This was the early '80s. Our computer systems were not so good in those days, yet we were counting on the Soviet computer systems to know the difference between a real U.S. launch and blip on a radar screen somewhere that was not real. It happens all the time, even now.
The Soviet Union was put in a position where they didn't have but a few seconds to allow for human intervention in such a situation. The nearly bankrupt Soviet Union's computer systems could not possibly have been any where near as good as our systems and, as most of us remember, ours were not all that great.
Hell, even Saint Ronnie changed his mind about the wonder of nuclear weapons, once he figured out that the game of "Nuclear Chicken" would, some day, end in global destruction that would make "Noah's great flood" seem like a wonderful 40 day trip, sailing the high seas. Thanks be, Mikael Gorbachev was there to help him turn things around, to lead the world back from the nuclear abyss. Nevertheless, nuclear weapons still exist, but no longer are they limited to two super powers kept in check by a policy known as MAD (mutually assured destruction). The acronym certainly fit the times. ( Nukes were not limited to the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. even then. Israel had them then and they have more now, though they will never publicly admit it.)
Now, I live in Georgia. I still consider myself a moderate, but readily admit that, in times like these, I tend to move toward the left, mainly because the far Right scares the living begeebus out of me and the Left never has scared me. I don't like people, let alone groups of people, who have more power and money than sense, who go out of their way to scare me. I especially don't like it when I find out that they are intentionally trying to scare me for political gain. As a matter of fact in all honesty, I must confess that it makes me angry as hell.
So, if the Left, whoever they are, are angry, I don't blame them; no, not one iota. How could I possibly blame them for being angry when I, myself, am angry as hell and I don't like being angry anymore than I like being scared.
What I really don't like is nausea and nauseated is what I have been for the last few days, thanks to the hate and lie-fest known as the Republican convention, 08 and the ACNM's coverage of it.
No where were the police state type of arrests of journalists and non-violent protesters covered. Were it not for the Internet, no one would know about any of it and the American people should know about it because this kind of thing can happen to any of us who openly disagree with the policies of the authoritarian fascists who have been in power for the last 7 1/2 years.
Anyone who believes that McCain-Palin represent change have to be out of their minds, or so brainwashed that there is little hope for them and, therefore, possibly our country. Only the modern-day GOP would think that Palin's speech at the convention represents change or, even, civility. If anything it represents an escalation of hateful GOP oratory and, I believe, the true face of a malignant bigotry I did not want to believe still existed as it did in Nixon's GOP (remember Nixon's southern srategy? A strategy of bigotry and fear-mongering in 1968 directed at the Dixiecrats and their followers.)
Not only is this a truly dangerous time in and for this country, thanks to the Neocons and their Bush administration, it is truly a sad time for people like me.
Hey, peeved hippie! Stop your hatin' and learn to love the (McCain) bomb!
Friday, September 5, 2008
"Fellow citizens, if the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain's resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry left never will."
-- George W. Bush, RNC '08
Aww, just look at you. You seem a little upset. A mite peeved, even.
Heck on a hot pancake, I'd even go so far as to say you were downright angry, given how I can see the ripples of general upsettedness and waves of appalledosity coursing through your hot liberal body like fresh biodiesel through a converted VW van. Really now, that can't be good for your chakras, can it?
What's wrong, buttercup? Right-wing politics got you down? RNC '08 making you gag? Toxic and inexcusable events of the past eight years make you deeply sick to your stomach, spleen, heart, mind, spirit and even your kneecaps? Or is it the wretched notion that the bizarro-world McCain-Palin agenda wants to continue more of the same?
Or maybe it's this: Maybe it's all this terrifying new evidence that there still seems to be this huge pile of Americans who aren't all that concerned with -- or even aware of -- just how violently the GOP continues to dump all over their very heads. Is that what's making your blood boil? Aww, there, there, now.
Really, I have to say, what nerve you libs have, daring to be angry at a time like this. This is a time of optimism and change! This is a time of true, red-blooded American mavericks, of hot Alaskan redneck babes and giant phallic guns and military fetishism and zero birth control, of teen pregnancy and God and freshly slaughtered moose on the dinner table!
Can't you sense the patriotism? Hell, McCain-Palin is so damn American it might as well be a McDonald's McRib sandwich dipped in Crisco and cooked over a Chevy Tahoe's exhaust pipe at a tailgate party in Kid Rock's bowels. Feel the jingoism, hippie!
You know what you should do, angry lefty? You should take a page from the Republican Convention. Just look how perky they all are, doing that incredible dance of the true blind American, completely blocking out the pain and misprision of their party's leadership -- the failed war, the fiscal disaster, the least popular president in a lifetime, the secrecy and scandal and historic ineptitude -- much in the same way an insane cat lady blocks out the all the cold lumps of fur piling up in the freezer. Really, why can't you be more like that?
I'll tell you this, peeved liberal: The GOP is laughing at your expense. Don't you see how they're tossing about "the angry left" catchphrase as though progressives are the only ones who've been molested by Bush's horrible policies and McCain's lust for more war, by illegal wiretapping, torture, environmental ignorance, the raping of the Treasury?
Oh sure, you and I both know there are plenty of angry Republicans out there too, furious at how Bush and now McCain have ruined their once-noble party and trashed the heart of the nation for the sake of oil cronyism and war profiteering. But there is simply no room for them at this particular table.
Right now, you get to be either one of two things: A furious lefty to be equated with North Vietnamese torturers, lured in by the "sham" of Obama's deep intelligence and potential historic greatness, or a deeply drugged conservative, numb to the world, lacking a foothold on a single issue you can defend but nevertheless shooting for the rafters with a giant rifle of gall. Take your pick.
Here's a fun fact: Do you know why Bush and others get to call you "the angry left" and lightning does not strike them dead on the spot? Simple, lovebug: because they know something you don't.
Here it is: Repubs know -- or rather, desperately hope -- that there remains a simply huge number of very ill-informed, reactionary Americans out there who are still operating on the lowest possible intellectual and cultural strata -- who are, for example, totally turned on by seeing Governor Palin in a power skirt wielding a rifle and a knocked-up teen daughter and a fetish for Creationism and oil and sexual ignorance, a woman who has called the war in Iraq "a task from God."
This is McCain's apparent message to these effortlessly terrified throngs (aka "Bush's base"): You know who should be running this country if and when I don't make it through my first term? Hot chicks with guns! Check that: Hot neocon MILFs with guns who can skin a moose and who reject condoms and who don't know a Shia from a Sunni from an Eskimo pie, but who know lots about foreign policy because she can see part of Russia from her desk. Yay America!
So I ask again, why so livid, liberal? Is it because it wasn't exactly "the angry left" who shoved institutionalized torture, pre-emptive military violence, or a complete disregard for science down the throat of American domestic policy? Is it the 4,000-plus dead U.S. soldiers, 10,000-plus wounded and brain-damaged, and tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians? Oh, you bleeding heart. So silly you are.
But don't you worry, because there's an even bigger secret looming that the right wing can't really mention right now. See, much as they want to sling "angry left" around and hope it sticks, there's simply no getting over the fact that, despite how it will take the Obama administration many years to repair the incredible damage Hurricane Bush hath wrought, most of us on the left are actually feeling pretty damn good these days. Happy, even.
See, we know the tide has turned. The Bush Dark Days are nearly over. The Obama groundswell is historic, extraordinary, unstoppable. The GOP had its turn, was handed six years of unprecedented, unchecked power, and very nearly destroyed the country. Even Republican leaders now openly admit their party is a mess, shattered and gutted by Bush, will take years and decades to restore to something resembling dignity. And McCain/Palin? An aberration, one of the most disquieting quasi-conservative tickets to ever give a nation the creeps.
So then, trust me when I say, try as they might, "the angry left" won't stick. As anyone with the slightest sense of history and poetic justice knows, such a jab is merely the final, desperate wailings of the bankrupt, the shameful, and the doomed.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
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