The Dead can't Speak... but that doesn't stop those those who wish to take or maintain power from using them. The most recent incident is Barack Obama wearing a bracelet with the name of soldier killed in Iraq during the Presidential debate. It appears the family has asked Obama not to wear the bracelet.
Of course, the Demopublican/Republocrat side would never stoop to such behavior. My side is pure and righteous, the other side evil and ghoulish. My side has every right to invoke the dead and use them to take power because my side will do what is right with that power.
No one in politics has the right to use the dead. It is odd the side of the blog-o-shpere which supports McCain (or simply loathes Obama) is just finding out now those in power use the dead to support their continued control. Where or where have you been during the last seven years? You haven't been listening to Bush use the dead as the main reason we have to stay in Iraq?
But of course, supporting The War to Realign the Middle East to conform to American business and military interests, by simultaneously protecting Israel and Saudi Arabia, placing a puppet regime in Iraq with which to gain access to their oil reserves and possessing force projection ability towards both Syria and Iran is a good and proper use of American lives...
The truth is there is only one side in America, the ruling side, the Party of Property which controls you, does not have your interests at heart and to whom you are nothing more than an interchangeable and replaceable cog wheel in the machinery of industry or war.
You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else's life. They're plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. That's their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously.
They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead.
Hmmmm.
But what do the dead say?
Nobody but the dead know whether all these things people talk about are worth dying for or not. And the dead can't talk. So the words about noble deaths and sacred blood and honor and such are all put into dead lips by grave robbers and fakes who have no right to speak for the dead. If a man says death before dishonor he is either a fool or a liar because he doesn't know what death is. ~ Excerpt from Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
i feel like something should be said in comment, but I don't know what.
ReplyDeleteexcellent observation.