Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

The much used Republican talking point ‘Cut and Run’ shows once again the ignorance and lack of education of our president and his sicophantic followers.

The term derives from a common practice used in the great days of sail. A vessel might be anchored, discharging cargo or awaiting orders. If a large gale or an attack from enemies were launched against the anchored boat, it would usually take about 1 hour to raise the anchor and get under way. In that time, the vessel might be caught in the storm and driven ashore, or come under attack from which they would be unable to defend themselves.

In such situations, the order would be given to ‘Cut the cable and run for open sea’ which would enable those on board to save the vessel from disaster and to adequatley to defend themselves.

At the present condition of the ship of state, the only way to prevent a complete and total disaster with not only loss of goods but completely wrecking on a foreign shore, is to cut the cable between this country and its failed foreign policies and run for the safety of diplomatic reasonoing where we will be in a better position to defend the country and save the ship.

With the international climate and an unwelcoming shore in the middle east, to cut and run is the only possible solution. Any ships Captain failing to act to save his vessel, would become personally responsible for its loss. And in the case of a Naval captain, would be court marshalled and drummed out of service.

John Paul Jones, Farragut, Nelson and many other Captains, cut and run and saved the ship. Commander bush refuses to.

Let us hope that when the ship founders, he will have the courage to go down with it.

In reviewing some Posts here on Irregular Times, I find a quote fom former Military officer and current politician John McCain, that “American Workers are lazy”.

It seems that every so often, conservative politicians think it is incumbent upon them to point out to the general public that “the workers are lazy”

Growing up in England, I was constantly reminded of my status as `Working Class,’ by people who had never worked a day in their lives. I have a picture in my mind of Lord Alexander Douglass Hume (Pron. Home) standing in the market square of a rural English town speaking of how the farm laborers `wasted their substance’. This in the 1950’s. It is the same vision that African Americans have of the Plantation owner sitting on the porch sipping mint julep while the slave worked in the field, `it does’nt matter what you do for them, they’r just lazy N*****s.’

In the thirties, the workers of America who built this country were harrased beaten and shot by the same conservatives who deride them for laziness. And this only for having the temerity to ask for better pay and conditions.

I realy started worrying when Americans started reffering to a `Middle Class’. This in the so-called classless society. It reasonably follows, that if we have a `Middle Class’, we must also have a `Working Class’ and an `Upper Class’. (Choose one and stand under that umbrella). The problem is, that the only Class to decide which Class you belong to, are the self appointed members of the Upper Class to which we are all supposed to aspire.

Hold on a minute! Does this mean that the preamble to the Constitution is wrong and we are not `All created equal?’

Yes Johnny. When you establish social strata in society, if you are unfortunate enough to have been born into the lower/laboring class or are a shopkeeper ar bankers clerk in the middle classes, you can at least aspire to a higher station in life, just so long as you do not step above yourself.

People who criticise the `workers’ or any other social or ethnic group are really saying that they, ARE BETTER THAN THE REST OF US! AKA Bigots.

Ask yourselves this. Have any of the critics of miners seeking better and safer conditions, ever worked several hundred feet below the surface of the earth at hard labor in damp unhealthy conditions? I think not. Have the so-called critics of the american worker ever picked cotton or cabages or tobbaco in fields in the hot sun? Have any of the so called leaders of our Great Nation worked in a steel mill where to walk outside on a summers day was a cooling experience.

In my life, I have never met a critic of the Unions and American Workers who actually had to sweat for 50-60 hours in uncomfortable unsafe and unhealthy conditions to feed the greed of Conservative Elite. Oh Yeah, we have all heard the tale of how Johnny Gotbucks had to work a year in his Daddy’s factory to `learn the buisness’ and how he made the same money as the common workers during that year. He forgot however to mention that his pay check would not have to feed a family and pay rent and medical bills.

It is time for the American and Emigrant workers to stand together. We are all after the same thing. Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric about Hispanics or Blacks or Asians taking our jobs. The extreme right and the conservative elitists want the workers to be at each other throats, it diverts attention from the conservative agenda which is to keep all of us at a financial level that only they controll. And if that doesn’t work, we can always start a war and send them off to be killed or rewarded with fancy ribbons for `Service’ to a country that has leaders who do not care about them or their children.

The con-elite are dedicated to the disruption and separation of people into smaller groups (Classes) that they can control. And use the press and the media which they own and control to spread dissention. Unfortunately there are those working people who have been led to believe that this conservative concept will eventually benefit us all. When do we get our slice of the pie? The industrial revolution started three hundred years ago and we are still being confronted with the `workers are lazy’ rhetoric.

My Old Dad used to tell me, `There is no shame in honest sweat’. The shame unfortunately is in accepting less than we are worth for our ability, talent and willingness to work and to hope for more for our children and grand children. Daily we see the con-elite attacking the ability of working people to achieve simple goals. Our basic education system has been reduced to an historic low, where talent is suppressed and scholarship derided. The workers of America have lost their place in the new society. We are told by the con-elite that we are lazy, work shy and dishonest and we believe it. Our Unions have been disbanded, our work places dismantled and sent off to countries where workers are payed less than we were for the same work, and we are expected to view those workers as the bad guys. Not so, they are just people like us trying to feed their families. We have been set against each other. Emigrant labor is being imported by the con-elite to reduce wages in the USA while prices rise to a level that will force working people to work for 60-80 hours a week at minimum pay, just to live. And we are expected to believe that it is because American workers are lazy. Whats next, children in the work place?

No Mr. McCain American nor any other workers are not lazy. They are frustrated that the conditions that our fathers worked and fought for are being erroded in the name of the con-elite created American Class system which you support. Go get a job in a factory for a month or so (if there are any left). Go out into the country and watch Americans working. Find a lazy one and he is probably running for Republican candidate somewhere.

Oh and by the way, Liberal Americans are included in the new society, They are considered lower than the working class, They are: LEFT LEANING LIBERALS. I am proud to be one.

Just saw the evening news. Apparently Limbaugh-The fat Nazi-has been arrested. Except that his lawyer insists that he was not arrested, merely booked.

If The Fat Nazi was not arrested, and comminted no crime, then Clinton “did not have sex with that woman”.

If mug shots, fingerprinting and posting bond is not being arrested, Then Nixon was not a crook.

If obtaining addictive drugs by illegal means is not a crime, then Saddam Husein is innocent of war crimes.

I am frustrated and bored, maybe you have some other thoughts.

Back in the late 60’s just before my dad died, he and my son sat together on a park bench talking. My son looked up into the sky and said “grandad Look, its a airplane”. My dad looked up and started talking to my son. I stood to one side listening fascinated while my dad told him of things that had happened since he had been born in the late 1800’s.

“I remember when I was child about your age” dad said to my son, “seeing a man walking in front of an automobile waving a red flag. It was the first car that I had ever seen. The man had to walk in front of the car carrying the flag, to warn pedestrians and horse drivers and riders. The noise that the car made, was so loud and unusual that it frightened horses and some pedestrians”.

Later when my dad was a teenage boy, he told of reading about two young men in North Carolina who had flown the first airplane. Dad thought that this was the most amazing thing ever.

My dad told of the time as young man when he went fight a terrible war with the new airplanes, the first tanks and the biggest guns ever made. Dad told how he was wounded three times. Once by machine-gun fire, once from arial bombing and once from mustard gas inhallation.

Dad was a patriotic young man of his day, who proudly came home from that war to find his country in economic dissaray with no homes and no work for the returning soldiers. and the fervent pre-war promises of the politicians forgotten or ignored.

After spending 20 years struggling to support his growing family in a time of plenty for the rich and powerfull, another war started and he and three of his sons volunteered to fight a war that was once again declared to be just and honorable.

Dad told my son of the time during that war, when he had taken me to the back door of our house to watch London burning and how three days later, an older brother carried me out of our burning house with my hair on fire. My son asked “why did they do that Grandad?” Dad replied that “when people go to war, lots of ordinary people get injured, lose their familes, homes and belongings, and that everyone is hurt or damaged in some ways”.

I stood and listened to my dad talking to a child, of the wonders of his life. I saw as his face grew firm at the telling of his war stories, and how his eyes lit up when he talked about the early cars, and the first airplane that he ever saw and how, as an old man he had watched in fascination, as a man walked on the moon.

Three days later, My dad died. I regretted that I had not taken time to listen more to his tale. But one thing that I do remember, Is the sadness in his eyes when he talked of war. And how he turned his face to hide tears when he spoke of his oldest son killed if France in the beggining of WWll.

I remember my dad only as a pacifist who had fought for his country when called and who watched his children growing into poverty, in a land of plenty ruled by a culture of class and race and social separation. He taught me that there was no shame in being opposed to any war. His life had shown him that war does not solve any problems either political or social, no matter how just or honorable. He challenged me to stand firm when some politician would call for war, and to resist injustice and falsity as an excuse to fight. I learned from him, that when a politician decides to go to war, there will always be one group which stands to benefit. They are not the working poor, the emigrants the minority cultures or the socially disadvantaged. It is the rich who profit from imense wealth created from war, and who feed on the false patriotism and glory, from which the young who fight the war will derive no financial benefit.

I look today at a modern world as different to me as the first car and the Wright brothers flight was to my dad and although I have served in the military, I am and have always been a pacifist.

George W. Bush dishonors his father by starting a war in which the prime aim is not even just and honorable, but purely for personal enrichment for him and his followers. I am not a coward or ashamed to stand and declare the war in Iraq and its terrible toll on people is wrong. I am not a traitor or disloyal to my country in opposing the blatant war profiteering on the bodies of dead Iraqis and American soldiers. On the contrary I am proud to stand and say that the policies of this administration, offend and denigrate Americans and free thinking people everywhere. The Rupublican efforts to divert the intention of the constitution and the bill of rights in pursuit of profit and power is an affront to all Amercans.

I dread the day when I shall sit with my grandsons and tell them that between my fathers life and my own, nothing has changed. Rich men still order the sons and daughters of the poor to fight to defend a system that has no concern for them.

I have just one hope, that maybe. Just maybe, this generation will have the courage to stand before history and declare in the the words of Cheif Joseph of the Nez Perces in the year of my fathers birth, “From this time forward, I will fight no more forever”. Dare I hope that history at last will think kindly of us?