Bloody brilliant!
Author: Christopher Merle (Page 45 of 53)
I made these boots to honor the memory of those who came before.
Got this via Planet Python. This is yet another stupid meme, that is amusing/interesting enough for me to follow blindly and do.
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open it to page 56.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
- Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
So I pick up The NPR Curious Listener’s Guide to Celtic Music by Fiona Ritchie. I didn’t even have to get up. It was sitting on the end table. Anyway, I was hoping it’d be the fifth line because the page starts with a end of a sentence. So, I started with the first complete sentence on the page. Here’s the sentence:
Ever developing on the bows and strings of musical people, the settlers’ dance tunes spurred the old-time fiddle and banjo music of the South, bluegrass, and rockabilly.
But if it were the fifth line it would be:
of the region, you may well argue to the contrary.
I like that better, so I’m changing rule 3 to: Find the fifth line. And I’m going to modify the second rule to: Open it to a random page. Here are the modified meme rules:
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open it to page 56.
- Find the fifth line.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
- Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
For those interested I’m on Twitter and you can follow me here http://twitter.com/clm122704. I’m sure everyone needs to be subscribed to yet another social network or online tool.
My conservative friends have all gone quiet online. Have they retreated to an undisclosed bunker? Are they stocking up on guns and ammo? Are they depressed? Do they think the world is coming to an end? I can only speculate based on what they said before the election. If they don’t want to give Obama a chance and want to be miserable for the next four years, then that’s their prerogative. I gave Bush a chance in 2000. I vote for him. It wasn’t until after 9/11 that my support for him began evaporating. It wasn’t until after the taking of Bagdhad it was gone.
I told them at the outset of this campaign, I wouldn’t say ‘I told you so’ if Obama won and I won’t when he is inaugurated. I was cautiously optimistic about the election, but didn’t want to say anything to jink it. I would not have been surprised if the Republicans stole the election again. There are two possible reasons for why they didn’t. The Bush-Cheney cabal isn’t as evil as I thought they were. Or they’ve so damaged the country not even an Obama led country can fix it. We’ll know in the first six months how bad it really it is and within in a year how long it’s going to take to repair the damage.
Obama has only one year to begin turning this nation around. Why one year? Because in year two the next election cycle begins. It will a spectacle. So will the Republicans work with Obama or will they draw a line in the sand and be obstructionist? Not much was accomplished by a Democratically controlled Congress after they took over in 2006. If the Republicans want real bipartisanship and Democrats resist the urge to steamroll them, we’ll see progress.
My great great grandfather Bear (Yona) Timpson served in the Cherokee Mounted Rifles under Stand Watie during the Civil War. My great grandfather Frank Anton Merle served in the Austro-Hungarian Empire Army in WWI. He achieved the rank of Feldwebel. My grandfather John Merle served in the Fifth Army in WWII. His four brothers all served in WWII, two in the Pacific Theater and three in the European Theater. All made it home. My father did not serve. He did do some ROTC when he was in college, and managed to stay ahead of the draft, first by being married then having two kids, but if he’d been called up he would have gone. I’m glad he didn’t have to. My Uncle Bert served in the Army Reserve and later the Air National Guard. I was in the Air National Guard. Both of my sisters and brother all served in the Air National Guard. My Great Uncle Clyde served in the US Navy either during WWI or shortly thereafter.
There are many reason why men and women serve. You may not agree with the causes they are fighting for. Some were drafted and had no interest besides surviving. Others gave themselves wholeheartedly to the cause. Should we honor those soldiers who have fought for a bad cause when they believed they were fighting for the right cause? Or should we just honor the sacrifices they made regardless? We cannot be blind to why they served. Is it possible to turn a bad cause into a good one? These are not academic questions.
So how do you tell Iraqi vets who’ve served multiple tours that they were sent there for a bad cause? How can you say it to their face? To the ones missing hands, feet, limbs, and faces. How do you say it to those with post traumatic stress disorder. Americans said all sorts of bad things to our returning vets from Viet Nam. That too was a war of choice. Isn’t it hypocritical to say “I honor your service, but you sacrificed for a lie.”? There is no easy way of saying it, but when you consider what some of them have been through, it shouldn’t be.
Ultimately, each soldier has to face that it is a personal choice why they serve. We cannot ignore the social dimension of the sacrifice either. We can only hope that in the grand scheme of things that on some level that those sacrifices were worth it. If it were so important that we invade Iraq, where was the draft? Why were we as a country not asked to sacrifice for the war effort? We were told to go shopping. Why were we hiring mercenaries? Why didn’t we get more support from our allies? As it stands now, what we’ve done so far was not worth it. All we can do is to make sure our returning soldiers get the support and assistance they need.