Decoration Day, 2019
This essay began as a part of a post on enhydra lutris's open thread, but seemed inappropriate there. Deleting it didn't feel right, either. Perhaps there is no appropriate way to "celebrate" Memorial Day? Anyway, here it is, albeit somewhat in rougher form than most other caucus99percent.com essays.
In line with the Shah's recent post about US holidays' metamorphosing, Memorial Day was once Decoration Day. The observance was so called because people "decorated" the graves and tombs of their own loved ones who had join countless others in "the war dead." Cities and towns also "decorated" (odd word choice) public monuments to those who had "fallen" (died) in combat.
Perhaps "Decoration Day," evoked too unbearable a visual--flowers and flags at the grave of your own child or parent or sibling or spouse, or the parent(s) of your child(ren). In any event, the name was sanitized to reference some more generic kind of memorial of some kind, somewhere, to those fallen slaughtered in some war or other. Perhaps a white marble base topped by a generic soldier sitting tall astride a horse, sword at his waist.
Children, likely unaware of the significance, as they are of Ring Around the Rosy, sing- songed while bouncing a ball or jumping rope: "One, two, three, a nation. I received my confirmation on the Day of Decoration. One, two three a nation!" An all too common mash up God, jingoism and war dead, with perhaps a soupçon of Double Dutch, from happy, live children.
On this board, I have not very often used any of the words on George Carlin's list of seven words that he could not use on TV. Today, FUUUUUUUHHHHHHCKKKKKK that.
FUCK all warmongers, like Senators Lindsey Graham and the late John McCain, neither of whom ever met a blood bath they didn't try their best to sell to Americans; Hillary Clinton, about whom I need not say more; Colin Powell, who helped Bushco sell the Iraq invasion to Americans via a speech at the UN that Powell KNEW to be bs; Donald Trump; Barack Obama; both Georges Bush; all other warmongering Presidents and politicians; yellow propagandists journalists across the msm who beat the drum steadily for any war the establishment wants to wage. At least before Iraq, the msm also reported daily on the war itself, but that reportage has gone the way of the war tax. Why make war unpleasant for the folks back home?
Which reminds me:
A special FUCK you to news set cast member and serial sexual harasser, Matt Lauer, and the entire production team of the Today Show on Memorial Day 2003. On the Friday morning before Memorial Day, 2003, the very first Memorial Day after the U.S. had begun its criminal invasion of Iraq, the FUCKing Today Show opened its broadcast with the sound of a helicopter.
At the start of that Memorial Day weekend, I was certain of some news about the war in Iraq at last. However, it turned out to be a helicopter, carrying Matt Lauer over some highway or other, for that all-important birds' eye view of back-to-back vehicles. With all the forced enthusiasm he could muster, Lauer reported with fake cheer on traffic out of Manhattan at the dawn of the long weekend. Because, dear reader, what is Memorial Day weekend, after all, but the start of the unofficial summer season, a fitting time to live the slogan "Life's a Beach?" No, not the blood-soaked, corpse-cluttered D Day beach, you silly! The Hamptons, Baby. Or for the hoi polloi, teeming (sniff) Coney Island.
And yes, there were, in the later, non-news portion of the same broadcast, those reliably tear-jerking phone calls from members of the armed forces in Iraq, telling their loved ones in the US how totes tickety boo they were and promising reassuringly that they'd come home soon, safe and sound. Because, as Shah reminded us, "for the troops." Of course, a few of the troops would urinate on the bodies of those whom they'd recently corpsed (to coin a verb). Someone's son or daughter, or father or mother, or husband or lover, much as the troops themselves are.
Months later, Lauer's then co-host, the perennially-perky Katie Couric, made some sanitized reference to the role of media in the run up to that invasion. It was a very brief, non-committal nod to the criticism that media had been deservedly receiving from those civilians with a non-jingoistic view of contrived casus belli. IIRC, she wondered if media should maybe think or look into something or other before helping an administration sell a war to Americans. So FUCK her, too.
Oh, and most definitely FUCK Tim Russert, then head of NBC News and therefore the then sculptor of its agenda. Of course, Russert also hosted Meet the Press. Both during the run up to the invasion and after, MTP gave Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice (Condoleeza, not Susan) and others all the time that they wanted to try to pull Americans' collective chain about the war. Because, after all, even if war wasn't justified, isn't the world really better without all the adults and children who died, suffered and still suffer as a consequence of that invasion? Saddam Hussein?
Today, I perhaps especially wish that Woodrow Wilson, a rotter of a human, husband and President, gets FUCKED irredeemably, although I'm certain that he already has been. Then again, maybe not. Maybe the afterlife, if any, is even more unjust as this so-called life. But, I digress:
Adulterer, racist, propagandist and warmonger Wilson had his Democratic Congress pass the Espionage Act and also instituted the draft as part of the efforts of all those Congressional FUCKERS to take the US into war in Europe. But not before Democrat Wilson had won re-election on the cynical slogan, "He kept us out of war." (FUCK Edward Louis Bernays and that lot, too.)
Not only did World War I directly cause much death and destruction, as do all wars, but it made a local flu into a deadly pandemic as troops returned home from war to the US, Russia and other nations.
Decoration Day. Everyone gone to grave yards, every one, to place flags and flowers that will soon decay and desiccate.
When will they ever learn that war is the worst invention ever?
FUCK WAR AND FUCK ALL WAR MONGERS, WAR PROPAGANDISTS, WAR CHEERLEADERS AND ALL THEIR RESPECTIVE APOLOGISTS.
(If you are put off that I have, I confess, tried at some points in this essay to manipulate your emotions, sorry, not sorry.)
Props to people who protested war throughout their careers, despite personal cost, including World War II veteran, Pete Seeger:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYe-bLaqhhY&list=RDbYe-bLaqhhY&start_rad...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pojL_35QlSI]
This Dixie Chicks' song was written after the lead singer got excoriated for criticizing Bush over the Iraq War, while the Dixie Chicks were across the pond. About this song, Don Imus, who used to launch MSNBC's broadcasting day, growled disapprovingly, "That's about a quarter of a billion-dollar point they're making there."
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHQhVnBBUVM]
Did I mention FUCK Thomas Woodrow Wilson?
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFUTHcjiZGo&list=RDwFUTHcjiZGo&start_rad...
The 250 year-old, considerably less optimistic, version of When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.
Comments
Some appropriate links ...
Andrew Bacevich, The “Forever Wars” Enshrined: Visiting Mar-SAYLZ
Danny Sjursen at The American Conservative: Yes, My Fellow Soldiers Died in Vain
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpXaCBCNd9k width:500 height:300]
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
Thank you.
what is wrong with us
I repeat again
FUCK THIS SHIT
Furthering Unexamined Collective Knowledge
To Help Initiate Strategic
Shifts in Hierarchical Institutional Tyranny
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Thank you.
The replies are interesting
Thank you. Yes, they are.
Here's another...
for the 'FUCK' pile:
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Thank you.
No question: Trump is a far more blunt instrument than Obama and Bush.Than most Presidents, for that matter. However, when it comes to war and anything related to it, they all turn my stomach.
The owner of a political board on which I used to post once opined that only those who served in the military were patriotic: all others were nationalistic. That was circa 2005; and I still can't decide if she was correct. I do, however, consider Trump jingoistic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/us/politics/trump-vietnam-draft-exemp...
ETA: I had to check back to be certain, but my essay did put Trump on the FUCK pile by name, along with Obama and Bush.
Just another Chicken Hawk...
overcompensating for his own cowardice.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Like deserter from even the Texas Air National Guard (which
is different from the more familiar National Guard), George W. Bush. And chicken hawk Bill Clinton. And Hillary Clinton for that matter. (I don't for a second believe that she tried to enlist, but, even in her fairy tale, she was enlisting to "serve" as a lawyer, not to engage in combat.) And Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. (Does Biden get credit for a child's having served? Not in my book!) And Darth Cheney. So many politician/war mongers of that era.
Obama was lucky enough not to have been old enough to serve in the Vietnam War, although he still could have enlisted at any time after he did come of age, but did not. (By his account, he hung out on the Honolulu army base--but in an effort to grok what being a black man meant.) Obama was also lucky enough to have been a state senator and not a US senator when the votes on the Iraq War and the "War on Terror" were taken. That probably won him the Presidential primary. However, he did much later say that he probably would have voted for the war had he been in Congress then.
IOW, on two counts, Obomber escaped being a typical chicken hawk pol solely by virtue of NOT doing something. Classic
Obama0bama.Did O actually say
he would have voted for the war? My understanding is he said he would have voted against, but slightly qualified it by saying he didn't have the intel that US senators were looking at (which I take to mean he didn't want to be too critical of those senators who voted for it).
He said what I said he said.
https://www.factcheck.org/2016/09/obamas-war-stance-revisited/
BTW, that was the very first website that came up when I googled in order to reply to you definitively.
And he also said what you said.
And he also said other things.
Well, on Charlie Rose
your cite says, in a 2004 interview, Obama replied Yes, I would have voted against the (go to war) resolution.
He was against the Iraq War. On the record. In his public appearance at the Chicago rally in 2002, and again in an interview in 2004. Against the war.
Yet in your prior post you had said Obama later (post-2002) said he would have voted for it.
What am I missing here?
You are missing my apology for misreading. I'll now look for
another source.
duplicate post deleted.
duplicate post deleted.
My strong recollection is that, well after he became President,
Obama said that he probably would have voted for the Iraq War, had he been a Senator when the vote was taken. However, after a few minutes, I was unable to find a link to a quote like that made after he became President. I just don't want to spend more time looking. It's not as though he will run for public office again.
We do know that: Soon after taking office, he "surged" in Afghanistan, for no apparent reason and accomplished more casualties. He wanted to stay in Iraq beyond the exit date in the SOFA. He started armed conflicts in a number of other Middle Eastern nations. He increased serial drone murders exponentially.
Every Senator who ran for President in 2008 who was in Congress when that vote was taken voted for the war (with Biden and Hillary later blaming Bush for his and her vote.) Same for Kerry in 2004. Do I believe that Obama would have done the same? Of course, I do.
I don't take Obama at his word when he says that he equivocated about the evidence shown people who were Senators at the time only because he didn't want to hurt the Democratic ticket. But, EVERYONE knew that the "evidence" that Tenet put together because he was asked for it was a steaming pile. (IOW, Obama admitted he was deceptive about a war vote during an election season for selfish reasons? Wowza!)I think he may have been trying to have it every which way.
To show that he was too smart to be taken in by it, Colin Powell has said that he "made" Tenet sit right behind him while Powell was giving his garbage speech to the UN. He said that he wanted Tenet to be in camera range while he (Powell) was speaking so that people would know who was responsible for the info.(Funny thing. I watched Powell give that speech. My eyes were so laser focused on him that I never looked behind him or to his left or right.
However, all Powell's "cover story" told me was that Colin Powell knowingly helped Bushco sell a war, knowing full well that the only evidence to support the invasion was crap. And the only thing Powell cared about in that scenario was making sure he could point to Tenet later, if the camel dung hit the fan. And, when it did, that's exactly what Powell attempted.
Anyway, I think Obama's reference before voters to the evidence during election season in an attempt to cover up for Democrats who voted for the war was unspeakable.
People are rightfully angry about Trump doing that
But again they seem to have forgotten that previous presidents have pardoned war criminals by not prosecuting them. On torture Obama said that "yeah we tortured some folks, but let's just look forward." Torture is against so many laws here and elsewhere, but let's just try not to do that again shall we?
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
According to Amnesty, Obama did not even stop torture.
It continued in GITMO, which he had promised to close and, as CIC, had full power to close. While this is not what Amnesty International referred to, we all know he force fed prisoners who were on a hunger strike (think Gandhi), same as suffragettes were force feed near the turn of the last century when they refused to eat. So, he was both torturing and interfering with the right of the prisoners, many of whom WE had long since found INNOCENT, to make a political protest.
Torture also continued in "black holes" like Bagram.
Also didn't stop: extraordinary rendition, which I refer to as offshoring torture, so "folks" like Assad could torture them for us.
Amen
Millions are spent on Mums and other flowers this weekend only to be loaded up in a truck and hauled off to the dumps to decay and to be repeated again next year............
I see the cemetery draped out in flowers then the guys picking them off the 60,000 acres and thrown in their truck to be dumped in a pile back out of site. I rescue a few of the pots of mini roses to plant in my yard each year, but the mums are just cast aside.
Seems to be an apt metaphor for the lives of the men and women that are sent to fight in wars of the elite's choosing. The ones lucky enough to have made it back home are left with ruined lives that the elite don't think should have much money spent to heal their fractured minds and souls. I am seeing people talking about the tweets from thousands of people who answered the army when it asked how joining it benefited them. I hope that people will continue talking about past this weekend and that someone who is thinking of joining will rethink their decision. How many lives can be saved if we don't allow this to fade from memory?
Well done and I echo all the fucks you have given here.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Thank you.
I have been trying to keep all my replies respectful and brief. I do greatly appreciate your comment, though.
I had been under
the misimpression that Memorial Day began as a commemoration of the end of WW2 in Europe, so thanks for the clarification. Will have to look up whether we celebrated a specific V-E Day in the years immediately after May 1945, which I seem to recall we did. Such a commemoration is definitely still held in Russia, which bore the overwhelming brunt of the conflict against the Nazis.
As for presidents and war, I would want to separate a least a couple from the pack of warmongers. Maybe 3. FDR basically was in a tough position after 1940 with Hitler and the Nazis taking over Europe and posing a possible existential threat to democracy everywhere. Definitely he had no choice after Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war by Japan and Germany. Whether PH should have happened is another story, still controversy there. Ditto for the economic/resources pressure we put on Japan pre-PH.
Jimmy Carter and JFK are two other presidents who instincts were clearly to keep the US out of unnecessary wars. All 3 of these presidents I view as generally either antiwar in attitude or inclined not to easily accede to constant requests from the MIIC to militarily engage us overseas.
Thank you.
What the day used to be named and what people did on the day don't speak to the reason the commemoration was initiated. However, it seems to have begun during the Civil War, which may explain the plethora of Civil War memorials, in both the North and the South.
I agree as to Carter, who staunchly refused to be goaded into starting a war over the hostages, in which the hostages would have been the first of many victims, anyway. Likely, it was one of the things that cost him re-election, but only one. I am not sure about FDR or JFK, but debate is for another day.
Nicely done HAW
And may I join you in a big FUCK YOU to war mongering zealots who lie to us and tell us it's for our "defense".
FUCK that.
How about we just call today what it is: diversionary tactics so they can grind our lifeblood and our pocketbooks to a pulp.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Thank you.
In order to benefit themselves.
In any event, far be it from politicians to call things what they are. As an example, I give you the Patriot Act.
How could anyone continue to live
...in a country that killed your son, brother, father for a lie?
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
It's been done since the Revolutionary War.
Just ask slave owner Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, who bloviated about all men being created equal, with inalienable rights, including the right to liberty. That document supposedly justified an armed revolution.
After the sons and daughters of farmers, fishers, ministers, teachers, etc. defeated the comparatively mighty British military, the Framers "rewarded" them with a Constitution that, once ratified, allowed all of about 6% of the inhabitants of the thirteen states to vote and left intact the institution of slavery.
True enough.
But I still don't understand how people can dishonor their loved ones who were conscripted and then slaughtered for a lie, by continuing to live in such a country. To celebrate a Memorial Day in an active War Crimes Nation is, of course, completely depraved.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Memorial Day
Not entirely true.
I just rename the ones remembered: not "Givers of the Ultimate Sacrifice", but rather "the Ultimate Victims". Crime victims no less than the burgled, mugged, murdered, embezzled, etc. in civilian life. Only the identity of the victimizing criminals is different.
Then, I remember and mourn them.
This applies to the vast majority of those who died from military causes even after Vietnam, too. One can hardly blame folks for wanting to serve their mandated societal slavery in four years (a military stint) rather than decades (non-veteran college financing). The victimization is the same.
The victimizers are, too.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
most of us have no choice
Most of us ordinary non-university working-class Americans have no choice. Without a unusually prestigious master's degree and a working budget of many tens of thousands of dollars, no other nation on Earth wants us.
And after the 2016 election, I can't really blame them. No nation on Earth needs the horrid pseudo-choice that "election" represented, or any possible usufruct of the same. And the other nations of the world know it, too.
p.s. A certain irony, albeit none too delicious, exists whereby the Americans who can emigrate easily are members of the very class responsible for why these other countries don't want Americans......
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
I think
it may have something to do with psychological self-protection.
They need to feel that their loved one's death had some meaning, that they didn't die in vain.
"He died protecting democracy!" is a far more comforting thought than "He died while killing people in a far away country who never did anything to hurt us. He died to protect the financial interests of ChevronTexaco, and to enrich the owners of Boeing and Raytheon."
In fact, if we scratch the surface of the US people's sentimental devotion to the idea of American exceptionalism, I suspect that we'll find much the same psychological defense mechanism at work.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
That makes sense.
A sort of sublimation. There's comfort in that.
One person who could never find that comfort was Cindy Shehan, whose son was killed in the early days of the Iraq invasion. She repeatedly asked: "For what noble cause did my son die?"
To me, she was one of the few Americans who were asking the right questions. She was one of the only Americans asking any questions at all. She could never make herself believe that her son's death wasn't an utterly pointless waste. Which it was. She was also one of the few that got that right.
The rest, the Gold Star Families, became an obstacle to change in the US political system because their delusions were sacrosanct. They mustn't think their loved ones died in vain. Which they clearly did. The Deep State was able to hide behind them and continue their war crimes with no questions asked. The American people bought into this and never spoke the truth about the pointless waste of life and fortune they were paying for. That's how they lost their moral compasses and still can't seem to find them.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Cindy Sheehan
A new generation has the opportunity to become familiar with Cindy Sheehan. She's recently been speaking out against the US's interference in Venezuela and Iran, and American imperialism in general.
http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
She had a sudden awakening and did somegthing with it.
Thanks for the correct spelling.
I've been following her lately. She will make a difference in this world. And while her son did die for no meaningful reason, she's harnessed her own churning emotions and put them to work for the greater good, beginning at the top of the food chain where the big decisions are made.
That's something I truly admire.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
I consider anyone who enlisted in the US military
...after the Vietnam war to be a member of a war criminal organization. Really, any American who paid the costs for any recent US war is an enabler of war crimes.
The people who trained the soldier being pardoned, and the people who put him in a foreign country with a murder weapon are the war criminals. If they are not charged, then the soldier should not be charged. That is at the core of what his wife argued and I must agree.
It's a matter of reality, logic, and truth.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Thank you.
What measure of culpability those who enlist bear is a difficult subject.
Justice will not occur in my lifetime.
So, on Outrage Day (my name for Memorial Day) I drive out to the nearest desert and set fire to an old tire stuffed with Chinese-made American flags to mark the worth of the occasion.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
So far, justice has not come in anyone's lifetime.
Still, we carry on.
Outrage Day is a good name for Decoration Day.
I've never been to the Vietnam memorial.
I remember, though, the controversy over its design. I remember the outrage of the glorifiers who denounced it as a "black gash of shame". I remember, also, that unlike the glorifiers, I knew from the moment it was announced, from the very first sketch that was published, that it was a work of genius, a solemn monument, not to glory, nor to shame, but to loss and sorrow and grief: a memorial, not a recruiting station. To my knowledge, Maya Lin has never come close to producing anything comparable in her subsequent career -- she probably cares, but she shouldn't, having done this one, remarkable thing.
In the end, the glorifiers were thrown their bone, an addendum: a well-executed but pointless-in-the-context sculpture of heroic soldiers heroically heroing. A better addendum would be a sculpture of a man, on one knee, head bent in grief, hand on the wall.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Thank you. I've been. To my great surprise,
tears immediately started rolling down my cheeks and my knees turned to mush.
i almost cried just looking at the sketches.
everything a war memorial needs to be.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
HaW I can't help but thinking that your answers
to the comments you got in this thread don't represent what you really think. I rather wished you could speak out freely. Some of the comments here seem to me quite insensitive and anyone who had gone through combat situations in most fucking Iraq invasion war in 2003, would be hurt, when they would read them.
Tulsi 2020 https://youtu.be/5jyucaAca_c
chuck utzman
TULSI 2020
How many times does this make now
that you've explicitly or implicitly suggested that some poster or other on this board, including me, and even JtC, is engaging in some form of dishonesty or deception? I'm certain that I can't have caught them all. But this time is once too many. For me, anyway.
I've never posted anywhere a single insensitive comment about anyone who went through combat. If you have a beef with someone else's posts, kindly address it to the poster in question, not to me.
I've made clear in a number of my replies that I've been trying, consistent with the nature of the day, to be respectful and not bloviate or argue. Claiming deception broke through that intent, though.
Usually, I will provide a link to support my statements if they are called into question. In this instance, I can't furnish a link to my head or heart.
ok, then I am not capable of understanding
(added emphasis for clarification)
anything and will not comment any further. Apologies, where they are due.
I have not said YOU made the insensitive comments, I said some commenters in the thread made comments to your essay that I found insensitive. If I was critical, then to the folks, who made comments to your essay.I was not critical of your essay at all.
I am not aware that I accused JtC of anything. If I have, he should tell me what I have accused him for.
I can understand the mis-understanding
between you and Henry. The way I see it, is that you're both more aligned than your mish-mash of words imply. It’s tricky, this form of communication. Hopefully our experiences continue to perfect it ; ).
I can not communicate in English well enough
(edited last sentence, because it certainly would be misunderstood)
to be understood the way I thought my wording would be understood. To me that just means I should not try it anymore.
If what I tried to say is understood in the opposite of what I thought I said, there is no hope for it to become better.
I was fully in support of HAW's essay. Sadly I was not able to express that in ways he could understand. My bad, my English bad and with regards to the comments made TO his essay, I was triggered to throw some word bombs at a couple of commentators, but I didn't.
So, I am making progress in not communicating.
Is that the end of comversation then?
Probably.
Hope not mimi
I understood your original post about me just fine.
And it was a post about me and my replies that allegedly did not say what I actually meant: Not a single word in your original post to me referred to my essay.
As best as I can tell, your English is more than adequate to understand my previous reply. However, since you've said you didn't understand that reply, I'll break it down:
1. If you have any problem with someone else's posts, kindly address it to the poster in question, not to me.
That is a copy and paste from my original reply to you, except that I substituted "any problem" for "a beef." It's a perfectly clear and perfectly reasonable request.
2. Almost every time you've posted me since I got to this board, you have said or implied something negative about me, often involving some sort of alleged deception on my part. This was far from the most insulting post that you've made to me, but, again:
A. It was just one time too many; and
B. It was the wrong day and the wrong thread. I thought that should have been obvious.
Bottom line:
My character has never been the topic of any thread on this site, yet that is what most of your posts to me have been about. Going forward, I will be, at a minimum, labeling that kind of inappropriate post every time I see it, whether it's from you or anyone else. So, you may want consider staying on topic if and when you post to me, or not posting to me. Either would be fine with me.
3. One new issue:
Fair notice: If I ever receive another private message from you maligning a caucuser, I will forward the comment to the poster you named in the private message.
I don't know how I can make any of the above more clear. So, if you really don't understand it, perhaps some other caucuser who you do understand can break it down for you even more than this post does.
I have not sent a private message to you !
I hate private messaging and in fact don't want to receive any.
I have been bullied by someone in a private message once (twice). I swallowed that and kept it to me. And I reacted politely. Much later (months later) I started to get lots of very kind private messages. It became a little too much for me. I didn't say that, but felt that way. So I wanted to know from JtC, if the pm system could be blocked for my account, as I don't like to receive pm messages, by nobody, nice or not nice ones. I didn't name any names to JtC. If folks are unhappy with me, they should tell me that in the public space, in the open. Not in the background on the pm system.
The person, who bullied me was not you. May be JtC assumed so. I don't know why, but then JtC assumed something wrong.
People have sent very nice pm messages to me. I reacted hopefully nicely and politely back. I even answered the bully messages politely. That doesn't mean thaT I like to get private messages. I would exchange private messages just with two persons, JtC and Joe Shickspack. That's it. And for them I don't need to use the pm system.
May be my private message account is compromised?
I don't have a working memory anymore smd don't remember what kind of comments I made in the past to you or anybody. I am 70 years old and the brain is just not made to function properly for online conversation in English. I am still one person of the 99percent, even if not an American, I belong to the 99percent. That's the only reason why I talked here on this board (and earlier on TOP). I am on no other board or other social media sites. It has been like that til at least 12 years. I don't remember what people said, but people remember what I said apparently quite often.
PS I honestly don't know anymore what I said to you in the past and as it obviously was something that insulted you, I send my apologies.
I received this pm from you at 12:06 am US time today.
You may very well have meant to send it to someone else, but you sent it to me, if only accidentally. If you continue to deny that this originated with you, I will send it to the poster you named.
And, no, LMAO, the pm system of this board is not working perfectly for every poster but you.
Also, it's irrelevant whether you remember your prior insults to me or not. Just cut it out going forward.
That's all I will address. Anything else, please see my two prior posts to you.
No, I have never sent out this message,
(correction of grammar mistake)
if you want I can post all my private messages I sent out online.
In the last three weeks I sent out pm only to JtC, Joe Shickspack, one other person, Granma and Anja Geitz. My guess is that it is the 'other person' who sent out this pm. I think that other person meant well. But that message you quoted was not sent by me. And I do think that though a pm can be written with well meaning intentions, it can cause troubles. That's why I don't like pm messages and hope I won't receive any anymore.
HAW...
Check your PMs, I just sent you one.
Texas fireworks
I live in the suburbs north of Houston, still in Harris County. All day long we've been listening to the sound of fireworks. As I write this, it's after ten in the evening, and they're still going off.
For most of the day, this pissed me off bigly as I considered the fireworks a celebration of war and contrary to the observance of Memorial Day — which was known as Decoration Day in my youth, and still is to my elderly parents. In any event, late this afternoon I started to rethink my anger at these sounds of war.
It occurred to me that it was entirely proper and right for the citizens of Texas to be setting of sundry explosive devices. These are the same people who have constantly and overwhelmingly voted to send the most reactionary right-wing lunatics to both Austin and Washington, D.C. Those they elected will, in less than a heartbeat, send the sons and daughters of those they represent to die in war. It will not cause those lighting the fuses of the fireworks to pause and think, not until their own child or father or mother returns home in a flag draped box.
I wonder what they will think of the fireworks then? Something makes me suspicious that those on the receiving end of those flag covered coffins will not be the ones exploding fireworks on Memorial Day. Not even in Texas.
But, until then .....
Good comment
Celebrating the remembrance of those that died in wars with fireworks is really missing the idea of the day. Besides do any of them even stop to think how the noise affects those that returned? Constant reminders of what they went through during their time of service.
Even then lots of gold star families are okay with sending more people to war in order to finish what their husbands, sons and daughters died for. War is a Racket should be required reading in high schools everywhere.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Jumpiness is understandable
Perhaps the thing that bothered me most about hearing fireworks all day (they're subsiding now that it's pushing midnight) is that I have worked with a number of vets who were VERY jumpy around loud bangs, even the sound of something dropped on the floor or doors slammed. Of course, not all of them were like that. Mostly these men affected were "ground-pounders," that is, ground troops who often found themselves in the line of enemy fire.
I've worked with hundreds of vets, mostly VN vets, and I can easily say that most — if not all of them — would not cotton to fireworks used "celebrate" Memorial Day. I wish a few of them were around here to explain things to some of my neighbors...
Totally agree that
As long as it's taught from a humanitarian perspective, not the way most curriculums deliver it, as you imply.
Wonderful and disturbing comment, traveler.
How many years will it take to silence the fireworks on memorial day?
Time has come today
How long will it take? This is the first year I can recall hearing fireworks on Memorial Day here. That's not to say this is the first time; In the past, I've missed being home for around half of them, although I was here last year. Also, in Texas, it's legal to shoot fireworks every day of the year, with the exception of local ordances to the contrary.
I suspect it has something to do with President Bolton ginning up the hounds of war. A bunch of folks around here are anxious to bomb some more brown people, me thinks. Since they'll get in trouble if they murder said people locally (unless they're cops), they blow stuff up instead.
'every day of the year'
It sounds like Texans like to celebrate with fireworks, whatever the occasion. Fireworks can certainly be a terror, and I can imagine the Texan version being especially terrifying in its mindlessness.
But then there's also this, excessive in another way, but more palatable ...
[video:https://youtu.be/MUcwm720oM0]
Sounds of silence - or not
Amazing show in Dubai!
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy fireworks, although not nearly as much as when I was a youth. Also, I seem to enjoy them more at a distance these days.
There's a time for everything. While there are no Texas state laws restricting the exploding of fireworks to any particular time frame, the retail sale of them is restricted. Of course, since this is Texas, they don't restrict them too much.
Distance is everything
Fireworks are far more enjoyable visually than auditorily. Silence the bangs.
"not fer nutthin', as Joy Behar says sometimes, but aren't
fireworks celebratory? Shooting them off on Independence Day therefore seems perfectly appropriate. Shooting them off on a day to remember war dead, however, seems wildly inappropriate.
There’s so much to scream fuck you at everyday, it’s pitiful.
Thanks Henry, also for the great ’not ready to make nice’ video.
...
and for the reference to ‘ring around the rosy’ which was such a spirited and almost ethereal manifestation (in our time) of something so tragically different. It’s a good metaphor.
Thank you again, Janis.
My pleasure, especially since Imus was likely correct about
their sacrifice, maybe even on the low side:
We just loves us some censorship and blacklisting, don't we? CONFORM or else./s
Cons immediately jumped on the fact that they were insulting the POTUS abroad, as if that is even an issue in the day of the world wide web, satellite broadcasting, etc. And they were speaking to their British fans, not Parliament or the Court of St. James.
Thanks for that tidbit Henry
I remember Imus in the morning. Do you think he and Howard Stern were the original east coast shock jocks? I'm not sure I could listen to them today.
I didn't so much as listen to Imus as watch him on MSNBC.
MSNBC was one a most Republican network with a paper thin veneer of attempted objectivity, from Imus in the Morning, to a Chris Matthews claiming he'd voted for Bush twice and would again, given the same opposition (Gore and Kerry), to then "self-avowed" conservative Republican, Joe Scarborough, to Tucker Carlson and I don't remember who all else. I did not watch it at that time.
Somewhere around 2006, after Bush the Lesser's approval ratings plummeted (and MSNBC's own ratings had never gotten anywhere near those of Fox News), MSNBC began transitioning to a Blue no matter who network. Olberman was their first, then, I think Maddow. Matthews remained, but changed his tune. Joe Scarborough somewhat moderated his and was allegedly balanced by Mika. Tucker Carlson bit the dust. Etc. IIRC, Imus was among the last to go, cut after racist remarks by a member of his regular cast.