Easy Over There - In a Chair

It's easy to sit behind the keyboard, stroking keys about the Iraq prison abuse or the criminality of the "current administration." Piece of cake to turn out phrases on the most recent headline, hero, or scandal one feels hot for. And it seems real easy for some to call our troops knuckle-draggers feasting on an orgy of killing when one doesn't have a son or loved one sitting and shitting in the sand over there. Easier to chastise others for "sending" their sons to die when one doesn't have a son or loved one to send. Easy to condemn the troops if you don't have to wonder if your rants could get a son fragged over there. There's a lot of crazy in the free world you know.

I wish these wise ones would quit wasting pixels and tell me how a 35 y/o man with 16 years invested, a wife and daughter, with the responsibilities that most Americans have, can throw his hands up and refuse to fight in wars launched by his government. Court martial is not an option for most soldiers. Unfortunately, the jarhead doesn't see those 59 million 2004 Kerry voters in the street to support him if he did lay down his arms.

Where are those 72 percent who when questioned said the conflict has made them feel worse about the use of military force "to bring about democracy"? Are those the same folks who think "democracy" equals "freedom" and together they mean you can vote and own things and go wherever you want? That's the Heartland definition even though most here in the poverty belt own very little, usually don't vote, and their idea of travel is crossing the state line to booze it up with cousins.

Easy to link the ugly news, and it's often ugly, and make snide comments, or snipe at those who disagree; I do it myself at times. The same cowards who urge others to protest or sign online petitions cringe or slink away from calling for revolution; might get their own bourgeois butts in boiling water with the government thugs they claim are corrupt and perverse. Real easy to call for carrying signs or signing petitions; as if that will change anything other than the flunky faces running the system. Easy to sell some stickers, shirts, and buttons; politically it doesn't make any monumental change or significant gains, but it can be a good income. And we're guaranteed to get a few more monuments eventually.

Some keyboard tappers think we can have a "velvet" revolution, in reference to the "bloodless" overthrow of communism in Czechoslovakia. Such keyboard pacifists should know it's not going to happen that way in the USA. Forget that the Czechs split into 2 countries afterwards, Czech Republic and Slovakia, or that the "velvet" was nothing more than switching from a state owned economy to privatization and foreign investment economy i.e. "free market capitalism." Nevermind that whatever "ism" it's called it still operates pretty much the same way, i.e. for the benefit of the few at the expense of many.

Easy to tell others to stand-up while your butt remains comfortably seated. Sitting safely behind the flat screen it's easy to claim the military has betrayed us, but not advocate overthrowing the government of course. Look folks, the military is doing as it has always done, read Major General Smedley Butler's lips : "... muscle men for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers … racketeers, gangsters for capitalism." That is what troops do. They rape other countries for your benefit. Yes, they defend your freedom; your liberty to live as comfortably as you do with the toys you can afford.

The elite seem reassured that folks will stay behind their desk, with a plate of sandwiches and a cola, bleating about bloodless revolutions and how things will be better if we just vote in the right guy the next time. Yep, keep voting. It really does encourage the bankers and gangsters.