Allan,
I served in the military because I came from a family that taught me nothing about how to live otherwise.Sounds like we might be pretty similar on that one. I started reading, observing and thinking on this topic and many others, becoming a mild conscientious objector very quickly but stayed in because the only way they let you out is if you say you are a coward or crazy. You know what I am talking about. I was only 18. It was a process and still is. I don’t hate the troops, especially the pawns.It could have been me.
You are making some off target assumptions even if you fall short of being completely jingoistic. I am in the U.S. because I believe the parameters under which I live are not going to be perfect anywhere. I pay taxes because while I am here I go to jail if I don’t and I am sure some of them go to good use. If I had a ounce of power I would change the tax code so that I did not have to support the war and all my taxes would go to something else. I would give up any hope of “prosperity” for peace and a hell of a lot less bullshit, instead of codifying greed based violence. I don’t think America has to fall to pieces if that happens.If it does it is our own fault not an excuse to keep killing.I am fighting for my vision of my country what’s the problem with that? Right now it includes bitching about unjust wars and the consequences. I think Ron Paul did that.
As far as my kids go ,well I guess we will work on that one. I want that war will not kill any more children . They will have the right to join a branch military if they wish but I won’t propagandise them and pretend it isn’t what it is or stand by idle while their school or coach or whoever does.
Maybe I have the means to relocate my kids, what about those who don’t? What do I do for those who don’t if I just leave?What do I do as an American if I run off?As a citizen of the world? I can’t help the kids in Palestine but maybe I can help some here. Maybe I am supposed to be here to help FLU keep from getting shipped off to a concentration camp. I don’t believe in running away from problems. Is that the alternative to being “the one with the gun”?
I am a truer American than most. I can still recognize what isn’t American, or what isn’t for me to be proud about and say something can’t I?
I don’t owe you any protest.There is no right kind of protester for you Allan, quit trying to make me jump through hoops.No matter what I say here, or do, if I am out proetestin and actually causing a threat to the system, when the time is right you will knock me over the head and put me in a pen, because you understand why it is done.
You think my stance doesn’t cost me a lot of money? Anybody want to buy a house with the guy who says most Americans are Fascist by default? That our God isn’t better than anyone else’s?I mean it’s a good time to buy a house. I guess somehow you missed that this is a public place.
In part I do O.K because I am willing to do the work most people set aside for brown people and I live frugally.Not because I am too much of a hypocrite.Nobody can keep a perfect ethics record or be 100% “true to themselves” and survive in a conventional way. Degrees matter to my conscience.
You can’t prove I am wrong so you are going to try to prove I am insincere? What is next, coward, lunatic,seditious traitor, enemy of the people? That’s how it is done under the immutable war design isn’t it? Something immutable should not take so much coercion and propagandizing of the many by so few.
