The Peace Piece or the confessions of an activist of another kind:

Peace is a religion in the U.S.A.
Along with guns, the little baby jesus (not to be confused with Jesus Christ
Armed Republican, ex-officio chairdeity of the R.N.C. that is a whole
different sect), certain U.S. Presidents with senile dementia, omnipresent
sexuality, good olde gelt and the faith of stern puritans like George Will,
the free market.
It is a discordant, mutually suspicious, hagridden modern pantheon we got.
Why exactly olde timey god went silent on us is a matter for speculation and
certainly it's too heavy a topic for humble John to untangle in detail. It
might've happened around the time the big one flattened Nagasaki, or when the
last skeleton was buried at Dachau, or maybe when Pol Pot was born. My
personal fave the very moment when Boris Pasternak got twenty years in the
slams for winning the Nobel Prize.
You seem my theory is that God doesn't go in for heavy irony.
But I could be wrong.
As a matter of historic record in modern times, the voice of god first went
silent for that spastic scholar, Friedrich Nietzsche. Oh at first old Fred
treated it like a joke proclaiming "god is dead" to good natured titters.
THAT transgressive bon mot got him invited to ALL the trendy philosophical
confabs...oh it was a goldmine for a while. Then one night Fred awoke and
decided that it was true! God WAS dead!!
In that very instant a million pound existential shithammer anointed
Nietzsche in the solar plexus and the hirsute professor started frantically
looking for a new system of transcendent ethics.
In search for a new law of life, He tried the superman ("Caesar with the soul of Christ" was the best he could
manage) and he mulled over Wagner's music (but once he saw the Valkyries
flying in on chains at Bayreuth bellowing for their lives, he was back to
square one).
He even marked out for the French as inherently closer to the divine spark
than mere Bavarians and Prussians...or maybe he just liked the weather in
Paris.
Finally he gave up the ghost and went decorously nuts and ended up dying in
an insane Asylum.
Metaphorically speaking, this is the same insane asylum from which a good
chunk of 20th Century leadership cadres graduated from, all intent on
screeching up a good god voice, from Cambodia to the Spahn Ranch.
So welcome to post god civilization cuz' as far as I can see, the divine
eternal has gone totally silent as of January 2000. Which brings back to the
threadbare collection of public and private totems we're all convinced are as
nutritious as that concept once worshipped on Sundays.
Whatever it was called.
Which is where I enter the picture, as my chesty unthinking bedroom suburb
was neck deep in peace protesters today. I mean HUNDREDS of these worthies
were out in battalion strength with signs and pleas and leaflets.
If you really worshipped peace, it'd a been an inspiring sight.
There were about a half dozen "pro-war" demonstrators in the center of
town...but they were laboring under a conceptual burden in that no one is
supposed to express an honest love of combat and slaughter.
So their best sign was "Support Our Troops" followed by "Remember September
11th" (a forlorn hope most citizens these days can't remember their oldest
offspring's middle name). But what the hell, they tried.
The peace faction had variations on "Let the Inspectors do their Job"...a
nice simple text byte-very effective.
And then there was the car horn sympathy symphony all day long...a crude
measure of the public sentiments but a telling one.
I'm not really for this notional war, but not for any reasons amicable to
peace worshippers. I'm simply resigned to the fact that Bin Laden isn't in
Baghdad therefore why tussle with Hussein when we have unfinished business
with Al Queda and now with Pyongyang?
And is destroying Iraq really worth busting up the NATO Alliance?
NATO has kept the peace for nigh on fifty years now with few losses to
personal freedom and fewer shots being fired-not a bad record. This battered
collection of bankrupts and mendicant-statelets the President is taping
together to advance his current foreign policy can only fantasize about doing
so well.
Now if Bin Laden was in Baghdad, well then alas down fall the bombs like
leaves in a New Hampshire autumn.
No I'm afraid that sort of thinking is none too welcome with the activists
down in the Town Center.
One thought though did arc across my frontal lobes as I walked past endless
peace placard holders this morning.
And it surprised even me...
"WHERE were this M@#$%^%f$%^@#*s back in November of 2002 when we were up
against the wall in this state and all over this nation? MY Ghod with
numbers like this out in the streets Romney would've fled the Commonwealth to
campaign via shortwave radio from Crab Key!
WHERE was these legions when Bush's lawyers and a mob of gucci'd anarchists
shut down the recount in Miami-Dade?
Where were any of them when I NEEDED THEM?? Because I busted my ass for Gore
and O'Brien in succession and gave time and treasure to them and host of
others only to see it all go to smash election night after election night.
I can tell you what they were doing in my precinct, they were handing out
instructions on how to write in some naïf' for senator instead of John Kerry.
Apparently our Junior Senator's stance on the middle east is insufficiently
peaceful for these citizens.
Well Kerry won and Romney rolled over us all like a tidal wave from the
sewage plant.
You tell me these are the unaffiliated leftist who were "unmoved" by the
choices presented to them in the last two elections.
The HELL they weren't!
Their peace bone hadn't been sprung yet that is all, and as I noted wa-ay
above, peace is a religion and it's worshippers were out in force Saturday.
The laughable inability of these proud peace activists to apply themselves
to any other aspect of politics is in part what dooms us to rule by genial
corruptards like Mitt Romney and Richard Perle.
Eric Alterman spoke the other night about the ingrained barriers preventing
democrats-liberals and leftists on co-operating on any program that might
promise a return to power.
It's easier to lobby with success than to explain failure but try telling
that to the crowd downtown beatin' the drums for peace.
The only thing they care about is peace-peace-peace...and they apparently
think a reactionary U.S. President and a reactionary U.S. congress can easily
be overcome by marches and demonstrations....
I think they are all very idealistic but they are two full years late and
armed with a political plan that was old hat in 1970.
We are now perhaps forty eight hours away from war, we were once forty eight
hours away from having Al Gore as President and two years later Congress less heavy
infested with homicidal buffoons.
And I'm afraid despite all the protests we'll be forty eight hours away from
any of that for the rest of my god-damned life.
Peace Be With You All...