We Interrupt This Brief Period of Sanity….

’Tis the Season
to bomb the Heathens.

O target city of Tehran
Not for long will you live
Above thy dark and cloud less sky
The bombers fly by
For over dark streets explodith
A big ass nuclear bomb
Neocon insanity and fears from the years
Are ignited in thee tonight

Neo-Cons are coming to town, Neo-cons are coming…to Bomb!

(I can’t remember how the whole song goes, thankfully. I hate Xmas carols. I know it starts with “you better not” and have forgotten the rest. )

Alan Kuperman…of UT/LBJ school? Oh right, the guy who dismisses any culpability on the part of the US or the rest of the world for Rwandan genocide by saying “we couldn’t have done anything, anyway”. Entertaining chap, that Kuperman.

@SanFranLefty: The best part of the most popular ditties? The kids have changed all the lyrics to mostly inappropriate circumstances involving Santa, reindeer and flatulence.

The Bob Dylan christmas album is a tour de force. You have to wonder, when he croonscroaks I’ll be home, for Christmas whether it is a promise – or a threat. A classic.

Hey, now I see on the Amazon linque anime… better than bad pron.

@Nabisco: Let’s see how far I can get from memory…

Jingle Bells
Batman smells
Robin laid an egg

Batmobile
lost its wheel
and the Commissioner ran away

Here the recording ends as the singer says “Rosebud” and croaks.

He goes to Lieberman’s temple, Beth Stupid.

@Dodgerblue: COTD.

@nojo:

Jingle Bells
Santa Smells
Rudolf Ran Away
Oh what fun it is to ride
in a fucked-up Chevrolet

Sorry but this picture is not OK. That is a real child who died in the real world. We are privileged people who seem to think ourselves better than our government. Peace on earth. May you never have a bomb shelter in your back yard.

You straights feel yourself so superior to us gays. And look at what you do. I can’t be glib. I will not be made complicit in this.

I would urge the hamsters to purge this post. Dead child porn don’t cut it.

We did this. The dead child. I quote from a recent post at Inside Iraq:

Today was one more deadly day in Iraq. Five suicide car bombs claimed the lives of more than 100 innocent Iraqis. People did nothing wrong but being at the wrong place at the wrong time. As we Muslims say, its their destiny which took them there where they lived their last moments, the moments before their bodies turn into small parts flying in the air because of the birds of death sent by some human brutes. Those who were lucky were wounded but still alive. The news talk about more than 400 people wounded and I am sure dozens of them lost some of their organs but they will accept that because at least they are alive. Others who were luckier survived but they will live for a while with the image of death dancing in their minds and dreams. It is not nice dancing in any way.

Rest In Peace Our Dear Brothers. You Will Be Always In Our Hearts and Minds.

We did this. The dead child. The ruined country. Happy Christmas.

Goodnight.

I’m with Benedick. I can’t bear it. I look at him and think of my new son, Mr Cyn jr abd want to cry.

All right, the time has come for us to stop beating ourselves up over the actions of an oligarchy that has taken over our country, and to be accurate, most of the countries in the world.

Its just conscience-salving hair-shirt-donning, and its a cheap means of achieving satisfying feelings of moral superiority, and its also completely unwarranted, on many levels.

On the grand historical level, war is and always has been the sport of power and money, and the powerful brainwash and use the regular people, in the middle ages, the serfs and commoners, in our days, the poor young fuckwads with no intelligence or education who have nothing in their lives and no future but to join the army, to further their war games, and its not even the fault of those poor fucking kids over their shooting. They are pawns, and its not some new kind of evil fascism that makes them do it, its exactly the same dynamic that has driven people to fight wars since time began. And as for us, who know better, we are helpless, and there is nothing we can do, and dammit, we are not complicit.

Nabisco, I love you, but beating ourselves up for NOT STOPPING ethnic and tribal warfare is even less warranted. We didn’t colonize Uganda and Kenya, and use tribal divides for our purposes, and then leave and leave behind that shit, and could we have stopped it? Shit, we have 100,000 troops in Iraq and cannot stop Iraqis from bombing other Iraqis, and thats our government, you and I, as individual, moral human beings, have no need to beat ourselves up about the Hutu and Tutsi.

So, we are not in power, we are bystanders watching the powerful wage their wars, and we are right to be horrified and angry, but we are not responsible. Just as throughout history, there have been enlightened, but powerless people who could do nothing but cry inside when wars happened, its the fucking world, its the fucking world, its fucking humanity, since the beginning it has been thus.

I am angry, and please, all you guys, please understand, I am angry because I cannot abide seeing you, the best people I know, blaming and beating up yourselves for the misery in the world.

You all are exactly as morally responsible for the acts of our government, as that dead child is for the acts of the Iraqi people who are engaged in whatever motivates one Iraqi to bomb other Iraqis. And that dead child is totally innocent. Its his parents issues that killed him.

We cannot stop it. The children of the bombers could not stop it either, the children of the al queda who get killed in our missile attacks could not stop their parents involvement in their cause, which is also a violent cause. The peaceful people of Iran are not responsible for their government’s repression and belligerance, the peaceful people of Israel are not responsible for the acts of Israel, the peaceful people of nazi germany were not responsible for the acts of those who joined in the murder, the peaceful people of Japan were not responsible for the Rape of Nanking.

I feel like Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, “its not your fault, its not your fault.”

Christmas is a made-up holiday, based on myths invented by followers of the Jew, Jesus, in order to provide a basis for his divinity, which they believed in.

But that does not mean that its a worthless sham, if somehow through it people at least once a year, are encouraged to consider some of what Jesus the jewish rabbi taught to his jewish followers, that hate must stop, that all people are worthy of reverence as our brothers and sisters, that the core of morality is to forgive, always, and to treat all others as you would have them treat you, and that you should never respond to violence or hate with violence or hate.

I know, helplessness leads to self-hate. Its evil, I cannot stop it, therefore I am evil.

Its not true. Its not your fault.

Fuck christianity, I am not giving a sermon, but I am jarred at this, well, anger and hate, and even self-loathing, here, now, tonight.

Its not because its a christian fairy tale holiday that I wish I were seeing you all expressing positive things like love and charity and forgiveness tonight, its just that, well, when you have an excuse to do it, you should grab it. So what if its a silly myth.

You know whats the really remarkable thing about “A Christmas Carol,” and the story of Scrooge and Cratchit? There is almost no christianity in it, is there? There is no christian preaching, not hardly, considering the world that piece of fiction came from. Its solely concerned with the redemptive power of love, and the evil, soul-killing effect of selfshness and greed. In the story, Jesus did not save Scrooge, christianity did not save him, no, the ghosts that visited him simply gave him a lesson in mindfulness, and showed a lesson of where selfish greed and hatefulness leads, and what comes of love and charity and selflessness.

Just tonight, can you all grasp that? I don’t mean that sense of “grasp” that means “understand,” I know you understand, I mean grasp hold of it like a piece of flotsam that will keep you afloat in this world of evil. Grasp it like you would grasp a life ring if you were drowning. Find the peace that comes with giving love in the world and people around you, and don’t find reasons to despair that it will do no good.

If you look at, and concentrate on, all the enormous evil in the world, it makes what little you can do look useless and not worth the effort. But the thing is, it is always worth the effort, every smile you can give to a fellow soul, is worth the effort of the smile, every act of small, petty forgiveness, charity, and understanding, is worth it, its the tiny things that give the soul the hope to go on.

I love you all.

@Promnight: Thank you Prommie. My darkest of days when the black dog is barking at me is when I get overwhelmed by all the suffering and evil and terror in the world and feel so utterly helpless and hopeless as to what I can do and how what I do personally and professionally to try to make an improvement isn’t working. Thank you for the reminder that I shouldn’t feel that it’s my fault.

But I often feel that there are only a few of us paying attention and getting outraged as others bumble in oblivion. So I feel that having knowledgeof terrible things but not doing enough to stop it makes me complicit in it.

Good night and happy Jesus birthday.

@Benedick is Danny Tanner: apologize, my prior comment was flip. The photo was jarring and disturbing – but how many Americans have seen the graphic and real effect of our country’s actions? That child was someone’s little boy, nursed to life and childhood. It is a terrible loss that his family will never get over. But that’s not how it’s presented or registered – it’s presented as “80 people were killed in a drone
attack on a #3 in Al-Qaeda” [ever notice the #3 has been killed 15 times?]

people can’t process that one horrible tragedy times 100,000 or 6 million – we can try but if we absorbed and processed it the same way we’d be overloaded. Psychological studies show it over and over. It works when it comes to helping suffering people. Nicholas Kristof wrote a column a few years ago called “Save the Darfur Puppy” – that people become paralyzed and hopeless when told 1 million refugees are on the brink of death, but if an injured dog’s plight is highlighted on tevee they rush in with donations and help. It’s not that they value the dog more than the Sudanese but that it’s manageable. That’s why the Times’ neediest cases fund presents individual stories. Because if they said over and over that for all of NYC’s wealth, close to 50% of the children live in poverty and 20% don’t haveenough food, we’d be overwhelmed at the size of the task at hand. But if we are told the Johnson family needs $200 so their 7 year old can get glasses, that’s doable. It may not be the grand scale of change we would want if we could wave a wand an magically fix it, but in the life of that child you just made it possible fo him to learn and read. And for that kid, you made a difference. I’ve come to that realization in my work – I can’t fix everything, but for my clients, I’ve made their lives less shitty. I guess it’s the campfire rule of life.

I don’t know. I’m babbling and I’m stone cold sober. I guess what I want to say, Benedick, not as elegantly as Prommy, is that it’s not that we dint care or feel superior. I am horrified by what my government did and continues to do in the name of my security by killing innocent children such as him. I’m reading a book set in Tehran and it’s horrifying this douchebag wants to bomb an amazing country with a rich culture and creative people. But what else can I do? I write letters and emails to papers and my elected representatives, I march in the streets (including carrying a coffin through midtown during the 2004 RNC convention, I’ve screamed on top of my lungs. Nobody is listening to people like me. So what else is there to do? Should I end it all so I no longer feel so much pain and suffering of others? Or do I soldier on, continue to raise my voice, find likeminded comrades, and look for joy and happiness wherever I may find it – a nice glass of wine, a stirring piece by Bach, the sunset over the Pacific, the toddler on the bus smiling and waving at me? I choose the latter, I choose to strive each day to survive and make things a little better even if it’s only for the people around me. To do otherwise would fall into a paralysis of overwhelming helplessness and despair.

Now I’m really babbling. It’s hard to post from a handheld and im not even in a tittie bar like Tommy was.

I’m going to take an Ambien and listen to some Coltrane.

I’m really glad to have y’all around. Happy Jesus Birthday!

The picture is actually quite tame compared to much of what’s out there. Wars are possible because we bury our heads int he sand about their consequences, and our national media is complicit. The horror of war is mostly hidden from view. That’s why the New York Times can get away with running warmongering editorials like the above.

I have a 5 year old and a two year old, myself. The only difference is I live in the U.S. and not Iraq, so my child is mostly safe from the neo-Con’s bombs.

@Promnight: In other words,

Where do you think you’re going? Nobody’s leaving. Nobody’s walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no. We’re all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We’re gonna press on, and we’re gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he’s gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.

/Griswold

@Jamie Sommers: No, not neccessarily happy, but I hope not guilty. Finding faith in the purpose of life, more importantly, the purpose of your own life, in this world, is serious work.

The purpose is to prevail, live justly, find joy, and be kind. I’m just saying don’t turn up your nose at Christmas as a time that can help one to see that, even if you don’t believe in it.

To me, Christmas is a time when I stop trying to convince my relatives of the errors of their thinking, I just try to get them to shut up about it, and it works. Thats something, anyway.

No. We did this. You and me. We allowed this. We did not storm the Capitol. We did nothing. We are all responsible. Thousands – tens of thousands – died.

Dead child becomes an amusement? Fuck you.

@Benedick is Danny Tanner: I have to agree. We citizens of this nation share the responsibility with the officials we elected and with the military we support with both our tax dollars and our children. We can’t act like our civic responsibility ends when we exit the voting booth. That’s the attitude of detachment that has gotten the US where we are now, the 21st century’s version of the barbarian hordes.

@Benedick is Danny Tanner: So what should I have done? Thrown the coffin down in the middle of 8th Avenue, stormed the barriers at MSG and kept going until my hands were wrapped around Cheney’s throat and I was shot dead? Did you have my back for that suicide mission? And what would it have accomplished? Don’t hurt yourself falling off your own high horse, my friend. And happy Jeebus birthday to you and the OH.

@SanFranLefty: Yes. That’s what you should have done.

@Benedick is Danny Tanner: Sorry. I guess I wanted to live. I thought marching and screaming was enough. I didn’t know I had to do suicidal jihad to be pure enough to criticize. I guess I’m too civilized and not commited enough.

This picture is as important as this picture, but just slapping it up there without more information/context makes it seem like dead child porn. Remember this? We needed to see that.

Yes, we are responsible, complicit — we haven’t done enough. But without photos, those people are just. so. far. away. And my WiiMote is right here, so I’ll focus on that. We need to be slapped in the face with the high price of war — collateral takes on new meaning.

Picture should stay but maybe be after the jump with a warning and some information about this child who died. What was this child’s name?

@SanFranLefty: You (the general “you”) are responsible for these crimes only if you had the ability to stop them, and none of us had or has the ability to stop them.

The world is full of shit completely beyond our ability to control.

Anyone, you Benedick, who feels personally responsible, you are whipping yourself for not doing something you could not have done anyway.

What is a moral and decent human to do when they find themself part of a society gone insane and doing evil things?

You can martyr yourself, as in animal house, you can decide its time for a futile gesture, and die, and the evil goes on anyway.

Or you can do the only thing you can, live rightly, espouse rightness, and keep alive enlightened thought and culture so that, whenever it inevitably comes to pass, that the current madness ends, the traditions and beliefs and moral compass is still alive and vital in society.

We could pool our resources, buy a small island, or a ship, set up a society, remove ourselves from this one, so we are not contributing with our taxes, but really, if you believe you are responsible now, how does dropping out, emigrating, assuage that guilt you feel anyway? That would just be running from the fight.

Martyrdom does nothing to stop it, emigration does nothing to stop it, going to jail for not paying taxes does nothing to stop it.

Staying and resisting and being the opposing, moral component of society, is all you can do.

And how can you continue to have the courage and conviction to even do that, if you still think that even then, you are complicit and guilty?

You know, a guy I once knew who started a small business, grew it until it was pretty big, until he owned lots of houses and had this big independant retail business, so big it was actually the only big succesful business keeping my home town’s dying commercial center alive, he was doing well, he once told me “how to get rich.” He said “watch what poor people do, and don’t do that.”

Well, the moral equivalent to that advice, which I think is morally valid, is, in answer to the question “how do I remain moral in an immoral society,” is to believe that the answer is, watch what the immoral people do, and don’t do that.”

Benedick, I admire you as an intelligent, talented, moral, kind, good man.

That element of our society which is truly morally responsible for our wars, our corruption, our lack of charity towards the poor and flawed, our racism and intolerance and sexism and bigotry and homophobia, that element of society, they hate you. They do not think you a “real american,” they do not think you one of them, they despise you as an elite, a homosexual, an artist, a liberal, they despise you for pretty much everything that makes you better than they are, which is usual, for the petty and ignorant, they do despise those whom they know deep inside are their betters.

The point I am making, Benedick, is that those who truly are responsible for our society’s crimes, they don’t think you are one of them.

They know you are their enemy, and that alone should be enough to tell you that you are not responsible for their acts, you understand?

If they don’t feel you are one of them, and they are the ones responsible, that means you cannot possibly share their responsibility. If they regard you as their enemy, that means that by your very being and living, with your ideals and beliefs that they hate, you have opposed them as much as one person can.

And the more of us there are, who simply live honest and open lives in accordance with our ideals that they hate, the better our society will become, just by being, Benedick, you defy them, you defy them, and that irks them and they hate it, and thats oour job and our purpose, just to be and live our beliefs that they hate.

@Benedick is Danny Tanner: BTW I don’t think anyone is viewing this photo as amusement. It’s what our US ‘Merikan media won’t show us. The great Brand W exodus of the Stinquers began because Megan was showing graphic photos of the “collateral damage” of Bhutto’s assasination. There is nothing but sadness directed at thischild from this crowd. And I’m sure Serolf is fully able to defen his editorial choices. This is the man who did more than anyone else to raise awareness of Esmerelda (sp?) Flores’ murder by right wing insanity than anyone else. His intentions are sincere.

Being a child of the Vietnam era, I’m of the camp that says hiding the consequences of our actions will only prolong them.

Most of us here have been around long enough to witness the methodical removal of state-sponsored violence from tender American eyes. My memory dates it to Desert Storm, but it may go back to Reagan. One of the lessons of Vietnam was never to let a photo of Napalm Girl get in the way of policy.

i totally agree with nojo. we grew up seeing images like this on the news every single night. it is that place of rage that benedick is ranting from that ultimately stopped the war in viet nam. i’ve been wandering around for years asking college aged friends, why aren’t you outraged? why are you not taking to the streets? the answer, of course, is this war has been sanitized by the media. it’s why rosie o’donnel walked up to rupert murdoch at a luncheon and simply said, “blow me” i love her for that.
i’m with benedick in my outrage, but not because this photo was shown, but because more photos aren’t shown.
did you see barry and mo give their cheery little holiday greeting?
all good tidings, and btw, we wish for the safety of the 30 thousand more troops i’m sending over there, merry christmas!!!
made me want to throw up.