Populie: We Support the Troops… September 17, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2354)

The greatest courtesy I can offer to any of my readers is to attempt to provide a non-prejudiced format of information which is vacant of opinion. (Of course, this is basically impossible to do since I am a mortal, and love to hear the sound of my own voice.) But let me attempt to be more faithful with today’s populie.

In the first one hundred years of our existence as a nation–1776 to 1876–our young, fledgling experiment was involved in nineteen years of war. In other words, 19% of the time we were sending young men off to die in some sort of escapade “for freedom.”

In the next one hundred years–from 1876 to 1976–we were involved in seventeen years of war. 17%. A drop.

From 1976 to 2001, a span of twenty-five years, we took three of those to be involved in war, placing us in a descending 12%.

But from 2001 to present–thirteen years–we have been involved in eleven years of war. An astounding 86% spike.

This increase in blood, guts, aggression and interference has caused us to develop several national policies, quietly, to sustain this burdensome effort. Among them is the popular notion that the military is honorable and should be given special consideration, and the hypocritical populie of “we support the troops.”

Entertainment loves it because even though they tout themselves to be liberals who want to preserve the turtle doves in some park, they have never met a movie that does not require a gun.

Religion favors this populie because it gives us something to pray for, allowing us to feel we’re transforming the world one bullet at a time.

And of course, politicians not only rattle their sabers, but occasionally brandish them to warn infidels and heathen of the power of our nation, while stirring the blood of the voters in their favor.

Do you really want to support the troops? Then get real instead of putting on a phony patriotism and a theatrical appreciation for our men and women who serve. Here’s how you can support the troops:

1. Stop starting wars that have nothing to do with us.

If we really believe we’re a Christian nation, we should only attack if we’re attacked. Period. I will guarantee you that soldiers would be satisfied to be “at readiness” instead of in peril.

2. If you find yourself in the position of starting a war which is considered to be necessary, then institute the draft.

Don’t go to your volunteer army or your reserves and ask them to take on innumerable tours of duty because you don’t want to bother the elite young people of our country. I will tell you, if George W. Bush had instituted the draft in 2003, the Iraq War would not have lasted more than four years, and if it had, there would have been protesters in the street, just as there were in 1970 regarding Vietnam.

3. Take care of the obvious needs of our veterans, granting them the dignity of acclimating back into society without being impoverished second-class citizens.

Don’t tell me you support the troops and then fail to notice that we are not taking care of their medical needs or helping them get off the street–homeless ex-soldiers.

I do not like a charade. Since we have come across the same situation we had in the Civil War, in which our weaponry has outgrown our medical ability to take care of the human body, we might want to slow up the carnage so we don’t have so many combatants trying to move around without limbs and hampered by severe brain injuries.

The United States has decided it’s the Roman Empire, and just as the Romans did, we are beginning to over-extend ourselves under the guise of being the “muscle men of the world”–to eventually be taken down by our version of Vandals from Germany, whom I am sure the Romans also considered to be terrorists.

I support the troops with all my heart–so much so that I work for peace, I challenge avarice and I question my government when it tries to excite the populace by waving the flag over the next conflict.

 

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The Mars and Venus War … July 14, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(1943)

I think it would have to be a really creepy laboratory–moss hanging from the rafters, bats flying by at odd intervals, spider webs and very little light. I mean, if you’re going to create a castle to experiment on how to destroy mankind, you might as well make it ominous and bizarre.

In this hostile environment, you must sit down and draft a hideous plan.

You could simulate the demise of humankind by creating a race war: black against white, red against yellow, brown against tan. But here’s the thing–human sexuality has us falling in love with all sorts of different colors, and eventually, on this little orb called earth, we will probably end up being the color of the dust from which we were created.

Perhaps in your laboratory you could propagate a religious war–where the faithful of one inclination decide to go on a crusade to destroy the infidels of another. But you see, human beings are strange. There are always a few–be they Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, or any other number of faith flavors–who come along and preach brotherhood, goodness, kindness and mercy.

I suppose you could try to use global warming, thermonuclear war, terrorism or some other frightening specter to dispel life from our planetary home. But we always seem to find some ingenious person who comes up with a great idea just in the nick of time–to make a light bulb instead of cursing the darkness.

So I think what I would do in MY sinister arena is promote an ongoing conflict between men and women that is masked by comedy–but at its root is a nasty bit of viciousness which eventually causes the two genders to lose desire for one another, believing the linking to be futile.

Yes. Just convince everybody on earth that men and women are incapable of getting along, and pretty soon you’ll have fifty per cent of the people fighting the other fifty per cent. What a devious stroke of macabre genius!

And then, here is the final unbelievable addition: you’re able to convince EVERYBODY that it’s true, whether they’re conservative or liberal, Christian or Jew, north or south, circumcised or uncircumcised–English muffin or bagel.

Then you can sit back in glee and watch the whole carnival implode on itself as one tiny little Calliope breathes its final notes.

OR … we could realize that God made men and women. He made physical differences so we could pleasure one another and also procreate the planet. Pretty good system. (Please note that God rarely asks us to do anything that improves our situation without giving us pleasure in the process…)

He told both man and women that they had dominion over the earth. He told both of them that they were equally responsible for caretaking the territory. Matter of fact, if you want to follow the theme of the story, woman came from man. How different could she be?

Yet we insist that somehow or another, through the manipulation of our culture, the laziness of our ethics and the backwardness of our theology, that men and women are just hobgoblins to each other.

If you will allow me: God made male and female.

The physical differences between us create the potential for continuing our existence. Yet the Father said “in the kingdom of God, there is neither male or female.” That means when we actually reach out of ourselves to higher thoughts, deeper spirituality and greater understanding, both genders take the same journey.

If you happen to be a Christian, you believe that the promise of your Messiah came through a woman. After all, it was a virgin birth, with some assistance from the Divine but none from Joseph.

The truth is, none of us know exactly what the differences are between men and women because no one has tried to accentuate the similarities. We truthfully spend more time figuring out our commonality with the porpoise and the chimpanzee than we do with Dick and Jane. It not only creates inequality, it fails to energize the potential which exists by the fusion of the two sexes in unity instead of conflict.

So I will not join in.

Any female member of the species who wants to come into my space will be treated as a human being, and the anticipation will be that she can pull her own load and she will be heard in all circumstances. I’m looking for reasons to get along instead of poking holes into the possibility of great fellowship.

So if you want to join this generation’s slide into insanity by negating one another based upon our sexual organs, you can feel free. it’s a very popular idea. But if we’re going to survive, we’re going to need each other–women and men.

And if you believe men are from Mars and women are from Venus, and you’re not prepared to build a space ship–be prepared to have the planet you so adore diminish in beauty, because there aren’t two caretakers.

 

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