- Something to think about... (Please read below) ________________________________________________ Russell Fuller - July 15 at 6:14pm JFK drew me into a consciousness of politics and the idea that I might become a warrior for peace, that I might really make a difference. I began sun-fishing, with a single sail, in a river of hope. Then I saw leaders I admired get assassinated and roll down the banks, one by one, and into the bloodstained water. I saw leaders in the Civil Rights movement gunned down as Jim Crow laws had long prevailed and whites were doing their best to prevent integration. I saw so many people beaten, treated worse than junkyard dogs, in both the Civil Rights and Antiwar movements. Saw some of the "best minds of my generation"... On and on and on it's gone, the homicides, suicides, the killing of one another—racial fratricide, the constant purchase of more guns after every national tragedy, as if having more guns than citizens will protect anyone. I saw "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" become an afterthought to safety, better safe than sorry, see something say something, just fuckin' rat out anyone you can 'cause everyone's suspicious. The neighbors all said of one serial killer after another, one kidnapper or rapist after another, "He seemed like such a nice man," "He seemed to keep to himself a lot, but we didn't think anything of it," "He seemed" like this or that because we neighbors didn't know, never got to know him, but from a distance, "He seemed ... normal." We have sold weapons to almost every nation and rebel group who could pay, perhaps the most to Saudi Arabia, the country that most strictly observes Sharia Law. And We the People are scared nearly to death of Sharia Law but don't know much about it. We frightened citizens don't protest that every president in memory has annually sold many billions of dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Jimmy Carter TRIED not to do it but was completely overrun by all the deals already in place. We don't sell to Israel. Israel's our special friend, our pet project, our pet, our proxy. Call it Little America. Because we know it's so blessed to GIVE, to Israel we have given aid in the form of an Air Force, nuclear weaponry, training and so on, enough to dominate the Middle East from the Jewish perspective, as we've helped Saudi Arabia dominate from the Arab perspective. There was some Cold War-like balance until the Christians, with their banner raised high behind George W. Bush, who pronounced God to be on His side and proceeded to destroy Iraq and loose every demon from Pandora's Middle Eastern Box. I felt like I was the only one sickened to my soul to see George W. Bush, the dunce we installed as president for not one but TWO terms, KISSING the King of Saudi Arabia and holding his hand at Bush's ranch in Texas. Oh, plenty of others were outraged, I'm sure, but their collective voice was too muffled for anyone in Congress, for example, to hear. We love the violence, the guns, the bombs, the drones. We eat it up all day long. "Bomb the shit out of them," says the postman and the presidential candidate. No matter how many millions of foreign citizens we've driven from their homes as our killing machine stalked them at close range, we're not keen on taking on any refugees. Just ask that guy at the gym, your baker or banker, your Congressman, your presidential candidate. If they got in the way of our bombs, well, whose fault is that? Stupid rag-heads. Instead, We the People buy more guns to keep us "safe." Ka-ching. This country was born in massive violence; we fought each other over slavery (mostly), calling on even brother to kill brother and father to slay son, and now with blood in our mouth from the taste of endless wars that once ended in "Victory!, we now think the Militia Amendment gives us the right to buy military assault weapons to "hunt" (that is, blow up animals) and "protect my family." Letting your family fend for itself might cut our annual gun deaths from thirty thousand to five, but we'll hear none of that. That's pussy logic. We're killing people all over the world so we "don't have to fight them here," but of course they're not coming here; we're just constantly ginning up the Offense Department and calling it Defense to keep funneling untold billions of dollars into the bottomless pockets of the rich. We go easy on the contraceptives. We use drones and moderate rebels to control world population. So we don't like Planned Parenthood. We need more soldiers. And what's to plan? You're either a mother or a murderer. Just have the kid, get a job, stay off welfare, and keep your mouth shut. Hey, your husband would be around to help if he didn't sell weed. Not our fault. Some fool, I guess it was Bill O’Reilly, King of the Fools in fact, tried to start the rumor that racism was a thing of the past in this country. Fox News, not The Onion. Not that Fox News is any more on the level than The Onion. And I guess all the dunces who receive the King’s trashy pranks as wisdom got right to work on that. But everyone familiar with our reality and history knows what we’ve done to blacks over the span of 400 years. We know racism is America’s original sin; it’s neither over nor going anywhere … anytime soon. And so we overcame our initial shock when O.J. Simpson beat the system, when ONE “ni***r” FINALLY beat the system the way whites had done for centuries, and black folk turned out by the millions, not just here but in Africa as well, to cheer and sing and dance deep into the dark-black night. They knew O.J. was guilty of course. What was important was that he beat the system, a black man beat the system, and we whites who knew they knew just had to stand there and suck it up—suck up centuries of grief and frustration and self-hatred, suck up all the voodoo fevers, howls, cries and whispers, all the blues songs ever written—and maybe force a smile. Used to be able to drink the water in the River of Hope. It was fresh, clean, healing. It was water to be baptized in, and it sparkled with promise, with hope. The river's down to little more than a trickle now, and it's poisoned with pesticides and other chemicals, with outdated medicines and runoff from one or another leaking well, with piss and shit and blood. JFK drew me into a consciousness of politics and the idea that I might become a warrior for peace, that I might really make a difference. Rest in Peace if you can, JFK. Rest in Peace if peace is still possible. And keep your powder dry. ________________________________________________