It's a beautiful thing. I was just about to write an entry linking to Operation Truth when I opened Kerstin's blog and saw she already did it. Please add it to your regular reads, link to it in your sidebar, share it with friends. Our government was hijacked by extremists last week - incompetent ones, at that - because not enough of us were paying enough attention. We are going to have to assert ourselves, not lie down and take it. It's going to take a grassroots movement of people who really care, who aren't brainwashed by Fox News and its propagandizing ilk, but it can be done.
It's all well and good to send the troops handknitted items to show we care, but we really should be fund-raising for body armor and reinforcements for their vehicles instead, unless we want to sit around knitting stump covers for legless 19 year olds. Does that sound ugly and harsh? Does that create a mental picture that is so sad and grim, you don't want to think about it? What's happening is ugly and harsh, and our mainstream media is a bunch of docile, well kept newspoodles. They sit quietly for a pat on the head, and go along with the military's wish to "shield" us from the reality of war. The body count on the news (which is giving grudgingly by the Pentagon, due to public pressure) doesn't reflect the THOUSANDS of young men and women (mostly young men) who have come home badly wounded. When you read or hear a little newsbite (notice how all we get is a mention of it) about 12 Marines "wounded" by a truck bomb, do you think they are getting scratched by flying glass? They come home quietly, to underfunded, understaffed VA hospitals, and eventually home, to try to pick up the pieces of their lives. And we never knew their names or their stories, just like we don't know the ones coming home in those transport planes in flag-draped coffins, because the bullshit line from the Pentagon is that it's "unfair to the families" that we see the lines of coffins, and grieve the loss of their loved ones with them. This is how these people "support our troops" - they hide them as an embarrassment.
During the election there was a lot of blowhard shit about how if you don't vote for Dubya, you aren't "supporting the troops.' We all were on the receiving end of it. The hypocrisy of this is enough to make your head spin.
Maybe it will take a second reign of our little Caesar and the Chickenhawk Backup Band to get this country's head out of its collective ass, but I will continue to hold out hope that we Americans aren't really as dumb as we look right now. Check that - that among the 51% who really do appear to be dumb at the moment, many are going to feel duped later and can be salvaged. But God, there will be a hell of a mess to clean up when this is all over.
Knitting - I spent yesterday watching movies and working on the top-down cardigan in Plymouth Galway. I do love one-piece knitting because I hate seams, but boy, sometimes I have to remind myself as I slog back and forth across what are becoming long rows (I'm making a size 38) that it's much faster and more satisfying than flat knitting. And it really is. Really.
I coughed all night last night and had to get up to take a slug of NyQuil Cough at 2:30. I am taking this as a hopeful sign that this cold is breaking up.
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