How Do You Sleep?

 

They buried a lot of guys last week. We ran the obituaries of four here at highwayscribery (immediately below), but there were others. Men and women dying the same way, cruising an inhospitable land in armored vehicles unequal to the task at hand, dying upon the trigger of an improvised explosive using a washing machine timer.

And, of course, there are the endless and countless civilians trapped in a nightmare from which there is no escape. One must go to the market to feed a malnourished, war-time family. And at the markets they bomb you. One must have a job, but oil workers are traders to the cause (whichever) and get shot in the back of the head.

Oh to be liberated.

The lines here posted are the result of casual musings by a man almost numb at the madness and violence all around him. You conservatives may sense they are laced with the glee you suspect so many leftists of harboring at the (p)resident’s colossal failure and, heck, you’re probably right.

What should we have done? Used the flag to blind ourselves to the injustice, to the unprovoked and (what seemed) uneven war? Should we have compromised our principals and said “violence now!” the way you have compromised yours and said, “we surrender our rights”?

Should we have hoped for the crushing of an impotent and submissive people, the establishment of rote democracy from on high, and then watched (r)epublicans turn it to an electoral boon that lifts only their corporate clients and loots the country?

No and no and no.

We all have the responsibility of at least attempting to perceive nuance and question the actions of those we support and believe in. We must not be blind to any movement, person, or symbol. We must be able to say, “It is wrong, in every instance, to invade a country that had not invaded us.”

We must be able to say, “As Americans it is our birthright to freedom and privacy at all times, that it is wrong to sift through our phone calls and bank accounts, and e-mails.”

We must be able to say, “Three weeks ago you killed a myth and hoisted this murder as evidence of some corner turned, some proof of a weakened resistance, of something other than the open-ended disaster you have made us pay for and deliver unto a beleaguered people. Again you were wrong as we were right, again, to oppose you.”

How do you sleep with these deaths floating in the sea of your existence, actions, and responsibilities?