New and Old Odds and Ends

Bloggers tend to be thinkers, and thinkers tend to think about the larger subjects going on involving mankind and the world. We do not all agree, which should be appreciated as a most important teaching aid to each of us individually and to human progress throughout our past and into our future on this earth.

If you’re a thinker, life as you conceive it, probably tends to go on pretty much the same, but the way you think old thoughts often changes as well, so that you feel even more strongly about a subject, or you find yourself looking at it through a newly opened door or without the hindrance of a fence or wall that used to be there. So that’s what I will be writing about, and I may find myself hopping around from one subject to another, and then back again.

The thing that continues to bother me above all others is Bush’s motivation for his war on Iraq. As far as I can tell, the events of 9/11 were the start of it all. I distinctly remember that after Bush finished reading the upside down book to the children’s class, he rushed to New York City, as he should have. However, that famous photo of him bounding to the top of a pile of debris and putting his arm around a fireman for a photo-op was a picture of a changed man. He wore his famous smirk, and the letters EGO appeared to hang in the air above him. From that day to this, he has reminded us that his main job is to protect the American people.

In order to protect someone, you have to have enemies, and up until then, he didn’t even know for sure who the enemies were. So he made some up—Iraq. And now we are their enemies too. And the way to make sure that we have enemies is to continue to make enemies of them. After all, you can’t be victorious and a hero if you don’t continue to vanquish them and then show how magnanimous you are by deciding what kind of government they will have in the future. (That might be difficult, but be sure you at least carry it out till the end of your time in office. In that way, you can ride off into the sunset as the victorious hero who has protected his people. Although, if it goes badly enough, you might decide to sacrifice your deserved retirement in the service of your people and declare that you will spend another four years in office, in much the same way in which you have negated the wishes of Congress through signing statements appended to their legislation.)

So now, we have lots of enemies, many of them Americans who were born here and still live here. And, because many of us who are native-born have grown to at least no longer feel proud of our country as we know it now, we have become known as unpatriotic enemies too. Add to those the people who came here illegally, even if they love the world of Bush and his crew, and we have a whole slew of people who hate, not only our enemies abroad, but also a slew of enemies here at home, already at each other’s throats.