I feel tired. Does anyone else feel tired?

No, I don’t mean that kind of pleasant, warm, fuzzy kind of tired you have just before you grab teddy and sink into the depths of a down comforter.

I mean weary. I mean strung out. I mean that witless, disoriented kind of tired that just seems to drag on and on. I feel that kind of tired.

I feel that kind of tired after five straight years of seeing broken promise after broken promise, lie after lie, constitutional shredding after constitutional shredding, moral disaster after moral disaster.

And now, 38 years and two months after the My Lai massacre, nearly four decades since Americans swore “Never Again,” I read this in the newspaper:

“He had to carry, since he was part of the clean up crew, he had to carry that little girl’s body and her head was blown off,” she said. “Her brains splattered on his boots.”

This is in the paper, but everyone on the big conservative site little green footballs is talking about whether Lance Armstrong took drugs before the Tour de France. The streets are quiet. A General by the name of Michael Hayden who oversaw the implementation of a mass surveillance program upon the American citizenry has just been overwhelmingly confirmed as the new director of the CIA. Nobody in the news media seems the least bit curious about the abrupt resignation of previous CIA Director Porter Goss and his connection to a scheme in which defense contractors used prostitutes as bribes to members of Congress.

I’m just so tired, after five years of seeing, over and over again, the latest big piece of news revealing yet again that an evil group of people control the most powerful nation on Earth. I don’t use the word evil lightly. Let’s play dictionary with American Heritage. Evil is defined as:

1. Morally bad or wrong; wicked
2. Causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful
3. Characterized by or indicating future misfortune; ominous
4. Bad or blameworthy by report; infamous
5. Characterized by anger or spite; malicious

In their behavior, the Bush administration and the Republican Congress fit all aspects of that definition: evil, the evil ones, the evildoers. Every month a new piece of news hits us over the head like a granite boulder with more evidence that the evildoers are in charge of the American government. And every month for five years now, I’ve summoned up my hope and courage that this time, the majority of Americans would finally notice what was going on, that this time our Democratic representatives in Congress would stop using words like “prudent” and start doing everything in their power to bring the evil in American government to account. “They can’t just ignore this!” I tell myself.

And then I learn over again, each time, each month after month after month, that yes, yes they can. Because (with a few exceptions) they do. They ignore it. And so the latest moral offense, or unconstitutional outrage, or inhumane policy becomes accepted, allowed, permitted, a new precedent for future behavior.

So when I hear of an enterprise in which innocent little girls’ heads were blown off and their brains stained America’s boots, and I hear that the military tried to call the whole thing the work of Iraqi terrorists, I can no longer even hope that Americans will turn off “Lost” and rise from their vibrating barcaloungers to scream “I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!” I no longer have that hope, because if Americans were really reasonable and moral people, we would have reached that point of outrage long ago. Oh, I know that there are a handful of millions of us who have been screaming in outrage for years now. But our screams are silenced by the layers of fat surrounding the heads of the remainder of the Slurpee-burping public. I no longer have hope that anything can penetrate the heads of the Slurpee-burpers. And so now I am just tired. So tired.

Are you tired too? Or am I just standing alone here whistling Dixie?

Maybe I just need a nap. In the morning, it will all seem better. Right?

“The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.”

- Vice President Dick Cheney, May 30, 2005

“The Pentagon reported Tuesday that the frequency of insurgent attacks against soldiers and civilians in Iraq is at its highest level since commanders began tracking such figures two years ago.

The numbers are an ominous sign that despite three years of combat, the U.S.-led coalition has failed to cripple the Iraqi insurgency.”

- Boston Globe, May 30, 2006

What a lack of difference a year makes.

Coincidentally, the Democratic Party just gave me a call no more than three minutes after I finished the post below. They wanted me to give them money so they could “help stop the abuses of the Bush administration.” I asked the Democratic Party representative why I should give the Democratic Party money to use in the 2006 elections if its demonstrated pattern of inaction in 2005 actually enabled the abuses of the Bush administration. The Democratic Party representative responded, “Well, of course President Bush is going to nominate justices to his liking. What can the Democrats do about that?” I retorted with one word: “filibuster.” The Democratic Party representative said, “Well, wouldn’t that just bring the whole process to a grinding halt?” When it became clear this cash cow wasn’t going to let the Democrats yank his teat today, he hung up.

Yoo hoo, Democratic Party bureaucrats. Do you get the point? If you want American liberals to support your candidates, many of whom are centrally anointed and won’t even be bothered with a primary challenge, then you’re going to have to develop a frickin’ backbone and actually make the difficult stands for the Constitutional liberties that your officeholders swore to defend.

Until then, I may contribute to some of your individual candidates, but your central committees won’t see a penny of my cash. Go suck on a corporate lobbyist’s nipple if you feel the need for sustenance, because you’re not going to get it from me.

Abu Ghraib. NSA listening in on phone calls. WMD debacles. The plot to imperil CIA agents in order to trash Joseph Wilson. Global warming rewrites. Reprisals against scientists. Domestic and Foreign Propaganda. Total Information Awareness. Stalking of librarians. Torture. Extraordinary Rendition. Secret Overseas CIA Prisons.

I could go on and on and on: just about every mistake, misstep, lie, illegality, and betrayal of the Constitution by members of the Bush administration has been hidden from public view by the Bush administration. We would not know anything about these abuses of power if the Bush administration had its way.

Fortunately, we’ve had a series of whistleblowers from inside the government who, when confronted with illegal and unethical behavior by members of the Bush administration, have cried “Enough!” and shared what they knew of malfeasance with the public. Because of these whistleblowers, the American public has been able to restrain to some small degree the extreme anti-Constitutional abuses of ethics and the human spirit by George W. Bush and his cronies in power.

But thanks to Congressional Republicans in cahoots with Bush, and to the considerable number of Democrats who either failed to see the big picture or failed to give a shit, George W. Bush was able to stack the Supreme Court with two justices driven by the twin pillars of ultra-conservative politics and fealty to Bush himself: Samuel Alito and John Roberts.

Yesterday we saw the result: by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court declared yesterday that it’s acceptable for government officials to retaliate against and punish whistleblowers, regardless of whether those whistleblowers expose unethical or illegal behavior, and regardless of whether they speak the truth.

The five-vote majority: Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. All of these justices are Republican-appointed. The last two are Bush appointed, and took their seats because too many Democratic Party politicians neglected their sworn responsibility to defend the Constitution by failing to filibuster Alito and Roberts.

The door that revealed the manifold aspects of Bush administration malfeasance has been slammed shut by the beneficiaries of Bush’s own political patronage. What else is Bush lying about? What other betrayals of the Constitution and of liberty are being executed in our names? Now we may never now.

The Bush White House has clearly gotten the message that the Iraq War is a disaster. With the number of dead American soldiers nearing the number of people killed on September 11, 2001, many Americans are asking whether the war in Iraq is really making Americans safer. The massacre of innocent civilians, including Iraqi babies, by US Marines at Haditha, is causing people to question George W. Bush’s claim that the war is a matter of good versus evil. And then there are all those Iraqis who keep on dying, with those left alive not still appearing very liberated.

But, George W. Bush is a man of action. When he sees a problem, he doesn’t just scratch his chin. No, sir! With public confidence in the Iraq War at an all time low, George W. Bush knows just what to do!

Get a new Treasury Secretary! Yeah, that will fix things!

Everyone across America has just been dying to get John Snow out of the Treasury Department. In family restaurants across the USA, there will be a big sigh of relief knowing that there’s somebody new to put his signature on our money. Yes, siree, when Americans looked at the people working with George W. Bush in the White House, they’ve clearly agreed: John Snow is the one that’s got to go!

Not Dick Cheney. Not Donald Rumsfeld. Not Alberto Gonzales. Not Michael Chertoff. Certainly not George W. Bush.

We can all go back to mowing out lawns in peace now, knowing that the disaster in Iraq is all taken care of. Thank goodness!

Click here to listen to Al Gore’s interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air yesterday. Gore talks about global warming, the possibility of a presidential run, changes in the Senate and the imperilment of liberty in America. It runs about thirty-five minutes, and seems like a good opportunity to actually measure the meaning in Al Gore’s voice: is this guy for real? Take a listen, and then tell me what you think.

The New York Liberal blog has been writing a good few articles about the emerging opposition to Hillary Clinton’s rightward tilt within the New York State Democratic Committee, which is meeting this week in Buffalo, New York. The blog post there this afternoon describes an article in the New York Daily News entitled: Hillary Pays A Price: New York Democrats angry at senator’s sudden ‘right turns’.

I’ve read that same article, and here’s a passage from it that strikes me as odd:

“In recent months, as Clinton has geared up for what most believe will be a run for President, she has staked out new, moderate stances on several key issues - alarming some liberals in the process.

She has called abortion ‘a tragic choice’, sponsored a bill to make flag-burning a crime, pushed for a crackdown on violent video games and supported the war in Iraq.”

This passage has me thinking about the use of the term “moderate” in politics today. I’m coming to the conclusion that “moderate” and “centrist” are terms that have no real meaning. After all, if “moderate” includes support for a making flag burning a criminal act, then what do we call right wing? Shooting flag burners?

The more I hear people try to use the terms “moderate” and “centrist” to describe their particular political opinions, the more I wish we could throw these terms into the trashbin of the English language.

I could say that protection of the environment, development of alternative energy, opposition to the Iraq War, support for reproductive rights, protection of civil liberties, and so on, are centrist positions that all Americans should be able to agree upon. To do so, however, would be dishonest. These are progressive positions, and they’re among the reasons that I’m proud to be a progressive. When it comes to matters like deciding between clean air and dirty air, choosing between peace and a war of lies, and picking between freedom and the establishment of an American totalitarian government, I don’t think that there is any good, coherent centrist position. Sometimes, we have to have the strength to decide what’s right, and then stand up for it.

Hillary Clinton has not had that strength in her first term as a United States Senator. Oh, yes, Hillary Clinton has been softening, but it’s not in the sense that her supporters would like you to think. Hillary Clinton has not been becoming more moderate. She’s been pandering to America’s right wing. Let’s be honest about that, and then decide on that basis whether she is truly worthy of the support of Democratic voters.

While the UK Independent caught and reported this story yesterday, oddly enough I cannot find a single mainstream American news outlet covering the following report by the Center for Media and Democracy. The report’s name:

Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed

In this report, available in executive summary or full 144-page pdf format, the Center for Media and Democracy releases the results of their project to track the use of 36 video news releases (VNRs) created by the Bush administration or corporate America. Center researchers found that just this small set of VNRs had been shown to Americans on the air by 77 television stations across the nation, in markets accounting for a full half of the American viewing public. Click here for a map of offending television news stations, and click here for a full list. At none of these 77 television stations did news staff identify the source of the VNRs. Instead, they were seamlessly integrated into the seemingly “independent” news programs, making it appear that the fake news and fictional endorsements being presented were both actual and independent of the government and industry that produced them. Three stations even had their anchors read scripts, verbatim, prepared by government and corporate interests for them.

Amy Goodman aired a segment on her radio show, Democracy Now!, in which she played a segment of one VNR released by the State Department and aired by multiple “independent” news shows around the country without an acknowledgement that the VNR was government-sponsored propaganda. Here’s just one snippet:

IRAQI AMERICAN 1: We love the United States! We love America! They help us!

IRAQI AMERICAN 2: Yes!

NARRATOR: In this Kansas City cafe, Iraqi Americans watch the historic events on TV.

IRAQI AMERICAN 3: I’m very, very happy. I said, thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A. I love Bush, I love U.S.A., because they do that for Iraqi people’s freedom.

You’ve never been able to trust a corporation’s own stories about itself.
But now you can’t trust the Bush administration to tell the truth about its activities.
Now you can’t trust the Congress to investigate government shenanigans.
And now you can’t trust that the “independent” news media’s take on an issue hasn’t already been bought.

Well, pardon me, but what can you trust in any more? What can you believe is real and true? Over two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson wrote that

“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories….

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government…. Whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, the people, if well informed, may be relied on to set them to rights.”

(Sources: Notes on Virginia, 1782 and letter to Richard Price, 1789)

But what if the people are no longer well-informed? What if they are ill-informed? And what if the government and the powerful moneyed interests who serve to keep the people’s power in check are to blame? What then? What now?

I could not help but feel, as I read two stories this afternoon, one about an explosion in a market in Iraq, killing forty, and another about a hearing held in Congress about the search of a member’s office for evidence of massive bribery, that there was a connection.

It’s something about the meaning of a free market these days, a market of politicians for sale, and a market in a nation we liberated, where now car bombs are given freely.

The growing shadows of our time take shape as the stifled investigation into either crisis.

It was a last gasp for the Bush plan for Iraq last week. You could tell that when George W. Bush met with Tony Blair, the two of them desperately wanted to break out of the cycle of failure that has consumed the Iraq War. Unfortunately, the two didn’t have the courage to try a new approach. They came out with the same old tired statements about the same old tired plan. They proposed winning a war that can’t be won, against an enemy they don’t even know how to define.

In the meantime, the reality of Iraq continued to whirl out of control. Scores of civilian deaths over the weekend were blamed on Iraqi insurgents, but the revelation of a massacre by United States Marines of at least two dozen men, women and children who were dragged out of their homes in Haditha and shot execution-style now undermine the credibility of the US military when it blames killings on insurgents. After all, spokesmen for the American military said that the people killed in Haditha were killed by Iraqi insurgents too. That turns out to have been a outright lie.

The so-called “democratic” government of Iraq is running death squads and torture chambers, and crafting laws that will dramatically curb the freedom of Iraqi citizens. Many Americans are now coming to the fair conclusion that the United States is fighting in Iraq to replace one despotic regime with another.

With the killings of CBS cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan and critical injury of Kimberly Dozier over the weekend, Reporters Without Borders is describing the situation in Iraq as getting worse. “The security situation is becoming more and more alarming for the press in Iraq,” the organization says. They ought to know - journalists are the closest thing to a credible source about the Iraq War that we have. What they have to tell us consistently negative.

Some, including President Bush, say that we should just ignore all the negative news, and focus on trying to find positive stories about Iraq. That’s foolishly naive. When it comes to the Iraq War, a spoonful of sugar does not help the medicine go down… and the medicine is turning out to be nothing but pure poison.

Two weeks ago, Carlotta del Hedgehog released a memo advising Republicans to somehow combine epithets against gays, blacks, Mexicans and terrorists in order to whip up fear and thereby win elections. Now come the first indications that Ms. Hedgehog’s advice is bearing fruit (so to speak).

In his run as the favored Republican candidate against North Carolina Democratic congressman Brad Miller, Vernon Robinson has begun paying for radio spots in which he declares:

Brad Miller supports gay marriage, and sponsored a bill to let American homosexuals bring their foreign homosexual lovers to this country on a marriage visa! If Miller had his way, America would be nothing but one big fiesta for illegal aliens and homosexuals, but if you elect Vernon Robinson, that party’s over.

A gay Mexican fiesta? Roll out the pony keg! But, wait, I’m a straight American. Can I come to the party, too? Or do I need an honorary gay Mexican escort? And in which pocket do I put that bandana? Robinson is right: this new democratic America sure is complicated!

Click here to donate to Brad Miller’s campaign and make that gay Mexican fiesta a reality.

George W. Bush sets forth a traditional vision of Memorial Day in his official proclamation today:

Throughout our history, the men and women who have worn the uniform of the United States have placed the security of our Nation before their own safety. America will be forever grateful for their service and sacrifice. On Memorial Day, we honor those who have paid the ultimate price for our freedom.

Defending the ideals of our Nation has required the service and sacrifice of those from every generation. From Valley Forge, across Europe and Asia, and in Afghanistan and Iraq, courageous Americans have given their lives so that others could live in freedom. These Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen took an oath to defend America, and they upheld that oath with bravery and decency. They have liberated the oppressed, spread freedom and peace, and set a standard of courage and compassion for our Nation. All who enjoy the blessings of liberty live in their debt.

This is a selective memorial which follows a well-trodden path. Members of the Armed Services of the United States are most often remembered on Memorial Day for their “service,” “sacrifice” and “courage” in the defense of American freedom and security. What do “service,” “sacrifice” and “courage” mean? And what about that “defense of American freedom and security” part? As politicians, priests, and talking heads on the morning shows go through the motions of trotting out these code words, I want to try this morning to push through them and say what for me is beneath them. I also want to try to move beyond this selective memorial to a more complete reckoning. So here goes:

MEMORIAL DAY

We ask mostly men and lately some women, too, to put on a uniform, take an oath, obey orders, and be ready to go to war. Every once in a while, they go to war. Lately, most of them end up getting sent to war.

On this Memorial Day, I’d like to take a few moments to think about the thousands upon thousands of American citizens and non-citizens who have died and who have been killed in wars. Their pay wasn’t worth it. Their health benefits weren’t worth it. They never got to live a full life. And they died because they were following orders, orders of a democracy, orders that stain every American’s hands red.

What do you say to a dead soldier for the orders that take his or her life and stain your hands red? You don’t say anything, because you can’t, because they’re dead. We pretend by making speeches in which we say we say nice words to the fallen, but we don’t really, because they aren’t there to listen. We’re saying nice, comforting words to ourselves. Ditto when we go to the graveyards and listen to the trumpeters play taps. We stand silently at the graves of dead soldiers and we say we “pray,” which consists in this country of tilting the head down, closing the eyes, and… what? Saying words to ourselves that help us feel as if we’re doing something on our end to even out the rotten deal we’re responsible for. It’s a pantomime of action to take the place of actually doing anything. So then we feel as if we’ve evened out the deal, and then we go to the store and get a new big television to watch our shows. Great deal.

The truth is that you can’t even out the deal for someone who’s died in an American war, because death is final and the dead are wholly inaccessible to justice. There are, however, a lot more people who end up wounded in wars. What sort of memorial is appropriate to someone who has lost a leg in war on the orders of a democracy, or someone who has been disfigured by a roadside bomb because we collectively decided that a war would be a jolly good idea? How about a free college education, a guaranteed job for life with full medical benefits? That helps, but it feels cheap, doesn’t it, like a payoff or something. So instead our representatives cut veterans benefits on an occasional basis to fund other priorities, but then give a big whopping “Thanks” on Memorial Day.

Thanks!

Thanks for what? That’s the sickest part of the whole sick deal. Because while George W. Bush and Representative Horace W. Bumblefuckridge III and Rush Limbaugh and all the rest of the talking heads say “gosh, thanks for defending American freedoms and protecting Americans’ security,” they’re muttering lies. Oh, sometimes it’s true: members of the National Guard put their asses on the line to save people’s lives in hurricanes or earthquakes or other natural disasters. Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked in World War II. But a lot of the time, the “defending American freedoms and protecting America’s security” line is bull crap. We send people to fight wars in nations that are no threats to the Americans’ safety, at least until we start the fight; after that, we end up with roadside bombs and more terrorists. We send people to battlefields when the outcome of the battle will have no impact on American freedoms, except perhaps to be used as a pretext to take away those freedoms.

So we’re left mumbling pretend words to dead people who can’t hear, regarding injustices we can’t fix. And a bunch of people come home disfigured and disabled for the rest of their lives because we ordered them into a war zone for reasons other than the defense of security and freedom. Boy, that sucks, and we’re collectively responsible for it.

We can mumble “thanks” and pretend that the injuries and deaths of American soldiers have meaning when sometimes they have none. But that’s not memory; that’s delusion.

Instead, why don’t we spend time on Memorial Day engaging our memories: remembering our moments of war euphoria, our collective embrace of warfare, and the screwed up results. Instead of saying comforting words to make us feel good enough to send another generation off to war, we can remember the deaths and injuries that were in vain so that we don’t make the same vain and stupid decisions again.

Ten days ago, Mother Davis wrote about the growing allegations of a massacre by US Marines at Haditha, Iraq. Now, the worst fears about what happened at Haditha being proven true. It seems that US Marines broke into the homes of Iraqi families, dragged civilians, including women and children, out into the street, and shot them, execution-style.

There was no firefight going on at the time. There was no reason to suspect that the Iraqi civilians had done anything wrong. The Marines just wanted to kill. So they killed.

This war crime was compounded by the additional crime of officers in the United States military working to cover it up. No serious investigation of the incident was begun by the military until Time magazine announced that it had a videotape with evidence of the crime, perhaps videotape of the massacre itself. Until that point, the military told us all that the civilians were killed by insurgents, not by American soldiers. The military lied to us all, to cover it up. There was never any evidence that Iraqi insurgents had anything to do with the killings, but the military told us the lie anyway.

The United States Congress has the duty to investigate all aspects of the United States military’s role in the Haditha massacre, including the coverup. If the Pentagon is allowed to cover up war crimes like the one at Haditha with lies blaming America’s enemies for such a massacre, then what else will the Pentagon be allowed to do? Right now, the Bush White House and the Congress are moving to deploy military force on American soil. The military has been conducting spy operations against peaceful American protesters through the Eagle Eyes program and other efforts. If the US military is capable of covering up massacres of civilians committed in cold blood, what other kinds of atrocities are they capable of covering up - within our own borders?

Yesterday, Representative John Murtha said he wants answers:

“Who said, ‘We’re not going to publicize this thing; we’re not even going to investigate it’? Until March, there was no serious investigation.”

Murtha is calling for a full investigation of the Haditha massacre and the cover up by the Pentagon. Will the Congress conduct such an investigation, or will it simply hold a hearing or two at which a few representatives from the military are asked a few questions, so that Senators and Representatives strike a dramatic pose.

Today, the US military is telling us that, yes, American soldiers opened fire on a group of protesters in Afghanistan, killing many people, but tells us that the Afghans were becoming violent, and so the killings were necessary. Well, why should we believe what the military tells us about this incident? How do we know that what happened in Afghanistan yesterday was not just another intentional massacre of civilians?

We can’t trust what the military tells us any longer. They have been caught in too many lies and too many cover-ups to be regarded as a credible source.

If one massacre of civilians by American soldiers has been uncovered, it’s reasonable to speculate than many more such massacres have actually occurred, and have also been covered up by military officers.

When the military comes to us and reassures us that, no, certainly such things are not taking place, will you believe them?

It’s a slow time. Letting it be slow:

meow meow

hiss

meow.