Come On People Now... Smile On Your Brother
I've had it with all this war. I'm sorry, I know you guys come here for the mad funny, and usually I deliver in startling ways even you couldn't have conceived before you got here which inspires in you gratitude and devotion bordering on worship, but today I'm afraid I have no funny left in me. The world has simply gotten to be too dark a place for humor to thrive.

At a certain point, atrocity piles up on top of atrocity until we can no longer afford to be distracted by Lindsay Lohan's drunkenness or Mel Gibson's anti-Semitism. To be honest, at some point I just feel stupid even talking about celebrity anti-Semitism when much of the violence in the Middle East that fuels America's involvement over there is predicated on a very real desire to rid the world of the all the Jews now living in Israel, if not more. Even I have standards.

I was doing the best I could wading through all the stories about civilian deaths and children killed and families displaced to get to the stories about the banal idiocy of everyday life that fills the Bucket every day. But I can't look away anymore without speaking up. I read something this morning that was just one atrocity too far, a direct result of the war-mongering and the lies of the Bush administration, an indignity wrought by callous political calculation, the brunt of which must be borne by our men and women in uniform.

I found out today that there are US armed forces deserters fleeing to Canada. That's right. I'll let that sink in. Canada. The forced call-ups of inactive soldiers, the odd recruiting-age fluctuations, the (frankly) abuse of the National Guard system, it was all a lot to take, but now the results of government action are making people so desperate that they are willingly going to Canada. You have clearly pushed these boys too far, Mr. President. And I for one will not let it pass unremarked-upon. I refuse to sit idly by and do nothing. I will blog.

These men go to Iraq, they serve, they get shot up or shoot up other people, they handle unexploded IEDs and make split-second decisions whether or not each and every passing car is a suicide bomber... apparently it's matrix of responsibility that at the end is so harrowing, so weighty that it causes some of our people, when called back to serve again, to hitch up the dogs to the sled and brave the frozen white wastes of the north.

It gets worse. They limp across the border having had to eat the last dog, wearing four of the team's pelts for coats against the Narnian perma-winter that exists north of the Dakotas. Drawn in by the glow of a whale-oil lamp inside an igloo, they push on, clamber inside only to find... hippies.

The Vietnam draft-dodgers are still up there, refugees from our last god-awful geopolitical clusterfuck, communing with moose and seals and eating their bean curd and weaving baskets out of hemp or whatever it is the fuck they do, all while probably Canada-tainted, adding unnecessary U's to their words like colour and honour, which between the winter and the draft-dodging, none of them actually have.

I bet once the new breed of deserters realize what awaits them up there, they are desperate to go to Iraq. They would probably volunteer to fight North Korea all by themselves if it meant they didn't have to hear another folk song. But you know the hippies, I'm sure they keep burning "incense" around the newcomers to keep them docile and sedate. Once the hippies have you, there is no escape.

According to the article, the problem seems to be that these deserters simply aren't interested in shooting people the way American boys should be.

The sticking point, I think, is that most of the kids who desert now are small-town white kids from rural nowhere who are only exposed to country music and Fox News and PAX-TV. As Americans, we all know that what media you watch/listen to is 100% responsible for what kind of person you are. Just today a study was released that said kids who listen to music with explicit lyrics tend to get it on with other whores just like themselves at young ages.

The music talks about sex. The kids have sex. I don't think there's anything else to consider. Two common points within the group studied and the supposed influencing factor always automatically means causation.

The government knows this. That's why they put out a video game that kids can play so they can pretend to be in the Army and shoot bad guys. They know the kids who play Grand Theft Auto run out and steal cars and shoot up whole neighborhoods. I just bought GTA: San Andreas finally myself, so expect to see me gang-bangin' on your local news soon. It already made me miss my regular Sunday post, so you know it's some bad shit.

But maybe the video game isn't enough. Kids are still deserting. Between the two stories of deserters and the teen iPod-inspired sex, I think the solution is obvious: the government needs to fund some explicit-lyric war rap.

I know, Republicans don't like to fund the arts, but they don't think rap is art anyway, so no problem there.

Really, how hard would it be to replace "skeet skeet skeet like a water hose" with something more jauntily violent about the joys of napalm?

This is such an easy problem to fix. Less teens would be having sex because they'd be off fighting the Nameless Faceless Enemy and the deserters would stop deserting because Chingy told them not to. Come on, you know Chingy needs the work.

And the hippies would be left alone, wearing their loincloths, playing their sitars with only an audience of moose and seals to keep them company. Then we all win.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 2.7


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:38 AM