We lost the war.

As I was waiting for the train today I was thinking about why we're at war, why Osama bin Laden attacked us and why we're involved in this thing with Al-Qaida. King George tells us that they hate our freedom, they're attacking our freedom, and I guess they are, I guess they do...Maybe they're jealous, or maybe they think that capitalism is inherently evil, and maybe it is. Here's what I think. If Al-Qaida wanted to attack us to destroy our freedoms and destroy our way of life and tear apart our country, they have been more successful with one single blast than I'm sure they ever dreamed. Those twelve guys that murdered thousands of people with four airplanes brought heaps of success onto themselves and their comrades. Just look at what their actions have wrought. Now, America is in a death-lock with the Iraq war, stretching her resources very thin indeed to keep up the battle-pace. Meanwhile, America's attentions have turned away from her own corporeality, the plentiful gaze is on the military and keeping the fighting machine running without a draft or any of the other old war measures that used to be in place. Thus America is dying from the inside, like an old leathery smoker woman, piling on cakes of expensive makeup to "keep up appearances", buying expensive clothing and accessories to adorn the wasted body inside them. But it is to no avail. The downfall has begun. The terrorists have won, more than they ever intended. They wanted capitalism to crumble into ruin, beginning with the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And look, America, look at the wasteland around you, look at our wasted beaches, our burning forests, look at our dying children, our shut-up factories and businesses, look at the farms crippled with pestilence and drought. Look at the Dickensian world we have created together with the terrorists, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, where all those tools that we built to hold our fundamental democratic rights in place have been destroyed by greed and hubris. Even our sense of justice has died, that we see this all around us and wallow in our apathy, crippled by fear and ignorance.

So, next time you want to wave a flag or be proud of America, think of how we have lost, think of what we sacrificed the day we decided to invest in the prosperity of war rather than of our country. The mission was indeed accomplished, as King George put it, but preserving our freedoms was apparently not part of that mission. So let us march onward to preserve the freedoms of teh Iraqi people, while our own country falls into ruin. Let us sit back and admire the repulsive beauty of our hubris.

Burning Bridges

First of all let me express my sympathies to the victims of the Minneapolis bridge collapse and their families. This kind of thing shouldn't happen in America unless it is instigated by some natural disaster: flood, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, blizzard...but in the richest country in the world, there is no excuse for our roads, bridges, and transport systems to be in their current state.

Everyone asks (just as they do in any disaster) why did this happen? Then again, the long Uncle Sam finger searches for someone at which to point in blame. But instead of Uncle Sam pointing outward, he should point inward and blame himself. This, like most American tragedies, is our fault, and we have the power to fix it if we begin thinking about our fellow Americans and stop thinking about ourselves.

Everyone wants tax cuts. Lower taxes, less government..blah blah blah. Politicians use the American avarice for their own benefit, winning whole elections based on their supposed viewpoint on lowering or cutting taxes. NO AMERICAN SHOULD SUPPORT TAX CUTS. It is selfish; every time someone gets a tax refund, they are stealing that money from society, they are refusing to help pay for the services we all need.

Why did the bridge collapse? The Minnesota Department of Transportation has most likely made budget cuts over several years to stay afloat; the funds allotted to them by the government have in turn been lessened. Why? The less taxes we pay as citizens, the less money goes into the government coffers to be distributed to entities like the Transportation Department. With budget cuts come layoffs and service cuts; repairs are made less frequently to roads because there simply is not enough money in the government bank to pay for it. So roads and bridges deteriorate, and then--what do we expect--bridges cave in, "accidents" happen, sinkholes appear...These events are not coincidence or chance, they are the direct result of our apathy as citizens and our selfish reluctance to contribute to the wellness of our society as a whole.

So ask your government representatives to raise taxes. Make charitable contributions. Adopt a highway. Volunteer. Do these things so that more people don't die needlessly on our roads, treading perilous paths that we have created through our hubris. Be not an America that says, I, me, my, mine...but we, ours, us.