Awesome LTTE today in the "Connecticut Post"

krispos42

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sun Nov-20-11 11:38 AM
Original message

Awesome LTTE today in the "Connecticut Post"

No, it's not mine, but I wish it was!

Boy, don't we wish we had the three or four trillion bucks we blew on that night on the town known as the Iraq war? Talk about the wisdom of crowds; polls showed that almost 70 percent of Americans supported the invasion. That was then. Now, the same percentage think the Iraq war was a mistake. I think it is only fair that those who originally supported the war write checks made out to those of us who opposed it to compensate us for our losses, and as an act of accepting responsibility for their actions. I would be happy to endorse my check over to the government to help balance the budget.

And those evangelical Christian leaders who stuck their noses in and sent the "Land" letter to President Bush should have to pay double and lose their churches' tax exemptions until the debt is paid off. In that letter, they expressed their support for a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq on the grounds that it was a "Just War." Buffoonery thrives in America.

Years ago now, I participated in the demonstrations held on the bridge in Westport against the Iraq War. One day, a young man driving a huge black SUV, a Yukon or Escalade, passed by. He stuck his head and both arms out of the window, flipped us both middle fingers, and yelled, "You ****ing idiots." He was a caricature that the world, if not America, would have recognized.

The Iraq war is one self-inflicted wound in a long list of self-inflicted wounds that have lead us to our present malaise. Henry Kissinger once said the U.S. doesn't have principles, it only has interests. Such amoral views led us to disaster in Vietnam and still lead us to disasters today. They are the foundations upon which American business and political strategies are laid. They imply we know where our interests lay, we've proven we don't, and can control our future, we can't. We Americans don't even know what our options are. The ruling political and corporate elites have interests that compete with the interests of the rest of us. They have made it so that their interests, and the options they formulate, are the only ones that get serious consideration. The parade of failures and bankruptcies since the first Chrysler bailout and the Savings and Loan crises to pulling Goldman Sach's and AIG's ashes out of the fire recently proves these executives don't even know what's in the best interest of their own companies. What they are good at is gaming the system to make themselves rich. The result is an inequitable society where the abstract ideals of justice and fairness are merely words. Income inequality is worse now than it has ever been in our history. Sartre said we are what we do. Does that apply to countries too?

Young people, whose generation's prospects are truly dreadful, have occupied Wall Street to protest the crappy state of affairs they've been handed. Unlike the Tea Party, they don't have David Koch's money behind them, or FOX news, who denigrates them. Regardless, the movement spreads. Across the country and the world, groups tiny and large, organize demonstrations. For a time, politicians ignored the Occupy Wall Street crowd. But surely they must feel a little queasiness in the pit of their stomachs. They know that change has always come from the bottom pushing back against injustice from the top. Can anyone claim that what these kids face is fair? The bottom is now the 99 percent of the people who have lost out to the manipulations of the 1 percent who are our business and political elites. Is Occupy Wall Street the breeze that becomes the winds of change? The future does not favor the status quo.

I wish those youngsters success.

Ralph Adams

Westport

http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/A-breeze-blows-on-Wall-Street-2276707.php

:yourock: :yourock: