Tag: Civil War

As Is by Mike Gold – 9-11 Part Two

After two decades, the 9-11 terrorists finally cemented their victory. They did so 366 days ago this very day

The victory has been the result of the chain reaction they must have hoped for in 2001: that by mounting attacks from Boston on New York and Washington, slamming into the Pentagon building and taking down our nation’s greatest warehouse of capitalism, we might unite for a few minutes but overall but our fear and the distrust inherent within a mongrel nation quickly would vomit down upon us and we Americans would turn on each other just as we always do.

That’s the textbook definition of terrorism; that’s why terrorism is an effective course of action for those willing to play the long game.

Steve Bannon © Bill Sienkiewicz.

The time was perfect for The Impossible Pussy, Donald J. Trump, and his criminally paranoid minions of White Supremacists to try to take over the nation. I don’t think they could have gotten as far as they have – their efforts remain a work in progress – if not for Osama bin Laden, the heart and soul of the contemporary Republican Party.

Critically, this White Supremacist Republican takeover of the United States of America by any means necessary (it’s not a coup as it’s hardly been bloodless, and only some White Supremacists think it has been bloodless) is indeed just the beginning. They stand every chance of succeeding. A handful of White Christian Republican far right-wing monsters and perverts can deny the people their vote or can overturn that vote at will. That, my friends, is a dictatorship.

You may think comparing the American White Right to Hitler is a cheap shot; it is not. Read some history. Not FoxOneAmericaBannon history where teaching the lessons of slavery might bruise the fragile feelings of some neurotic Youth Corps-raised White children and therefore must not be taught, but the real thing. The American White Republican Right is desperately and militantly trying to fulfill Adolf Hitler’s dream – no matter how many White American soldiers and sailors died in the fight to stop the fascist dictator. And, today, the American White Right Republicans have managed to label “anti-fascists” as our great evil.

These people know better. In their initial response to the first assault on our nation back on January 6 2021, the actions and inactions of Donald J. Trump and his White Supremacist Republican sycophants were condemned by such stalwart Republican masters as Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Mike Pence, Lindsey Graham, and Nikki Haley. Since then, those comments have been sent to the Star Trek mirror universe. Oh, no. McConnell, McCarthy, Pence, Graham and Haley never said anything bad about Trump. That would be heretical. Trump is god; what he does is by definition for the greater good of Real America… the White Christian Republican America.

The present Republican party is the party of bigotry, hatred, and treason. Their masters are McConnell, McCarthy, Pence, Graham, Haley and Trump. We better obey the All-Mighty Trump if we want to breathe right.

Today is the 366th day of the Second American Civil War. It did not start pretty; it will not end pretty… if it ends at all. I wouldn’t bet against the United States of America not being around when and if it’s over. It won’t be a north vs. south thing, it won’t be a state-by-state thing, it will be a city-state operation where those areas dominated by people who are not White Christian Republican Supremacists will replace our “blue” states, leaving the vast dry oceans of American hatred to be our “red” states. You’ll be able to tell where you are by the number of masks worn on the streets, the availability of women’s health services, the number of non-Christian houses of worship, a general acknowledgement of deductive reasoning and the respect for the principles that were the firmament of that great nation, that Camelot-like place on hill that we used to call the United States of America.

You may have a different opinion… but you would be wrong.

Brainiac On Banjo #086: We Can Be Heroes

Brainiac On Banjo #086: We Can Be Heroes

There goes my hero / Watch him as he goes / There goes my hero / He’s ordinary — “My Hero,” written by Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel and Pat Smear, 1995.

Memorial Day, which we celebrate today because usually more gasoline is sold over three-day weekends, was still called Decoration Day when I was a child. It didn’t become a federal holiday until 1971, even though Decoration Day became a thing after the first U.S. Civil War. According to History.com, one of the earliest Memorial Day remembrances was organized by a group of freed slaves in Charleston, South Carolina less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865.

In recent years, the definition of Memorial Day has grown to include all of those whose lives were sacrificed for the greater good. Today, we tend to call these people “heroes” and that would be okay had our definition of hero not been allowed to expand to those who do what all humans are supposed to do: help out those in need. That’s where I get a bit cynical. I’ll go along with the hero thing as long as we come up with an equally descriptive term for those who could but maliciously refuse to help out those in need.

I think you know the people I’m talking about.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran the front page I reproduced above. The story, of course, was continued on interior pages but I’m sure you get the point. This was one of the most appropriate front pages I’ve seen, and I’m the type of history freak that reads old newspapers for fun. I rarely go out of my way to praise the NYT, but fair is fair. It would take the effort of a much better writer than I to make the point any sharper.

Yesterday, I had an online conversation with a friend who is a veteran of our recent middle eastern activities, who, by the way, was wounded in the war. I don’t think he is a hero for having been wounded. I think he’s a hero for having been there in the first place.

Be that as it may, we discussed the Times’ use of the word “incalculable.” Obviously, if there’s a list, the number is calculable. That’s true, but I don’t think that was the point. I said it was the loss itself that was incalculable and not simply the number who have died thus far. For every name listed, there are an incalculable number of people who are severely impacted: friends, co-workers, family, online correspondents, vendors dependent upon their business, brothers and sisters in arms, teachers, nurses and physicians and others who have been there in your support system for years, and so on. The impact is truly overwhelming, particularly as it’s all been within the past ten weeks or so.

His initial thought was significant: we should be specific in our rhetoric. Damn near everybody has suffered a loss in this pandemic, and most of those who haven’t probably will before it’s all over. We bitch about our inconveniences, but we are still here to complain. In no way does that make the rest of us heroes. We are survivors, and we should be proud of that. Or, at the very least, appreciative.

We are living through a history we will tell our grandchildren about. My maternal grandfather died of the Spanish influenza that followed World War I, when my mother was about three years old. It took me quite a while to piece together that story. Today, history is no longer written by the winners — history is written every moment of every day, in print and online, with audio and video to flesh out the static pictures and provide a more accurate view, in the aggregate, for future generations.

I am fond of quoting philosopher George Santayana’s well-known aphorism “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I say “well-known,” but I remain amazed by how often I read the words of people in power who simply do not get that. I can’t understand why. Maybe power tends to erode reason.

Maybe it’s more the quest for power that erodes reason, particularly when that power is defined by money.

Yesterday, the New York Times made Memorial Day all the more memorable. Maybe we can’t avoid such disaster, but there is a great, great deal we can do to minimize the damage.

True to the present name for this holiday, we must never forget.