Stop Me Before I Vote Again

what no takers ?

not surprising i guess
given
the solitary
loathing dove darkness
of many regulars here

where's the pinkish sanctimony
in pushing for doles to our vets

How would the Obama administration respond to a full-scale march on DC, with tent cities set up in parks throughout the city? One that refused to abide by limits on the number of campers or times when demos could occur or where. Would the government respond like Hoover, who sent in the troops under MacArthur? Or like FDR, who sent Eleanor?

my:

vets aren't college kids
the impact of violence would be powers higher

It'd be a wash, any way it panned out. The all volunteer professional force gets a lot of cheap lip service love, with a lot of cheap vilification on tap to keep rugged individualist wingnuts and bien pensant pwogs edgy. That's the extent of their popular support. They get enough benefits to keep them slightly resented, and resentful, amongst the working class—which is thoroughly split into micro-aristocracies anyway. Anything that emerged in spite of all that would be mopped up by cops reinforced by Blackwater et al.

"a lot of cheap vilification on tap to keep rugged individualist wingnuts and bien pensant pwogs edgy"

i was hoping to provoke any of those sort
playing thru here

left rugged individualist wingnuts make me chitter with delight

and sanctimonious peace pastors

why i want to make them

not just walk their water walk
but prance it

When the vets start keeping their constitutional oath and protecting Americans from terrorists who claim the right to kill them based on secret evidence, without a trial by their peers or a congressional declaration of war, then it'll be time for a bonus.

I'd rather they just went home and took up pleasant hobbies. That's worth a bonus. I want a bonus too, now that I think about it.

Come to think of it, I do agree that veterinarians should get bonuses for keeping our dogs and cats safe and healthy.

I must admit to having been a little mystified by your reference to vets wearing uniforms - until I remembered that they wear lab coats.

I think a good bonus for our vets would be $2 million dollars each. And if they work on horses and cows then maybe even more.

Pied Cow's proposal is sensible and modest. I concur or agree or whatever is needed. And I don't want to embarrass anyone, but sometimes I find lab coats incredibly sexy.

Pied nice plan
But I prefer unmediated payments
Give the horses and your relatives the bonus directly
In kind

No more risings mil kings glue factory or hamburger grinder

Of course Al likes lab coats all the better to flash me with

Michael Yates sez on 05.01.12 @20:49:
How would the Obama administration respond to a full-scale march on DC, with tent cities set up in parks throughout the city? One that refused to abide by limits on the number of campers or times when demos could occur or where. Would the government respond like Hoover, who sent in the troops under MacArthur? Or like FDR, who sent Eleanor?

No brainer, man. Obama's response would be like Hoover, turned up to 11 -- while, at the same time, going on TV to make one of his usual fluffy, vapid speeches about The Needs Of Our Veterans, likely using a bunch of disabled Afghanistan vets and a couple of APCs as a backdrop. Then, he'd finish adding insult to injury by having Michelle do some foto ops with disabled veterans at Bethesda Naval or someplace.

-------

Actually, I'm kind of conflicted about this. Part of me is thinking fuck 'em; they willingly enlisted and took a salary to go to Afghanistan to occupy, murder and torture; I'm sick of listening to people whine about our poor traumatized troops who've just come home from murdering, torturing and traumatizing women, children and old people in Afghanistan! Motherfuckers can eat shit and die, for all I care.

Then, there's the other part of me who's an old Army brat, who spent three years or so in Germany in the '60s when my Dad was sent over (Mannheim 1962-64, Heidelberg 1969-70), and whose Dad also did a tour in Vietnam (1967-68) and who was forced to engage in a prolonged little war of his own against the VA for medical benefits to cover his treatment for Agent Orange and malaria in Vietnam, and the treatment of his Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 1972, which was likely the result of the radiation dosage he received on his very first assignment after finishing basic training in 1949: as part of an artillery battalion guarding the Hannaford nuclear plant (y'know, the one where they built the first atom bombs). This is the part of me that wants to see the veterans get an even break, the part of me that saw his Dad -- and two of his uncles -- shipped off to Vietnam to have a year of their lives pissed away, and then having to fight the goddamn' VA after they came home.

It really burns my goddamn' toast, when I think back on it... at the same time the media were making up bullshit stories about hippies spitting on GIs returning from Vietnam, the only people I saw spitting on my old man when he came home was the goddamn' VA.

This isn't grandpappy's army. They aren't conscripts, and they aren't involuntary rejects.

These motherfuckers go to war hungry and come back sated, however otherwise fucked up they are.

You might be able to get soldiers to come on over, but these kids leave warriors and come back rape-happy vikings.

Hey
This is about Vietnam vets
The guys in the crotch kicked demographic
They were indeed conscripts or forced vollunteers

No they didn't all become break and enter genet's
But they did go over there 2.4 millions of em
And 300 k got wounded

For those who saw action it was prolly worse then WWII

A bonus of 58k for each survivor of action
A dollar for each death
300k for the wounded
And
To honor their fallen comrades 580 k to the families of the dead

I have no notion about younger or older vets
But these guys sacrifice dwarfs anything since

My pal son of Sam
might suggest numbers for desert storm I
even though he served in Bosnia he served with guys and gals
from DSI

Flug you got the point obviously
I liked your last passage
They got spit on by the VA
Not me and the woodstockers
In fact if anything we tend to over defer to the vet units in the anti war movement
Defered out of deference guilt

That's a broad brush for this, Jack, and not really fair. I know lots of those kids. They're no worse and little different than anyone who takes a corporate job: clueless, some; poorly socialized, some; indirectly drafted, some; idiotically romantic, some. The common theme I've seen is a severe reaction to the operant conditioning facilities called "school" and a narrowing of choices that's drummed into them, situationally imposed and often both.

More than ninety percent won't ever kill anyone, in uniform or out. I don't get too bent out of shape over those who have. I'm not having happy thoughts about it, but by my standards whatever they've done pales in comparison to the works of, say, cruise missile liberals at the policy and propaganda levels.

What brought it all home to me was walking past cops in the hallways, on my way to go tutor kids who were too scared to learn and too scared to refuse the tutoring that wasn't going to help them. I could ditch the freak show. They couldn't. That was a while ago. Schools haven't gotten any nicer.

There are other schools, needless to say, with a less direct prison prep atmosphere. The control theater and petty, vindictive irrationality are subtler. The good teachers get shamed, ridiculed, driven out. The kids learn less blatantly brutal pecking orders. But the lesson is clear: submit, play the mind games and take whatever escape route you can.

Al,

I know the ones who were eager to ship off to Fallujah to hill some hajjis. Maybe they adapt to it by conforming to the martial culture, but there's no ignoring that they made the choice. Fuck them. Fuck that. Not a one of them was obligated to take Sam's dollar. Not a one. Maybe that's unfair, but it cannot be dismissed.

...maybe a blue blood CEO has been conditioned by familial cruelty and callousness, as well, Al. I still feel no pity or fellow feeling for him. And should he be thrown from a balcony, I'm not going to take a moment to lament the forces that shaped him into a merchant despot. He could have said no,, right?

Jack T. Crowbot sez on 05.02.12 @22:02:
This isn't grandpappy's army. They aren't conscripts, and they aren't involuntary rejects.

You might be able to get soldiers to come on over, but these kids leave warriors and come back rape-happy vikings.

Good point, though I have to note here that Dad was an enlisted man, and had already been in the Army about eighteen years when he was sent to Vietnam. My Uncle Lee (Army) and Uncle Howard (Navy) were also enlisted, as I recall, and were there in '64 or '65ish, and Uncle Bill, the "baby brother" on my Mom's side, was drafted in '65 or '66. He and my Dad were there at the same time. Our family was pretty goddamn' lucky; Uncle Howard, Uncle Lee, Uncle Bill, and Dad all came home OK, not horribly maimed, opium-addicted, or insane.

Jack, I know that kind of kid too and I can still cut them some slack. Systemic pressures are such that the moral reason I'd like to see and uphold, and see them uphold, is a rare thing indeed. That won't change easily or quickly. It takes time to reclaim humanity.

As for the blue blood scions on the CEO track, and their highly paid lackeys, that's tougher. IOZ did a fine piece on their soullessness. There's probably no humanity to reclaim. I don't like to follow the logic from there. It winds up at the gates to the gulag.

If the logic leads you there, Al, I think you've missed a turn. Does anyone really deserve to rot in stinking camp for the rest of their days, occasionally wracking their minds to try and recall what sunlight felt like without a barred window in the way? Well, yes the world is lousy with such people.

Who though deserves to stand in the guard towers and know that they have done this thing?

That's well explicated, Leon, and your points are well taken too. No disagreement from me.

I don't know, Al. The SMBIVA line on cops is almost notoriously tough-minded, as perhaps it should be. But it seems to get all mushy in regard to the people doing the mostly foreign work of militarized market capture.

Don't the services attract the same types as the peace brigades? If so, why have no illusions about one set, but set up a house of sympathetic cards regarding the others?

Al and Leon

My view on class struggle:

It's nothing personal

So I can still take Jesus up
on his Personal imperative
And love the class enemy
As myself

One soul at a time that is

Jack, I see a big difference between what drives kids into a cop's uniform and what drives them into the military. The cop knows he's not likely to face anyone who shoots back, though he may get shot in the back by another cop. The motive for nearly all of them is tightening the screws, in safety, right where they live. It's telling that the only time one cop has fragged another is when one of them attempts to do something good. And call it mushy, but Occupy got lots of veterans in support and the Teabaggers got lots of cops.

Owen, that's where I was wandering. Personalization can never end well.

I think it's essential to look at the role honor plays in motivations. People who serve in the military are persuaded to do so for, among other reasons, how honorable and noble it is, how they'll be revered. And truly noble notions of self-sacrifice and caring for others are perverted into making people volunteer to be warriors. And of course, they ARE honored: by their families, friends, communities, even total strangers. They're treated like disposable items by the powers that be and the elites, but that's another story.

The Honor narrative and propaganda draws a range of personality types, at least as I've seen it. I've met more than a few lefties from the military, or at the very least, people with surprisngly heterodox views. And let's not forget: where's the honor in schlepping boxes in the WalMart storage room?

In my own experience, almost all cops I know are baggers and right-wingers, and many are racists. This includes the ones I like. The racism usually takes the form of, "Look at what we do for These People, or what these animals put us through...." There's a lot of martyrdom, woe-is-me, I'm-such-a-good-guy-for putting-up-with-this-shit, so the "rest of you can be safe."

But cops aren't lured with the same sense of honor. Most cops I've known fall into two types: 1. those who want the pay and bene's. 2. Thugs who want a badge and a billyclub. The second type are usually overly racist, but just about all I know are baggers.

During his first tour, Danny learned to enjoy killing, so 3 're-ups' until '73 when, doing small unit stuff in the highlands, he killed an intel ofc who had forgotten the password.

Danny was correct but, presto, court martial - he did poorly after returning to the states, ptsd worked its wonders just as it does and will on tens of thousands afiraq combat vets...

please recall they are in a new world

the periphery cannot be

penetrated with pity.

......a periphery which can't
be penetrated by pity
or lib kissy pies

.....pity?

i'm suggesting cash

cash helps

but only a few
decades ago

i knew this did too
and it did [sometimes]

----HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE
EJERCITO GUERRILLERO DE LOS POBRES
-------------E.G.P.

I can't work myself into a lather about the choices an eighteen year old makes. I don't expect them to have acquired the experience and knowledge I've gained over the last four decades to make a decision that suits me.

If I find myself wanting to dump on them, I remind myself that unless I'm willing to go the full Arthur Silber and completely disengage, I'm just another hair on the ass of the beast like them. It's the follicles near the head that are the problem.

chomskyzinn, you gotta meet some non-white cops. My anecdotal experience with them is 100% genuine belief in community service. Granted, it's largely wrong/misguided, but it's sort of sweet. There are actually, say, Hispanics who get bitter and try to steal the money from the gas station job that someone else is trying to save for college, and there are other Hispanics who don't like that and want to be a protector on call so their kids have a chance to grow up better.

Into solid middle class America, yes. They don't see the trap they're laying for their future, anymore than do the vaguely anarchist progressive jerks, but their motivations have a touch of genuine selflessness that's lacking in the latter group, and that, at least, is refreshing.

Many Hispanic cops I've known would've been very comfortable giving people the business in Pinochet's torture chambers. Just as bad as the worst white cops, if not worse, and particularly rough on blacks. The Latin machismo thing can get ugly in a blue uniform.

Of course, this is anecdotal, my own experience. Exceptions to what I'm saying abound. But I've known some pretty nasty Hispanic cops.