There was this sixth grade teacher I had, he looked like Ed Asner, he taught history and social studies. It was the first time a grown up had actually taught me about subliminal advertising. He was careful not to draw conclusions, you knew he had them, but he was a good teacher. People … wait, no … I learn better by discovery. It was a haunting notion to me that cigarette and alcohol ads has skulls and bones hidden in the ice cubes and smoke. He explained the concept and then gave us magazines, I was drawn to death wish advertising.
During the conflict in Vietnam, the US involvement in the conflict, the nightly news always had a report, from before my solid memories begin to 1975 when the last of our troops, sort of, had been evacuated. Every night they’d include the tally of the dead. The two ideas are associated in my conscious thoughts and have been for a very long time. With the exception of scare tactics and propaganda I could never figure out how counting the dead was news, not every day. The count is useless until the conflict is over. Useless is harsh and lacking in empathy, but if I apply empathy to war I get even more fucked up than I already am.
When was the last time you saw anything about Afghanistan on the nightly news? What is the alleged body count? The counts in both Iraq and Afghanistan seemed to light to be plausible and even when there was fervor for the wars the news didn’t have that sense of urgency or frequency. My only real point how can this not be the opening and closing statement of every news outlet?
I’m not sure what the opposite of empathy is exactly, but it’s sociopathic, sociopathy is a synonym for whatever the antonym of empathy is. The worse outcome in trying to kill a man is not failing. Failing puts things beyond your control, you’ll probably suffer and die, but it’s easy, suffering and dying is easy, you don’t need to train to learn how to do it. Succeeding is a lot more complicated. Ever since they gave shell shocked a real name and diagnosis, PTSD, we’ve used it like it were an answer to some question. Like we were asking god to grant us the serenity to la-la-la, it’s something to say to aknowledge a thing without knowing it, as though calling that thing under the bed a boogie man somehow strips it of it’s teeth.
There seems to be a national indifference. Sure, you and I know people who were personally affected, but even so, not in public.
Shit, a four hour interruption. It’s ok, the world should have more of my attention than my computer. The world should have more of everybody’s attention than any computer. I know there are people on the other end of this, it only serves to further my disappointment at my own lack of clarity.
I’m sure I’ve missed a lot of speechs, but I follow the coverage of the preamble to the election. Sure, my following is random, but all the media says the same shit their competitors do albeit with different bias. As best as I can tell nobody is using Afghanistan as a core or even a solid peripheral to their campaign, either for or against or the acknowledgement that it’s happening. Whoever wins the election will be, among other things, the commander and chief of a pretty fucking huge army actively engaged in at least one war and teetering on the brink of a few others and covertly involved in other global fuckery. You’d think that would be more important to the American public than Trump being a douche bag (e.g. inciting violence at rallys) Bernie being a commie (e.g. Bernie is a commie) or Hillary being indiscrete with emails and the holy fuckwad of other arm chair indictments.
Yeah, no. I had a better entry. I mean this entry was better before it became an entry. For all the side-stepping, goose-stepping, and in horseshit stepping, we’ve had the sons and daughters of America dying in the sandbox and/or fucking up their own and the racial conscious of mankind by doing the war equivalent of not dying; killing. Yeah, war makes things upside down. The opposite of dying should be living. Whether you’re an agnostic, atheist or, say, a Shinto shrine person guy, the ten commandments cover most human morality. Thou shall not kill is a pretty fucking good one, and all the nationlist, patriotic hubris, GI loans or whatever people use to excuse it, there isn’t any other way of stating that war is state sanctioned pre-meditated murder. And just because that’s a big one doesn’t mean it’s ok for you to go around coveting shit. Yes, you in the back row ducking. Quit coveting.
The excuses aren’t even the point. The point is we make them from an armchair while kids on every side are fucking up their psyche’s for a prize they’ll never get to enjoy. The point is that even with the world shrunk down to the size of this keyboard and screen, there are a whole lot of shits and fucks NOT being given. Over a decade. An active war. Sons and Daughters. WTF?
Here’s a theory for you; Global warming is the earth dying of embarrassment, the earth saying whose idea was it to give me to the fucking monkeys?
Loading comments...