And we'll find you a leader that you can elect

[sovay]

This administration has run so hard from the start on leaded fantasies, the presence of a fossil fuel in its latest scream for the headlines seems macabrely apropos. Oil is indeed a lucratively unrenewable resource, but aren't those equally heady fumes of the Banana Wars and Neptune Spear? In my own throwback to the twentieth century, I haven't been able to get Phil Ochs out of my head. It was in another of his songs that I first heard of United Fruit. I live in endless echoes, but I am tired of these threadbare loops of empire that were already sticky shed and vinegar when another fluffer of American exceptional stupidity hung out his banner of a mission very much not accomplished. Is it the Crusades this time or Manifest Destiny? War Plan Red hasn't panned out so far, but we can always rebrand the Monroe Doctrine. Colombia! Cuba! Greenland! Daddy's shadow and Deus vult. "Every generation of Centauri mourns for the golden days when their power was like unto the gods! It's counterproductive! I mean, why make history if you fail to learn by it?" I was thirteen when I heard that line and I understood the question. Who knew I was going to spend the rest of my life finding out just how many people were never even interested in trying?

Comments

[sabotabby]

This is so bleak. Just the confluence of every bad tendency the death cult has.

[sovay]

This is so bleak. Just the confluence of every bad tendency the death cult has.

Why can't the trash take itself out without taking anyone else with it?

(I deal very poorly with the sheer unnecessariness of this murderously stupid situation. We did not need to be here. It maddens me that we are.)

[dewline]

Because taking other (unwilling and undeserving) people out with them is part of the pleasure of being the trash.

[sovay]

Because taking other (unwilling and undeserving) people out with them is part of the pleasure of being the trash.

I believe you were trying to be helpful rather than the opposite, but truly it is not a question for which I had no answer available to me. I do not like the collateral damage and I express it in the form of rhetorical frustration. It is not a cry of unknowing.

[dewline]

For my part, I was venting my frustration at being also being among "the anyone else"...yet again.

[sovay]

For my part, I was venting my frustration at being also being among "the anyone else"...yet again.

Thank you for clarifying. Everyone is gun-shy including me. I ran recently into a blast of "naive [second person address] American who has never had to learn how the world works" and did not want to be further explained to.

[shewhomust]

Not just me that's been earwormed by that one, then? Ssso many lines are just so spot on just now: We own half the world, oh say can you see/ The name for our profits is democracy...

[sovay]

Not just me that's been earwormed by that one, then? Ssso many lines are just so spot on just now

"Those treaties we signed were a pain in the neck!"

[asakiyume]

Part of growing old is seeing people do things over and over and over and thinking, For crying out loud! Did you learn nothing? ... But I guess what they learned was how much they loved the smell of death and collapse.

[sovay]

But I guess what they learned was how much they loved the smell of death and collapse.

Well, as is the tradition, may they choke on it.

[sabotabby]

This.

I feel so fucking old.

[sovay]

I feel so fucking old.

My entire political, i.e. adult life has been dominated by the delusional fragilities of men I didn't vote for with intermittent spasms of damage control. (My childhood was the Reagan era, so it's not like it was a golden age, either. I just had less ability to participate against it.) This seems an unreasonable way to conduct a society.

[sabotabby]

Life is a playground for 500 guys, the rest of us are just staff.

[sovay]

the rest of us are just staff.

General strike.

[sabotabby]

Agreed.

[minoanmiss]

Ugh, so true, so very true.

[sovay]

Ugh, so true, so very true.

*hugs*

It does not thrill me.

[gwynnega]

It would be nice if Phil Ochs could ever sound dated, but that never seems to happen.

[sovay]

It would be nice if Phil Ochs could ever sound dated, but that never seems to happen.

He'd be so pissed about it!

[chomiji]

I find myself thinking of a song sung by a local folk group when I was in my 20s and on my first job, and our government was again diddling around in Latin America:

Only 25 million dollars for El Salvador
That's all we're gonna spend, and not a penny more!
And if 'n we don't win
We'll git out and never go back in —
And if you believe that bullshit, well, I'll tell you more!

[sovay]

And if 'n we don't win
We'll git out and never go back in —
And if you believe that bullshit, well, I'll tell you more!

That sounds like something Pete Seeger could have collected in his Report from the Marianas (1945). Also horrifyingly timeless!