guy to use a urine bag in orbit, nobody will give a damn which one of these people had a bigger dick.

The only thing they’ll remember is that these people were dicks.

If we can work with our erstwhile enemies, we ought to be able to work with our own goddamned countrymen.

Into the Valley of Death

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

 

A number of you wrote, wondering why I haven’t said anything about the tragic deaths of US Navy special forces who were killed during a rescue mission a week ago Saturday in Afghanistan.

The short answer is: I really try not to write when I’m pissed off.

I’m not always successful, and then later I sometimes have cause to regret saying certain things in certain blog posts.

I’ve started this post several times in the last few days, only to delete it.  The subject matter saddens me, but that is not what is getting on my nerves. 

No, what is pissing me off are some of the letters I’ve gotten and many of the comments I’ve read in the popular press.

 

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

 

I have replied to a number of you, and I hope that my responses weren’t too abrupt.

Understand, I have no problem with those who messaged with reasonable questions about military operations and I don’t mind answering as best I’m able. 

I certainly understand that many folks, hell even those with actually military experience, would have questions and comments when such a tragedy occurs. 

And I understand why you might ask me. 

As most of you probably know, I spent my entire life in the military. In the US Navy to be specific. I can’t discuss much of my career or most of the operations I was involved in, due to the nature of my specialty.  I wasn’t a SEAL. However, I was occasionally privileged to be involved in a few of their operations and rode along on a couple missions in a support role.  I likely know a bit more about them than the average person, but I’m certainly no expert on the intimate details of SEAL teams.

The only real experts on SEAL operations are the SEALs themselves.

Anybody who tells you different is full of shit.

 

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

 

I am, however, a qualified expert on war fighting doctrine, tactics, planning, and military intelligence.

I am a certified expert in various forms of weaponry and certain special operations.

I know a fair bit about helicopters too, having been a qualified Navy Surface Warfare Officer and having had the deck of a cruiser during more than one flight operation.

But I also know where the limits of my knowledge are, something that seems to be lacking in more than a few folks.

What pissed me off about the death of seventeen members of SEAL Team 6 and three of their support team, not to mention the Afghan special operations soldiers who were onboard along with the US Army flight crew, are the astounding number of people – news media talking heads, the usual pundits and politicians, and the average mouth breather on the street – who suddenly consider themselves experts on special forces, combat operations, military equipment, the Afghan terrain, and what should or should not have been done last Saturday.

The most common criticism seems to be summed up by the following comment (as usual, posted under a Yahoo news article):

The commanding officer should never had put those Seals in that aircraft. It was bad military tactics.

Technically, it was arguably bad logistics, not tactics – but I’ll try not to slap at the nits when there are larger targets.  Bad tactics? The commenter doesn’t bother to explain how he had access to the commander’s situational awareness or the classified details of the mission that would allow him to make such a post-incident assessment.  Details such as the real-time tactical situation on the ground, the latest threat assessment and intelligence, the availability (or lack thereof) of transport and its capability and equipment, the time sensitive nature of the mission, the number and make-up of mission personnel and their equipment load-out, the experience of the flight crew, the number of expected injured that might have to be lifted out, and about a thousand other things – all of which would have had to been assessed in seconds and decided on the fly. 

Whose tactical brilliance put so many of our elite in one vehicle?

Why 30 Navy Seals in the same Chinook?

All the copters in the US fleet and an idiot had to put all 30 on one...OMG...this person should be court marshaled....What an idiot sending only one copter, there should been 15 arriving with all out firing and shelling killing every single warm body creature in sight. Why does the US military fail to use "overwhelming" fire power at critical time in need????? What an unnecessary loss, if I were the families of these solders I be asking many questions and demanding answers and those responsibe pay a high price.

Why are they still using the vietnam era machine Chinook? Where is the V-22 Osprey?

Why wasn't the big bird escourted by smaller, agile birds. Who's mismanaging this whole mess?

Actual, real, military missions are not, at all, like playing SOCOM on your PS3.

No, really, they are not.

Being a steely-eyed snake-eating bad-ass motherfucker in Gears of War doesn’t actually qualify you to lead or plan real military missions any more than watching an episode of JAG qualifies you to ditch a crippled airliner into the Hudson. 

Real military missions are complicated, even the simplest ones have a thousand moving parts and ten thousand moments where things can go pear shaped.  The operating environment and the clock often relentlessly dictate what you can and cannot do – no matter what you might otherwise desire.  For example, atmospheric density has a direct and significant effect on the performance of helicopters.  The thinner the air, the less the bird can lift, the more restricted its ability to maneuver, the more restricted its speed, the fewer options the pilot has.  Hot air means thinner air.  Higher altitude means thinner air.  The difference of ten degrees or a thousand feet can make a huge difference in what the machine can carry.   Weather makes a big difference.  Rain, clouds, wind affect how the bird performs, especially in the mountains.  Dust and grit in the air affects engine performance and the ability of the pilots and gunners to see, so does smoke – and there’s often plenty of each above a battlefield.  The terrain of the LZ makes a difference, a helicopter with top mounted rotors can clear obstacles on the ground while making a landing far better than a machine with a tail rotor.  The design of the aircraft makes a difference, it’s a hell of a lot easier and faster unloading large heavy items down a tail ramp under fire than manhandling them through a side door –  don’t think that matters? Try lifting a full can of .50cal ammo sometime, or better yet jump from about six feet up while carrying a hundred pounds of equipment see how long your knees hold out.  Different aircraft handle the dangerous and dynamic conditions of a combat LZ in different manners. All have advantages and disadvantages. Every single military mission is a series of trade-offs.  Every single mission requires an ongoing series of decisions and assessments, often with only the bare minimum of information. Every single combat situation is chaotic and fogged and insane.   There is only one truth in combat and that is this: no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.

Why are we still using the Vietnam era Chinook?  Because it works, most of the time. Because it’s a proven design. Because a replacement costs billions that we don’t have.  Why weren’t they riding a fancy new Osprey? Would using a tilt-rotor have made a difference or would the SEALs have died anyway? You ever seen one of those things? They’re not exactly nimble either, especially while landing.  Why weren’t they riding in three or four or five smaller, faster, more maneuverable H-60 Blackhawks? Because maybe there weren’t four or five or six available. Because maybe there wasn’t room in the LZ to land four or five or six helicopters at the same time. Because every landing in a hot LZ is a risk, landing four or five or six helicopters multiples the risk by four or five or six or twenty.  Why weren’t they escorted by Apaches?  And etcetera and etcetera and etcetera.  I don’t know, I wasn’t there.  Most likely the answer to all those questions is, because the Chinook was what they had at that moment.  Because the SEALs and the Marines and the Rangers and the regular Army grunts ride into combat on the Chinook a hundred times a day, and most of the time they make it. 

As I said, any combat situation is a series of trade-offs. There are always things you can do better if you only have the time, or the assets, or the intel, or more firepower, or those special one of a kind weapons, or more men, or better communications or air cover or artillery support or some damned thing that you don’t have.  But you never do, you never have the time, you never have enough intel or firepower or assets.  So you have to make do with what you have.  The SEALs were on a support mission, coming to reinforce a Ranger unit pinned down under fire.  In such a situation the single most critical factor is time.  All those other things, firepower and intel and equipment and SEALs, don’t mean jack shit if you can’t get them into the fight before it’s over.  Very likely the answer to the question, “Why were the SEALs all riding on a single Chinook?” is because that’s what was available and ready to go when they needed it. 

 

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

 

Most of the time we win, but sometimes the enemy gets in a lucky shot.  The Mujahedeen have been fighting on their own home turf for decades.  They are smart and experienced and cunning.  Nineteen of them killed nearly three thousand Americans with nothing more than determination and a couple of box cutters.  This isn’t a fucking video game, in real war real soldiers die – even SEALs.  Flying in a war zone is always risky. You take a chance every single time you get on a helicopter in the battlespace. Do it enough, and sooner or later the odds will catch up with you. We lose men and machines with terrible regularity - that's why they call it war.

It’s bad enough when armchair warriors and video game commandos second guess those who command the SEALs and the Rangers and the rest of our military, but then there’s this horseshit:

i am not buying it, something is fishy about putting the best guys in a large chopper and flying them over a hot zone, doesnt add up......

Why would a Seal Team be sent in to "rescue" Army Rangers? Rangers carry more firepower than Seals since they are light infantry, unlike Seals who are usually quick in quick out. Something about this doesnt add up...

It seems awfully coincidental that it just happened to be the same unit that eliminated bin laden. Something dirty is going on.

Like so many things since 9/11/2001, this story almost rings true, but not quite. The media account is a little too pat and reads like carefully prepared propaganda than honest news reporting...on over 100 sites...exactly the same story with exactly the same writer.

if you notice, in the article, it mentions that seal team 6 members were killed in this crash. makes you wonder if someone up top didnt want them talking about what ACTUALLY happened in/at the mission that killed osama

Something is fishy about putting the best guys in a helicopter and sending them to rescue someone.

We are only taking their word that it was none of the men who were on the OBL raid. They know the names of the individuals who died in the crash are going to be released and so of course they are going to deny that these guys were on the OBL raid. They said that the names of the seal's on the OBL raid would forever remain secret, so they can't admit that they were on the OBL raid.. DUH... By the way, I'm a conservative-tea party member who also thinks that 9/11 ( along with many others things) doesn't add up, but I don't believe in UFO's , or any of that other crap you knuckle dragers like to try and discredit us with. If you even did a miniumal amount of your own research into the FACTS of 9/11, you could come to no other conclusion then to have questions. I've met a hundred guys who were just like u until I told them to go home and watch "Truth Rising"..

This kind of conspiracy crap disgusts me. 

These silly paste eating bastards are the same droolers who think George Bush secretly snuck into the World Trade Center towers and planted demo charges without anybody noticing.  The idiot parents of these morons were the ones who believed FDR let the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and that NASA faked the moon landings on a sound stage in Burbank.  It’s the same mental defect, the same faulty reasoning, that leads these same fools to believe they are somehow experts on engineering and crash analysis and metallurgy and physics and terrorism as they are in special forces doctrine. 

This nonsense deserves no respect whatsoever. Period. 

If you believe that the President of the United States, the US Military, and the SEALs faked the mission that took down Osama Bin Laden, if you believe that the Commander in Chief then ordered the deaths of an elite special forces team to cover up some vast conspiracy and you believe that the men and women of the US Military or the CIA or any other US organization would actually carry out such orders, then you are a fucking idiot. You deserve no respect whatsoever. Shut up.

Conspiracy nuts are not seeking the so-called “truth.”  They are not engaged in critical thought.  What these pathetic losers are doing is attempting to use tragic events like this one to get attention for themselves. Nothing more, nothing less.  The only difference between these assholes and any other con artist is that they deceive themselves into to believing that they’re a serving some higher, selfless cause – in this case they are attempting to use the death of real warriors to make themselves into the heroes they have neither the courage or the will to be in the first place.  They are no better than those greasy sacks of shit who jerk off to Soldier of Fortune and dress up in raggedy-assed camouflage and talk about how they could have been a Marine - but  the job of Mall Security was so much more rewarding.

I am sadden to say, it is events like this that I stopped my sons from entering the military. Just didn't want my sons to fall victim to the idiots in Washington and their political war. Lets send the immediate families of these powerful politicians to the front lines of combat and lets watch how stragety changes.

If you actually think that sending politicians’ families into to war would actually change how we wage war – especially for the better – then you are an idiot.  John McCain’s father, Admiral John S. McCain was the commander of all forces in the Vietnam theater, it didn’t keep his son from flying combat missions or ending up as one of America’s most famous Prisoners of War.  Hell, even Sarah Palin brags how she sent her kid off to fight like she was some kind of Spartan brood mare. And seriously, do you really, I mean really, want US military strategy influenced by politicians to protect their own kids? Really? If so, you’re a fucking idiot and your kids are probably fucking idiots too.  By all means keep them home, you’re doing us a favor. Because they are likely just one more set of fucking idiots the Chiefs and Sergeants and First Shirts don’t have to waste time deprogramming.

Why are we releasing this classified information??

Our enemy doesn't need to know that SEALs died in that crash AND they don't need to know that they shot it down.
Mis-information??

Announcing to the world that the Taliban had killed 20 SEALs from Team 6 gave the Taliban a feather in their cap and a morale boost.

Why don’t we let the commanders worry about this?  If the SEALs aren’t worried about the names being released, then I’m not worried about the names being released. The families of those men were proud of what they did for a living and who they were and how they died, and if their wives and sons and daughters and mothers and fathers want the names known and remembered and honored, then who the hell are you to question it?  Go ahead, threaten the families of SEALs, see where it gets you.   The insurgents who shot down the helicopter are now dead, hunted down and blown to into smoking hunks of burned meat – I hope they enjoyed their boosted morale while they had the chance.

 

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

 

And finally there’s this:

They should be back in Washington getting rid of those scums there.

Give thanks that we don’t live in such a nation where our military did exactly that.  The men who died on that helicopter last Saturday were US Navy SEALs, the very best of the very best.  They died doing what they believed in.  They died coming to the rescue of their fellow Soldiers. They died doing their duty, nothing more, nothing less.  They died not as heroes, though they are certainly that, but as American fighting men who were doing the job they were sworn to do.

To suggest that they would, or should, turn on the duly elected government of the United States, to suggest that they would forswear their oath and their duty, is the single most disgusting insult that could possibly be levied against their names. 

 

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

 

 

 

 

---

*For those who don't recognize it, the poem woven throughout this post is Alfred Lord Tennyson's immortal "Charge of the Light Brigade.”