Marxism International

I’ve been in and out of town this past week and consequently frivolities like blogging have suffered both from lack of time and my now legendary ADD.   There’s just so much to do when you’re out and about, and so much fun to be had doing it that it is easy to become sidetracked by superfluities

(Note: friends tell me I’m a bit lazy.  I disagree, but I do seem to have this need to be constantly entertained).  

But, in any case,  I’m back.  

There’s been a lot to blog about, too.   As usual, though, the really important news is eclipsed by the superfluities which overpopulate CNN and the usual chattering suspects  who will, I believe, do anything rather than talk about something that’s actually worth a hoot.

I think among the silliest stories are the ones detailing with ant-like devotion the comings and goings of Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother whose son, Casey, was killed last year in Iraq while serving as a mechanic with the First Cavalry Division.   The poor fellow had just re-upped the previous August knowing full well he’d be Iraq-bound sooner or later.   He reminded me of that other Nobel Prize winner Pat Tilman, the former NFLer who, eager to fight in the Chimp’s War on Terror, joined the army and wound up getting smoked by “friendly fire”. 

I mean, what the hell were these guys thinking? 

With Tilman, I can almost see why he’d identify with our egregiously shitty ruling class.   He was, after all, a well-paid pro-baller who was due to get his own tv show and maybe even become rich via celebrity endorsements.    If Pat Tilman hadn’t rolled a seven, he could’ve been a free (read: rich) man by age 35, unlike 90% of his fellow Americans, in whose ungrateful name his life was suddenly ended.

But, what about the the rest?   It is one thing to risk (and lose) one’s life for what most of us would recognize as the general good.   It is another to do so for the likes of Mr Bush and his associates and especially that malevolent class of evil-doers forever looming behind them.   Few of us in Southeast Asia in the 1970’s believed with any credulity that that what we were doing was remotely connected to making life better for our loved ones or for our country.   Class lines in the US military were pretty visible during Vietnam.   Mostly poor and working class, we were fighting a determined and ingenious enemy (like now), armed with a tenable world view which in turn was linked with a fierce sense of national pride and self-determination.   And for what?   Personally, we just wanted to get back to the Land of the Big BX. 

And our adversaries, as it turned out, had dreams very similar to ours.

I don’t know that much about the resistance in those countries currently privileged to be occupied by Western imperialism.   I imagine it is composed mainly of souls both saintly and hellish (much like souls everwhere) who are trying to expel a particularly noxious and malevolent invader, hell-bent on remaking the world in its own image.   I wish them well.  At least well enough for them to evict their tormenter.  Hopefully, they won’t replace one murderous gang of pricks with another.

Their targets are by and large those drawn from the lower echelons of American life, inspired perhaps by patriotism and a sense of adventure, but probably there for the most part because it’s a paycheck.   And benefits like a future education or job training which are becoming increasingly dear to the sons and daughters of the working class.  

What would Cindy Sheehan have said if her son had returned home whole and safe, unlike so many of those indigenous Iraqis who statistically become “collateral damage” or “non-military casualties” or who, simply and cruelly, are killed for sport?   One can imagine beaming mother and proud son, standing against the red, white and blue of their hometown of picket fences and Nascar races and serenely oblivious to the grieving mom and pop just down the street.  Or across the country.   Any country.

Without a People’s Army, the People Have Nothing.   Why you fight is much more important than how you fight.   Why do people like Casey Sheehan fight and die for criminals who rob us daily of what makes life worth living?   Who cannot provide us with tenable jobs, or health care, or decent housing, or more than a rudimentary education, or safe cities, or anything but some ephemeral “protection racket” from a nebulous enemy they themselves were instrumental in creating?   And why are such people called “heroes” by Left and Right alike?    Have we finally become, truly, a nation of sheep?

Now, were I a fly on the wall at the imagined meeting of the President and Cindy Sheehan, that’s the question I’d want to ask.