The Long Walk Down
We started off a long time ago trying to get to a nice place. We are scratched up from briers, tired and are now in a fetid swamp. Funny thing when you walk through the country. You can lose sight of places where you were. You descend down a ridge. You still see that but no longer see the even higher places you were.
We can all list some of the landmarks we saw on the paths we've traveled. Messing with the Vietnam peace talks. Rumors about the hostages. Outing our agents.
The southern strategy, dallying during the aids crisis, the moral majority, family values, one man one woman.
Blundering into the first Iraq war and lying into the second. Watergate, Iran contra, Valerie Plame
Abu Graihb, water boarding, extraordinary rendition, demonization of immigrants, family separation and tent cities in the desert.
We could all list more.
They say there is a horrible family of cannibals in the swamp up ahead and we smell the long pork cooking. I remember all the so called trail guides who insisted we didn't take more promising paths. Who walked us through those horrible paths where we saw all those landmarks. The ones who tell us that we have to keep walking into the swamp and that the cannibals aren't so bad.
I am dead sure some of these guides and the cannibals are in cahoots. They might even be the same. Some say that some guides were well intentioned and just happened to pick bad paths. That things weren't so bad when they chose those paths. Maybe so.
I'm not dancing today, I am just remembering the ways we took and wish we had made better choices.
Edit: misspelt wish
= new reply since forum marked as read
