So Much For My Blood Pressure

Now that I probably don't have a single reader left, having sent them all home, I find that I can't avoid hearing the news, and that occasionally (even if I try not to be obsessive about it) there are things I need to get off my chest. Starting with...

First off, I want to be clear, I DO NOT WANT TERRORISTS TO ATTACK THIS COUNTRY. This might seem obvious, but that's exactly the charge which is leveled at non-supporters of this Administration, that they hate America, blame America, and want America to be hit again.

This is, of course, a fallacy. The President is not America, the President is the temporary steward OF America, her pilot (chosen by her passengers) for up to two four year spans of time. If the driver of a bus that I'm on begins weaving in and out of traffic and driving in a manner I perceive as unsafe, I am free to criticize the driving, but it doesn't mean I hate the bus. The bus may be the most modern technological marvel of people moving, the absolute state of the art, and it can still be driven in a dangerous and unsafe manner.

It's the same argument I've made before when being accused of hating the troops. I have nothing but respect for (most of) our troops. As with any large group of people, there will be bad apples, but on the whole I believe our troops are brave men and women out there honestly trying to protect this country and I salute them for it.

But back to my original point. To make the argument that I want terrorists to attack this country, you have to also make the argument that I want to have a root canal and both my legs amputated, because I can make the same statement about those things as I can about America being hit again: I would rather have a root canal and my legs amputated than be diagnosed with bone cancer and the prognosis of losing my life in the next few months after a long and painful struggle. Clearly I don't WANT either of these things to happen, I have simply made a value judgment regarding which I consider to be the lesser of two evils.

So it is with this country being attacked again. Although it is thankfully not a choice any of us would ever have to make, I think we'd all rather suffer another attack on the scale of 9/11 than have all life on planet Earth wiped out in a nuclear conflagration. The one kills 3000 people, the other billions, the human life algebra is an absolute no brainer. Unfortunately, the choice we're asked to make today is less clear and also one we DO have to make: How happy are we with the dismantling of everything that makes our country great (especially our previously high ideals regarding human rights)? And after learning the details of the "compromise" between the White House and Congress over the Geneva Conventions, I am prepared to make this statement: I would rather the U.S. was attacked again than to be ashamed of my country's leadership. Not ashamed of my country, only of those under whose stewardship she has been allowed to decay and fall into disrepair.

I may, if I have time later, come back and detail what I know of the "compromise" and how it runs counter to everything I believe this country stands for. But for now, understand that we who object to this Administration are not blaming America for the problems of the world we are blaming the Administration for allowing our country to tarnish, for putting a dent in her fender, a scratch in her quarter-panel, and neglecting regular maintenance.

Liam.

Perhaps an end...

Well, folks, it's been fun, but...

My blood pressure is up. Not figuratively, not as a metaphor for the politics of the world today, but literally, rising out of the healthy into the warning zone that leads to hypertension.

And I think a large part of it is the constant stress of paying attention to a political America gone amok, an America I perceive to be on a path leading in the general direction of her ultimate destruction or (at very least) loss of everything that makes her great.

I don't, and have never, written this blog just because I like to hate this President. I have done it because I hoped that by publicizing just a bit of what I saw as harmful, shameful and wrong in the behavior of our leaders, perhaps I could help in some small way to correct the problem, to convince one more person to vote out those who do us harm, to make one more person open their eyes to political truths.

But in the end, I think all I've done is given myself a place to vent, while at the same time dropping myself further and further into an obsession with following the news, sputtering ineffectively at the pure absurdity of some of the talking points, put forward with a straight face and swallowed hook, line and sinker by some who don't take the time to actually think critically. To my knowledge, none of those people read this blog. Those who do (or at least, those whom I know do) already think, whether they agree with me or not.

So I need to focus more on my life and my family, more on living day to day, and hope that the ship of American state can right itself and sail strongly forward once again, as it has many times before. I need to trust in the system, not because there's necessarily reason to, but because it doesn't help me to worry about all of this if I simply worry myself into an early grave.

Therefore, it is with sadness that I say that this will be my farewell blog post, at least until my doctor reports that my blood pressure is under control again. I may occasionally come in to vent about one thing or another, if I need to vent. But I am going to do my darndest to stop focusing on the news day in and day out, which will make far less frequent the times that I have anything worth ranting about.

I leave you with a commentary by Keith Olbermann, broadcasting his nightly Countdown show on Monday (the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack). I wish I could keep watching his show, but I think that's one of the sources I need to get rid of, if I'm ever going to calm down and see my blood pressure fall.

Liam.


This hole in the ground

by Keith Olbermann


Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and -- as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul -- two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us could have predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country's wound is still open.

Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.



At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial -- barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field -- Mr. Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground." So we won't.

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of doing any job at all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President -- and those around him -- did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves."

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."

When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.