ABOUT WAR: While You Were Away…

Impression of Alexander the Great addressing his men when they refused to go on:

“Men, I don’t know why the gods set us on this great course, and what may be incomprehensible to me, must be doubly so for you.  And that’s why we have to go on, land after land, obstacle after obstacle, killing everyone who stands in our way, until the gods finally reveal their very great purpose to us.”

His men thought:

1:  Here we have one more useless heroic gesture from the parapet.

2:  It’s done to boost confidence/morale: cast admiring glances, swell with pride, rush/thrill with excitement, ache for the bittersweet glory of battle.

3.  Battle sucks, he’s a putz; and I hope they shoot his ass off before they get mine.

For some reason, his guys bought it; or maybe it was the execution of all the chief dissenters that encouraged the survivors’ understanding and will to carry on.

The troops who march off to war singing generally return silently if they return at all.  There is no sport in war, no winners, everybody loses, and the end result is disaster for some, and lifetime wounds for the rest – invisible, or not, we’re all disabled, dehumanized, and diminished by it, even non-combatants.  Even so, there are always those who yearn for Armageddon, who work for and revel in it, a giant I-told-you-so and a thumb in the eye for all the rest of us who must be made to suffer for ignoring them, I suppose.

The foolish gestures of war; the real heroism clichéd and trite, so prosaic, so real, is desperate stuff – what we console ourselves with as we face or lie dying, contemplate the dead, justify the holocaust. Innocence, forever startled. There is no glory, no promise, and no hope in warfare. Just blood.

 

“FILL ‘ER UP!”

©JLegry.

BERNIE SANDERS for President

OPEN LTR TO HILLARY SUPPORTING SON

As a veteran observer and participant in the ’60s, Bernie’s activist style is transparent to me. I have no problem with stridency. Watched people being washed down the stairs of the SF courthouse with fire hoses, among other things. We should talk sometime. Noticed as a citizen involvement type that sedate, law-abiding, mainstream people generally react badly to loud, passionate, earnest voices and clenched fists. Lots of misunderstandings possible. American politics has always been loud, bombastic, pretty much corrupted – look at Boss Tweed. We are in another phase of the on-going clash between have and have-not, only we have sectionalized it even more. Inclusion is a hard and often seemingly impossible condition. “Be civil,” “be polite.” That didn’t work in the French Revolution either, as I recall. Bernie’s point, IMO is:

“The Democratic Party has a choice. It can open its doors and welcome into the party people who are prepared to fight for real economic and social change – people who are willing to take on Wall Street, corporate greed and a fossil fuel industry which is destroying this planet. Or the party can choose to maintain its status quo structure, remain dependent on big-money campaign contributions and be a party with limited participation and limited energy.”

Believe Hillary will lose the general to Trump – not a contest of skills and abilities – celebrity contest – he knows how to play it, she is drab as mud. In this consumer-based inconsequential reality show, Trump trumps. We need Bernie. He will have many trustworthy and far-sighted helpers. We need to change and the time is now. If we stay the same, or struggle to do so (always ridiculous – shoveling shit against on-coming tide stuff) we will go down. IMO, Bernie can beat Trump. He sees the vulnerabilities and has excited the base. It can happen. Still plan on going to the convention with Bernie. Lincoln won the narrowest of margins in 1860 – that may be the light at the end of this impending civil war tunnel too.

When all said and done though, in the general election: VOTE BLUE.