TBT: The Brutal Truth

And Yet Another Kick In Cohen's Ass

Three words for you - William Rivers Pitt:

You speak of the angry mob because you got slapped around via email, but your characterization of the anti-war crowd tells me you have not spent a single moment out in the streets with them. I have. I have covered dozens of protests, large and small, in cities all across this country before and after the invasion of Iraq. Millions upon millions of Americans participated in these, and never once, not one time, was a rock thrown.

No violence was offered anywhere, unless it was violence offered to old ladies by riot-garbed police, as was evidenced in Portland several years ago. I have the photographs to prove it. If you want to see anger, enjoy this picture of a 60-year-old woman holding an anti-war sign while being placed in a hammer-lock by a riot cop.

"The hatred is back," you say, as if such hatred is beyond justification. It is interesting that you make so many allusions to Vietnam; the comparison is apt, yet not on point. This is not a situation of "Then" and "Now," but "Then" and "Again." The two issues are joined by a common theme: official malfeasance, presidential lies, administrative fear-mongering and horrific body counts in a faraway land. The lesson of Vietnam was so searing, many believed, that it would never have to be learned again.

Why the anger? Because that lesson didn't take, at least with this crowd. Why the anger? Because millions of people are staggered by the idea that, yes Virginia, we have to go through this again. We have to watch soldiers slaughter and be slaughtered for reasons that bear no markings of truth. We have to watch the reputation of this great nation be savaged. We have to watch as our leaders lie to us with their bare faces hanging out.

Why the anger? It can be summed up in one run-on sentence: We have lost two towers in New York, a part of the Pentagon, an important American city called New Orleans, our economic solvency, our global reputation, our moral authority, our children's future, we have lost tens of thousands of American soldiers to death and grievous injury, we must endure the Abramoffs and the Cunninghams and the Libbys and the whores and the bribes and the utter corruption, we must contemplate the staggering depth of the hole we have been hurled down into, and we expect little to no help from the mainstream DC press, whose lazy go-along-to-get-along cocktail-circuit mentality allowed so much of this to happen because they failed comprehensively to DO THEIR JOB. (emphesis mine)

I'll add the following run on sentence that's sure to make all the CEOs of the top multinational corporations quake in their golf shoes: Between now and 2013 -- despite the efforts of every corrupt and complacent sonoafbitch in Washington D.C. today cashing in every single solitary political, personal, or sexual favor they've amassed during this Administration's belligerence upon the people in order to stop it all -- the Fairness Doctrine will be reinstated, the 1996 Deregulation Act will be repealed, and the filthy, Godless, fake Christian, Republican rich (and some Democratic rich) will be paying immensely to provide any and all ammount of welfare entitlements for the poor, welfare entitlements to the elderly, welfare entitlements to the people of New Orleans, welfare entitlements to the physically or mentally broken soldiers that manage to come home intact from George W. Hitler's middle-east misadventure (fuck Godwin - he didn't sign the Constitution), and it will happen either by ballots (after the people forcibly re-insert the Democratic Party's spinal collumn over the next few years), or by the people's passion for good old fashioned bullets and shoe leather.

It will happen simply because the people are tired of greasing their squeaky wheels and will be more apt to replace them over and over again until they get a wheel that doesn't squeak. It'll happen simply because there'll still be too many angry unwashed faces by then ... and still not enough birdshot.

(A Twirl Of The Tinhat To: Gordon)

posted by Sizemore at 4:22 PM

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