Today me and my daughter Ashley went up to Hilltop Mall because we wanted to get photos of my granddaughter Mena taken so we could all have wallet-sized pictures of Mena looking insanely cute. And as we were waiting for our turn at the photo shop, I started asking Ashley questions about torture.
“Torture? Huh? What does torture have to do with wallet-sized cuteness?” Nothing. Get over it. As a blogger’s daughter, your job is to supply input — not to reason why. Okay then.
“Just suppose for a minute that all the Arabs in all the Arab countries throughout the Middle East who have been tortured over the past many decades by various American forces and spy agencies and corporatists — that they all suddenly got together with all the various Asians in all the many Asian countries west of the Indus and Urals where Americans have tortured quite a lot of people, and that all the Latinos from Mexico and all the many Central and South American countries where Americans have tortured untold numbers of people thanks to excellent torture techniques taught at the infamous School of the Americas, and that all the blood-covered Africans from all the economically-colonized African countries where American armies, intelligence agencies and corporations have tortured people over the past many decades since Patrice Lumumba and all the….”
“Okay. Okay. I get the idea.”
“And that all of these innumerable abused victims of American torture all banded together, consolidated all their armies and natural resources and anger and stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and then all of them came after us all at one time? All of them? And overran the entire USA from Boston to San Diego?”
“It might happen,” replied Ashley, “but it probably won’t.”
“Yeah, but just supposing that it did — then my question is this: If we absolutely positively for certain knew that all of these Others were going to do to us what we had already done to them — then how could we possibly prepare ourselves for such an event? How could we teach ourselves to endure or resist and/or even to survive such hard-line torture — like what Americans handed out at places like Guantanamo, Baghram and Abu Ghraib?”
I mean, of course, besides having to learn to endure the torture of having to spend a day at the mall.
“Haven’t got a clue,” Ashley answered. Me neither. How can you even begin to toughen up and prepare for something like that? Perhaps we could do what all too many Americans are already doing now — and become homeless? It takes plenty of guts to survive that. In order to be homeless, you really do gotta man up.
Or you could play continuous 24-hour loops of recordings of colicky screaming babies? Trust me, that would toughen anyone up. Or you could almost drown yourself in the bathtub each night. Or go without toilet paper? Or audition for Survivor?
There really isn’t any good way to prepare oneself for being tortured — except for this one: Stop torturing other people and then hope to God that they will then stop wanting to torture you in return. “What goes around comes around.” Didn’t Jesus say that?
PS: Considering that we were shopping at Hilltop Mall on a Saturday afternoon right after payday — considered by many to be the absolute primo time-slot for shopping — this mall was strangely deserted. On any given Saturday afternoon ten years ago, this place would have been mobbed!
PPS: Well, guess what? America already HAS been “invaded”. And here’s a video from MSNBC commentator Cenk Uygur to prove it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8GMNwDJzgo&feature=share.
In this video, we are shown an image of almost all our congressional representatives giving the prime minister of Israel many standing ovations, even though everything that Bibi had just said goes totally against our own national interests.
In this video, Netanyahu is stating that the West Bank and Gaza belong to him because his ancestors occupied it 2,500 years ago. Okay. But under that logic, then Congress needs to supply the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota with billions — or perhaps even trillions — of dollars so that they can take back the West Bank of the Potomac! Or else we should start supplying Italians with fighter jets and tanks so they can take back Jerusalem — which used to be part of the old Roman Empire.
America has already been invaded — and conquered! — by Israel’s corporatist lobbyists. In this video, you can watch Congress give our occupiers many standing ovations. Do you think that Congress would give the same kind of standing ovations to, say, American union leaders? Or Americans who want single-payer healthcare? Or American college students who want better schools? Or mayors of American cities pleading for better infrastructure? No way!
You think that Israel’s corporatist lobbyists don’t already “occupy” America? In his speech to an Israeli corporatist lobbying association recently, President Obama pretty much says it all when he addresses AIPAC president Lee Rosenberg by his nickname. http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/05/22/transcript-of-obamas-remarks-to-aipac/
“Rosy, thank you for your many years of friendship,” says Obama. “Back in Chicago, when I was just getting started in national politics, I reached out to a lot of people for advice and counsel, and Rosy was one of the very first. When I made my first visit to Israel, after entering the Senate, Rosy, you were at my side every step of that profound journey through the Holy Land. So I want to thank you for your enduring friendship, your leadership, and for your warm introduction today.”
Even Obama is beholden to Israel’s corporatist lobby (and clearly not to the voters who elected him). I rest my case.
PPPS: America has also been “invaded” by its own political and military leaders — who clearly represent themselves instead of us.
Here’s an article by journalist Anwaar Hussain, describing how the people of Pakistan have been used, misinformed and manipulated by their political and military leaders — and how, as a result, the future of Pakistan has been pretty much doomed http://truthspring.info/2011/05/24/begins-the-fire-hunt/. But guess what? The same sorry conditions now engulfing these poor unwary Pakistanis are also now engulfing most Americans too. Too bad for us, suckers. The rich get richer and we get NOTHING.
And then there’s America’s third major “invasion” — by the Federal Reserve and the banksters and Wall Street, institutions that have absolutely no allegiance to America at all but rather to international cartels that play out grim blood-money oligarch games that also suck America dry. And where is the anger here either? Like Pakistan, have we too become just another minor nation of victims who relish the role of being masochists? Apparently so.
More and more, I am beginning to think that I’m completely wasting my time here even trying to write about possible viable solutions to all of America’s woes — or about various sensible ways to keep MY country from being swallowed up by its economic occupiers.
America is going to Hell in a hand-basket right now, and the only solutions to these troubles that our so-called leaders keep feeding us are the same old tired solutions that got us into this terrible mess in the first place — more unnecessary wars, more influence by bankers, more media lies, more anti-depressants (http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-swanson/36365/the-small-group-of-thoughtful-committed-citizens-has-been-drugged), more corrupt politicians — and more Americans who absolutely eat up all these faux solutions like they were pieces of Marie Antoinette’s cake.
Doesn’t anybody in America have any common sense left at all right now — except for perhaps a handful of progressive bloggers and some little old ladies like me? Or have any sense at all for that matter?
“We’ll always have Paris.”
On Friday, February 11, 2011, the Paramount Theater in Oakland offered a program that looked like a prospect for a very pleasant evening of entertainment that was supposed to be the columnist’s opportunity to “take the day off.” Sitting in a single screen movie theater listening to a musician play the organ before the cartoon and newsreel are scheduled to start the show, was a déjà vu moment. When did movie theaters stop showing cartoons? When was the last newsreel made? The time travel thrill came to an abrupt halt when Ricky Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) made it clear that the Nazis were the bad guys because they would torture prisoners to get information about the good guys in the resistance. We wondered if the young American men who died in the European theater of operations during WWII would appreciate the irony of their own deaths if they could see their country now.
Before leaving for the movie, we had tuned into the Mike Malloy talk show program to hear what was happening to Brad Friedman of the Bradblog website and the vacation week substitute radio host. On Thursday liberal news websites had broke the story about how Friedman was being targeted by the United States Chamber of Commerce for some dirty tricks style attacks on his credibility.
During the day Friday, this columnist had zoomed around on the Internets to gather some material for a column about the phenomenon of the mindset that drives pathological liars to be used in a column that will be posted at a later date.
It seems that seeing Casablanca on the day when systematic attacks on newsmen looked like they were part of a premeditated plan to cripple the effectiveness of citizen journalists would only double down on the irony level contained in the patriotic message of the Academy Award (AKA Oscar™) winning film.
The film contains one of the few exceptions to the Hayes code ever seen on American screens. In the World War II era movie, patriotism trumped the rule that no movie must get away with murder. Whew! That must come as a great comfort to the folks who want to sidestep the treehuggers laments about civilian casualties as collateral damage in camel jockey country. Major Strasser has been killed? “Round up the usual suspects!”
Didn’t the bad guys shown in Casablanca make a point of stifling the publication of dissenting points of view?
Lately, both of the two biggest American political parties seem to be using the Nazi image for a reenactment of the old childhood wrangling titled “Your mother wears combat boots!” Heck, back then, most kids who participated in that Monty Python style debate had never heard the word “lesbian;” let alone understood the full implication of a mother who wore combat boots.
Like Ricky Blaine, this columnist prefers to sit on the sideline and make sarcastic observations rather than participate in political debates.
The Nazis style was: fight against communist. Use succinct short slogans. Tell lies so big that no one will believe the teller has the cajones to tell that big of a whopper. Shut down media that doesn’t use pre-approved propaganda. Rig or cancel fair elections. Make the message so simple to understand that a high school drop out can understand it. The Geneva accords were scraps of paper. It’s OK to use torture to find out what the enemy resistance is doing.
Heck, aren’t the Republicans and Democrats equally guilty of using that modus operandi at this point?
Brad’s website was disabled and unavailable all day Friday. Even if it wasn’t a major equipment failure (just like what happened to the Iran nuclear program hardware?), don’t most Americans say that all is fair in love, war, and politics?
If net neutrality rules are imposed on the Internets (just like the Hays code was forced on the film makes) does that mean that citizen bloggers won’t be free to spend their own money to go see the 24 hour race at Le Mans and write whatever they want? Isn’t the traditional headline for the World’s Laziest Journalist’s annual Columnist Day celebration: “I column as I see ‘em!”? Doesn’t that mean that no matter what, bloggers will always be protected by the First Amendment?
There are two styles of column writing; the Dionysian and the Apollonian. Which one would teabagger trolls say is used by the World’s Laziest Journalist?
The United States Chamber of Commerce might be willing to spend $2 million to stifle Brad because he insists on reporting esoteric stories, such as the one about the absent minded professor on the Supreme Court who misunderstood the complicated implications of putting a checkmark in the wrong place on an innocuous and informal office form, but it seems unlikely anyone would notice if the World’s Laziest Journalist writes a column comparing and contrasting the tourist destination ratings of Paris vs. Casablanca.
It’s just like what Ertha Kitt said about money. To paraphrase her: This columnist has been to Casablanca and Paris. I prefer Paris.
Won’t the Huffington Post always be an available venue for disgruntled liberal writers? Did some blogging curmudgeon make some crazy assertion about “First they came to get the Bradblog . . . .”? Don’t take those conspiracy theory nuts too seriously.
Oscar Wild said: “Good Americans think that when they die; they’ll go to Paris.” Why wait that long?
Now the disk jockey will play (you can see it coming a mile away – just like JEB moving the Bush Dynasty back into the White House in 2012) Dooley Wilson’s “As time goes by,” “The last time I saw Paris,” and “Le vie en Rose.” We have to go see when the Berkeley 7 Flashback series will be showing “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Have an “I was misinformed” type week.