Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home Now

While I was proud to have extended Operation Toy Soldier to total of five states so far in my recent Amazing Tour d’New England, my travel companion–aka, my politically-apathetic sister–wasted no time in ranting to our mother about it who, in turn, is again obsessing at my daring to utilize my First Amendment right to protest. (Thanks, sis. Really.) My mother feels that to protest diminishes morale and isn’t “supporting the troops.” As I’ve told her before, not wanting the troops to die is supporting the troops. No matter how many times I explain it, I’ve come to the conclusion that my family will never understand my peace activism. They’d rather I just blended in–just sat back and looked pretty and acted like a Good Little Godly Girl ™–not someone who goes to antiwar conferences and started her own peace protest involving leaving toy soldiers everywhere (see link above). They’d rather I was like my sister, perhaps–never appearing to have opinion of my own about anything, and never being able to have my own opinion because I don’t know the facts about anything outside my own tiny little life. They’d rather I was too weak to stand up for myself and my beliefs and, instead, either yielded in conversation or immediately began screaming so that the other person would not bother arguing because they want her to shut up so very badly.

No, I will not be like that. I cannot be like that. I’ve been watching the news obsessively since I was nine years old. I don’t even own a tv, but I still watch Democracy Now online almost every day. I read blogs, I read CNN’s website–I get around. I seem to hear about things an average of two days before it appears on MSN.com’s home page. A part of me truly hates when my routine of news-absorption is interrupted and I have to play catch-up. I hate not knowing what’s going on in the world around me. I don’t understand how anyone can so willfully choose to be ignorant. Give me the stories of people my sister has never heard of: the hate crime of an innocent Muslim woman, the war against women in Congo, the disappearing of the island of Tuvalu, all of that. All the stories of the “underdogs,” the stories that are truly important and generally ignored by the mainstream media. I’m okay with having never heard of most actors, even when others almost always look at me like I’m from another planet. Have you seen King Corn, Eulogy, or The Business of Being Born? Have you seen whatever fascinating documentary, indie flick, or foreign film I watched last? Do you like reading the Bible to find examples of how Jesus was a social activist liberal misunderstood by even his own disciples? Do you love Howard Zinn and Michael Moore? Did you talk your parents into voting for Ralph Nader when you were fifteen years old? All of that said, do you find this song to be an awesome rallying cry?

My sister thinks it’s a phase. My parents think I’ve “gotten in with the wrong crowd” because I want peace. It’s not a phase. I’m not going to wake up some day and think “you know what? Our country should go bomb the Cradle of Civilization for imperialistic reasons. Huzzah, I thirst for me some blood of dead Iraqi children!” As for the wrong crowd, I hang around social activist feminists, GLBT people, Quakers, peace activists, and history graduate students. We talk about Spongebob, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and enacting positive change in the world. Sometimes we have cookies.

Though my family might want to change me, I’m always going to be me and I’m always going to stand up for my convictions. Whether they like it or not, my family members were the ones who taught me this. Between my religious right-wing brother bullying other people into being afraid to voice opinions different than his and my mother’s lectures about organic gardening, the backwood’s movement, and how if homeschooling became illegal, she’d be arrested before the state put me back in public school, I learned to question everything because some people don’t want you to question anything. I cannot be some mindless robot with little sense of self. I must be me, and being me entails believing in peace.

Protesters, Or Hate Mongerers?

Can a Country Have a Nervous Breakdown?

According to this . . . articulate . . . blogger, it can. (I wonder if disabilist language means anything to this person?) Let us respond to this in Red Skelton Pledge-of-Allegiance form.

It’s insanity.

First of all, congratulations on causing me to disregard you at the very second word in your entry. This is truly impressive. That said, insanity is a legal word, meaning such unsoundness of mind as affects legal responsibility or capacity. Thus, you’re saying that the US cannot govern itself or be held responsible for its actions and requires a legal guardian to make all decisions for it. That’s not insulting at all. I overlooked the antiquated term “nervous breakdown” in the title, giving you, perhaps, poetic license for such melodrama. Now, you see, at word number two, it becomes clear to me that you have no concept of modern psychology or the meaning of your own words. Further, at word number one, you have no concept of proper conjugation. “It is insanity?” The United States, itself, is the epitome of legal insanity? Do tell. Now, see, I must continue reading this drivel just for my own giggles at what such a brilliant mind could create.

It’s insanity, war, homelessness, job loss, food shortages at pantries, request for food stamps at a record high, crime is rising, people fear for their health, robber barons bankers sucking us dry.

It would just be mean to point out that this isn’t a complete sentence, wouldn’t it? In fact, it’s just a jumble of thoughts with no connections or point. Despite the improper conjugation at word number one, this sentence lacks a verb; thus, it has no action. That said, I pray tell what you, dear blogger, are doing to change any of these things. Are you protesting the war? Are you helping the homeless? Donating food?

robber barons bankers sucking us dry

Robber baron bankers? While I could write a dissertation, I, instead, will leave you with this and the sound of me giggling.

The country is having a nervous breakdown

Can a country have a “nervous breakdown?” Can a country have any mental affliction? If so, where is the mind of the country located? I want to guess Montana, buried deep beneath that big sky country; or, perhaps, in the Appalachians of Kentucky or West Virginia, among those purple mountain majesties. If someone were blowing me up on a regular basis for coal, I’d have issues too. If a country has a mind, where is its liver? I can only be corny and guess the wine country of California.

and surrounding this malady

malady, n. any disorder or disease of the body, esp. one that is chronic or deepseated.

If this “insanity” of which you speak is not a one-time “breakdown,” but is, instead, a chronic malady, this means it’s not going to go away. Alas, our poor country is going to have to live with its issues for the rest of its life. How do you talk to a country about its problems? How do you tell a hunk of earth that you’re there for it if it needs a shoulder to lean upon? How do you force a country to take its medication and smile again? Perhaps this has been going on so long, it can no longer remember what it was to truly be happy. Perhaps it can only think of the inequalities in its life, instead of those spacious skies and amber waves of grain. Perhaps while its citizens killed each other and poisoned it and neglected one another, it saw everything, while the rest of us turn our heads. Maybe when we don’t see that beggar, the country wishes it has hands so that it could spare a dime, brother. What if we are what sickens the country? What if we need the help and the country is only responding in the way anyone who witnessed such abuse and was unable to do anything to stop it would?

are the vultures ready to scavenge the vulnerable – the tattered signs of an uncivilized, barbaric and criminal nation. We’re loosing justice and tossing the rule of law out the window and when that happens we also lose mercy.

True, it is only now in recent history that we have lost “mercy.” When the first explorers raped and pillaged the Native population, there was mercy. When innocent colonists were hanged as witches, there was mercy. When human beings were used as slaves and considered 3/5 people, there was mercy. When Native children were separated from their families to be “civilized” at boarding schools, there was mercy. When 146 people died at the Triangle Shirt Factory fire because the doors were all locked and there were no fire escapes because the bosses didn’t want the workers to take breaks, there was mercy. When the Japanese-Americans were rounded up and placed in internment camps during WWII, there was mercy. When those perceived to be gays or Communists were tried by the House Unamerican Activities Committee in front of the entire country, there was mercy. Never before in the history of our country have we acted as “vultures”–uncivilized, barbaric, criminal, or merciless.

Next to the Civil War this is a very low point in US history, simply because we’ve lost the most important thing any great nations could acquire, trust.

Again, your perceptiveness baffles me. How wise of you to think that our current problems even begin to compare to the Civil War, when half the country seceded from the Union and the issues of slavery and freedom for all turned brother against brother; American against American. Let us go have a picnic and watch our countrymen die in battle before our eyes. Oh, what’s that? The current war isn’t shown on television the way Vietnam was, so we easily place it out of our minds unless we get our news from independent media?

Also, I’m so glad you mentioned that every country in the world trusted us before this war. Could you remind Venezuela and the majority of the rest of Latin America about this? ‘Cause, see, they’ve seemed to think we were imperialists ever since we invaded them back around WWI for their oil and such. Wait, where have I heard this story before? Don’t tell me . . .

Shanghai Allows Couples to Have a Second Child

Authorities in Shanghai, China have begun to allow “eligible” couples to have a second child to help care for the expected boom of elderly people in 30 years. Said many young Chinese couples, “How nice, but we can barely afford the one child we have. Why would we want to do that?”

I Just Have One Question

Why is it always Arkansas?

America’s New Most-Trusted Newscaster

A poll on Time magazine’s website asks: Now that Walter Cronkite has passed on, who is America’s most trusted newscaster? With 8,746 votes, Jon Stewart is leading with 44% of the votes. What does it say about our national media that a comedian is the most-trusted newscaster?