our bad; or, some people claim that theres a government to blame, but i know its our own damn fault

dark times in los estados perdidos. you've been reading; you know. undeclared (and unsanctioned) martial law in DC. border patrol roadblocks in southern new hampshire (live free or die trying?). and now, the sobering realization that when you boil it down, its our fault. my fault. your fault. oh yes. there is no sense in denying it. because when you turn your back on the meanest kid on the playground, you dont get to complain when your mouth is filled with sand and broken teeth.

you remember back in the 2nd grade when you first heard the phrase "of the people, by the people, and for the people", and you wonder where that went wrong. you think, if the government is of the people, why dont i get a say? i'll tell you. you let it go. you shut the hell up. we all did. so did our parents. it started with cynicism, when people would joke about voting for "the lesser of two evils". it gained strength through fear, and it ripened and began to fester on the vine with legislation that took away the voice you had never heard; your own.

there is a popular bumper sticker that says "take my civil liberties; i wasnt using them anyway". well, shit, people. first off, these things that are now called "civil liberties"? about ten years ago, we called them "our rights". we suposed that they were "god given" and "unalienable". now, they are granted to us ever so condescendingly in packages like free-speech zones, and we forget that this entire country is a free-speech zone, acourding to the First Amendment.

and yes, why the fuck werent we "using them"? why is it that when you start quoting the Constitution, people look at you as if you were babbling on about the end is near, repent now? It isnt enough to say that we werent using them because most of us didnt know about them. they said "shit" on south park, we all remember that, and yeah, wasnt it good to live in a country that had freedom of speech. Oh, by the way, if you need to protest, please do it over here. yes, around the block from where the mayor is speaking. yes, behing this razor wire. oh, the dog? that's just molly. careful, she tends to go for the jugular once she smells tear gas, hippie.

how did i get started on this? oh yeah, it was this quote from my favourite turncoat, senator mccain:

"My friends, I will have an energy policy which will eliminate our dependence on oil from Middle East that will then prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East."

Right there; did you catch that? if you ask me, thats a full-on admission that our current clusterfuck in the Former Republic of Iraq had fuck all to do with WMDs, "Iraqi freedom", "spreading democracy", or even staying the course. it was, and is, about oil. plain and simple.

But Mr. Conklin, you ask, if it was about oil, then why are we paying so much for gas???

Answer: when your boss is the vp of an energy company, and your godamned secretary of state has a motherfucking oil tanker named after her, do you really want "cheap gas"?

bit im off track, as usual. point being, WE FUCKING KNEW IT WAS ABOUT OIL. come on. i mean, a year before the war, Pakistan got the Bomb. we didnt give a fuck. they said they were going to use it on India, friends of ours, and we did nothing. a fe years into the war, the DPRK actually DETONATED A NUCLEAR GODDAMNED MISSLE in the sea of Japan. what did we do? we said it was "provocative". anyone who was paying attention knew that the WMD line was just that, a line.

so heres the problem, and its two-fold.

most of us werent paying attention. because we've got precious little of that shit, because we are so used to 30 second summaries of what is going on. bad fucking news.

so ok, maybe those people are excused. but the rest of us, myself included, the people that pay so much attention that their hair is falling out and their desks are littered with eyelashes, WE FUCKED UP. it was up to us to stop this. it is, or was at the time, a government OF THE PEOPLE.

oh well. we sure screwed the pooch on that one. im gonna go distract myself and pray for forgiveness. my apologies to the dead. on both sides.