BY BOB BEARDEN
The beat goes on and the world gets a little more scary each day and our president and his cabal of advisors and macho cabinet CEOs are ramping up the rhetoric and the blowback is coming from Russia, Syria, ISIS and now the little toady dictator from North Korea is making threats.
Boy, howdy, ain’t America great again?
People are being slaughtered in Syria and diplomacy in our leaders is non-existent but the saber-rattling is bringing out all the wanna be Hitlers and Mussolinis and Pol Pots.
And who will suffer the consequences of a World War III? Well the Trumpster and his hench people have safe bunkers to hunker down in, but what about the rest of us? Well, our youth will be pumped up to be patriotic and go off to another bloody war and either get themselves killed or maimed and our VA hospitals will again be overwhelmed beyond their capabilities, but God is good – America is great again!
Don’t any of these clowns have a clue as to what they are causing to happen? Or do they actually care? I think not. Incompetency is a cancer that has totally infected our government and the way to appease the great unwashed has always been send a bunch of their kids to get themselves killed in a war that is totally unnecessary and America will be great again.
What a sad commentary on we humans that we can’t enjoy ourselves unless we are shooting at something or someone. We can’t feel good about ourselves unless we can find someway to make our penises grow big with firing off a bunch of Tomahawk missiles and killing a few people in the process.
What kind of world have we created for ourselves that it takes mayhem and watching people die needlessly to make us feel good about ourselves?
I am a veteran who comes from a long line of veterans. One of my step-brothers gave his life in World War II at the Battle of the Bulge. Every single member of my families that went to war came home a pacifist who hated the very thought of war. Why was that? Because they saw what war does to people and they saw their friends blown apart and die in their arms too many times. They had ceased to want to kill or be killed. Why can’t we get over our blood lust?
Why do we continue to let the arms dealers and the sellers of weapons of mass destruction dictate how we live and die?
“Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.”
– Carl Sandburg
“Let me live by the side of the road and be a friend to man!”
– Sam Walter Foss
When will killing something or someone cease to be an adrenalin rush? I am fearful that it never will be!
– Bob Bearden is a trustee of the Central Oklahoma Labor Federation and a member of Mayflower Congregational Church UCC in Oklahoma City
