Fred Reed titled Islamo-fascism, Judaeo-fascism, Bapto-fascism,
and Why We Need More Bars. Remarkable, as several of you noted.
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Fascisms.shtml. Easy access.
.
As a lifelong sucker for creative, out of left-field thinking, or music that
sometimes pitches like Sanky Koufax, I clicked on his website and
selected this essay, one of mamy listed. Again, he cuts to cores and
propels in many directions. Enjoy.
Ed
http://fredoneverything.net/Baez.shtml
Baez, Coyne, and Reed
All the Answers You'll Ever Need
By Fred Reed
July 11, 2009
Last night Vi and I watched for the first time a documentary, (Carry It On)
shot by my friend Jim Coyne, on Joan Baez and the movement against a war no
one any longer remembers, far away, on another planet. It was lovely
filmwork. Jim is a genius. I may have to stop having friends. I feel
inferior to all of them. It gets depressing.
Of no interest to anyone but me, perhaps, it completely changed my
understanding of Baez, whom I had regarded for forty years as just another
pretty voice. No. Smart, tough, principled in a world that isn't. I hereby
apologize.
In that war-I forget what planet it was on-the freaks and professors and
mothers and the simply decent finally managed stop the carnage, though only
after the Pentagon had killed 60,000 American kids and a million or so
Vietnamese, not to mention devastating Laos and bringing Pol Pot to power.
God I'm proud. We're such a force for democracy.
When the GIs left Asia in '73, the commie peaceniks thought they had won.
And they had, for ten minutes. The grip of the military on the country
loosened briefly.
Unfortunately the soldiers learned. Not how to win wars, which they do
poorly if at all, but how to keep a war going. Winning a war isn't all it's
cracked up to be. The promotions and contracts stop. When you are paid to do
something, it is in your interest not to finish doing it.
The Pentagon's first lesson learned was to avoid conscription, as the
conscripted and their families will take to the streets. By using an army of
volunteer suckers about whom nobody of importance cares, the military severs
its wars from most of the country, which loses interest. The brass are then
free to do as they choose.
The second lesson learned was that while defeating the enemy is not
necessary, and perhaps not desirable, controlling the press is everything.
And they did it.
So forty or so years after all the love-ins, the marches, the righteous dope
(all of which may seem silly, but in my view preferable to watching a
Cambodian mother screaming over the opened bleeding guts of her child) the
Pentagon is at it again. Once more the jets howl over remote primitive
countries, countries that did nothing to the US and couldn't have, and
promotions flow, and contracts, and generals demand more troops and more
money to stop communism. Excuse me, terrorism. Soon, the Chinese, a better
threat, coming to a theater near you. With the passing of years, one demon
fades into another. Switching enemies is much easier now, what with
search-and-replace.
But it's all about democracy and freedom and patriotism and Saving America
from.from something. The hoopla changes little, and how well it works.
Patriotic friends sometimes say to me of the military ardent things like,
"When your country says go, you go!" I seldom point out that no one in their
families is in the slightest danger of having to go, nor that "the country"
is recruiting hard and they aren't urging their children to enlist; nor do I
ask, "What is your attitude toward having your daughter drafted onto the
streets of Baghdad for five tours, perhaps coming back drooling and gurbling
for life after having her brains scrambled by a roadside bomb?" Patriotism
is important to patriots. They are full of it, and I'm about a quart low. I
shut up. I don't want to lose friends.
Yet, I think I must be a communist. It seems to me that when your country
says "go," you should ask, "Why?" Do you have a reason to kill whoever you
are being sent to kill? Then go. Otherwise, don't. If I told you to go to
Ottawa and kill Canadians, you would think me mad, and think it correctly.
Why then should you obediently kill them because a politician in Washington
tells you to do it? I do not understand.
And of course "your country" doesn't tell you anything at all. Countries are
abstractions. Men tell you to go, and for their own purposes: Dick Cheney or
George Bush, Nixon or Nitze, or the men who run the petroleum industry, or
people in the Israeli lobby, or men in the military companies who want
contracts, or officers who want to give war a try.
Why are these people "my country"? And why isn't Joan Baez my country
instead of David Petraeus? I will choose who is my country, thank you.
Ledbelly, Benny Goodman, Carl Perkins and Miss Emily Anne will come before
Lemay, McNamara, Lyndon Johnson, and Obama. Long before.
Soldiers talk much of honor. I do not understand how military service can
possibly be thought honorable. If the Wehrmacht were landing in North
Carolina, yes, but I do not believe that it is. Where is the honor in
bombing from the air lightly armed peasants who can't fight back? It is
cowardly, yes, and obscene, but do not talk of honor. Murder for hire is
murder for hire.
We now have men who sit at screens, drinking coffee and firing missiles from
remote robotic aircraft at people on the ground whom they cannot identify.
Brave men, they. I could burst into a kindergarten and kill the children
with a ball bat. The one is as honorable as the other.
Recently I saw on television a black sergeant in Afghanistan, probably
chosen by his commander for photogenicity, standing in front of a tank or
mobile gun, I forget which. He said something scripted like "This is a
such-and-such unit, the most powerful fighting force in the world." This
sort of ritual cockiness is carefully ingrained. Near my barracks in Parris
Island was a sign, "The most dangerous thing in the world is a Marine
rifleman." If it had said "an ambitious colonel" it would have come closer
to truth.
But one may wonder (unless one already knows) how good the Pentagon's
military really is. A pissed-off peasant with an RPG would seem on the
evidence more effective than the pricey zoom-kapows arrayed against him.
I cannot endorse the politics of the Taliban. If one of them told me that my
daughter couldn't go to school, one of us would leave the room on a
stretcher. Yet as fighting men, are they not magnificent? They have only
rifles, explosives, RPGs, and balls. Their enemies have unlimited air
support, helicopters, armor, artillery, sophisticated communications,
night-vision gear, good food and excellent medical care. The Taliban take
heavy casualties, their enemies almost none. The ragheads do not even have
PX privileges. Yet they have not been defeated. A fight on even terms would
last perhaps five minutes.
This, for a trillion dollars.
What the hell. Plus ca change, plus ca doesn't. Next year in Beijing. Tell
you what, though. I never liked Kum Ba Yah, and "We Shall Overcome" is
probably the sappiest song every written. But those people had nothing to be
ashamed of.
On a pleasanter note: I have decided to become a famous song-writer and make
millions. The following is a beginning, copyright Fred Reed, all rights
reserved. Major recording studios can send large checks.
Up and Coming
A Song for Our Times
By Fred Reed
Way up North, 'round a mile from Niagara
Pfizer built a plant, makin' Viagra
The old-folks home was a mile to the West
Some call it cursed, though I'd say blessed
Amazingly
About a year later disaster struck
The main flow pipe got hit by a truck
That love stuff got where it shouldn't oughter
It all leaked into the drinkin' water
Lots of it
Chorus
Viagraaaaaaaa!
Bringing resurrection to a pinnacle of perfection
In Paducah, Chatanooga, DC, and Mian'
A laudable inflation that grows the population
And a king-hell motherlode of spam
Granpa took a drink from outta the spout
The look on his face said, "Granny look out."
A devilish glint came into his eye
Granny took a look and said "My oh my."
It's what she said
Grandpa leaped to his feet and he said,
"I'm not tired but I'm goin' to bed.
You still strike me as a purty gal
But I've had a little trouble getting vertical.
Until now"
Granny hollered "Pa, now don't you fret
There's a dance left in the old girl yet.
I don't see how but somethin's givin'
Us a hell of a rush toward better livin'
Through chemistry"
The seismic lab down at Memphis State
Said, "There's trouble up North, we think it's a quake."
A reporter for the Post reported back
"Yeah there's a tremor but it ain't exack
-Ly an earthquake."
Lawyers like roaches thought they smelled some loot
They wanted to have a class-action suit
Pfizer had to do a lot of explaining
But Granny and Grandpa weren't complaining
But things got stranger
Springtime rains washed it into the ocean
Where it got spread around by the waves in motion
The Navy reported that to its surprise
The old Titanic had started to rise!
Eagerly
When the stuff reached bottom the seabed rose
Pushed to the surface by volcanoes
Scientists said upon reflection
They had never seen such a massive erection
Geologically speaking, of course
Viagra fumes leaked into outer space
From lava that was flying all over the place
Such was the power of the drug to excite
That the sun came up in the middle of the night!
What we've learned from these events is
Everything you do has consequences
If chemical bliss is what you seek
You gotta make sure the pipes don't leak
You gotta make sure
You gotta make sure
You gotta make sure the pipes don't leeeeeeeeeeak..
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