The Patriots at the HuffpoYou can sense how much they really despise the Fourth of July, with all its expressions of love of country.
Jesse Kornbluth wants us to know that his allegiance is to the planet. How Terracentric of him! Is Earth any better than Mars? And get this little non-sequitur:
George Bush, recently 60, holds the ultimate elder's job, but he's no elder. He was drunk and disorderly for the entire war that defined the character of our generation. He has always surrounded himself with men who ditched school the day the other kids learned about cause-and-effect. And now, with language no elder would use, he wages a war that must remind everyone his own age of the one we lost.
But Bush performs a necessary service, if only for his --- and my --- generation. He's a daily reminder that while he fueled his aggression, we smoked the peace pipe, put our heads between speakers and heard home-rolled mantras, took the magic pills and had visions that changed us in fundamental ways --- we learned to value right livelihood, to seek our own answers, to take the long view.Ah, yes, drug abuse as representing personal transformation. It wasn't a very compelling argument 30 years ago; now it's quaint.
Marty Kaplan sheds a tear
for lost opportunities:
We were one after 9/11. It's not hard to imagine an alternate history that might have followed that awful day -- one that united us behind energy independence and shared sacrifice, that united the world to fight global warming, that didn't squander American unity on a stupefyingly misconceived and divisive war, that didn't calculatedly enflame every hateful polarizing wedge issue in the culture wars.Personally I had hoped that we would all unite after 9-11 to say enough of the New York Yankees buying pennants, but Marty Kaplan had another agenda. But you're perfect, Marty, don't you ever change!
Gene Stone says the
opposite to America: You're perfect, so change.
As I grew older my love of the country also grew, but the expression of that love differed from Oscar's. College meant years protesting American involvement in Vietnam. Next followed protests for civil rights, and against Nixon, and then against Reagan, and for women's rights, and then against Bush, and then for gay rights; then protests against the next Bush, and then against the war in Iraq.And soon to come, protests for animal rights!
Christopher Durang
has similar thoughts.
And so when my generation looked at Vietnam, unconsciously we felt it was hard only to obey, obedience in every single instance had been pointed out to be wrong in Nuremburg. There were times you had to say, this is an order I won't obey. I am NOT saying the Vietnam war is the moral equivalent of Nazi Germany's actions. But I am saying that draft age men like myself found ourselves saying "Why are we in Vietnam?" in an uncertain voice; we had sort of missed the lead up to it. And the answers coming back were confusing and debatable. It was hard to sit there going, Well this doesn't sound right, but I think I'll go kill and maybe die in it anyway. Obedience was no longer the prime virtue. Individuals had to know when to say no.Beginning to sense a theme here? Yep, all these dolts are stuck in 1968. One, two, three, four, we don't want your stinking war! Five, six, seven, eight, it's the American flag we really hate!
