Granfalloons

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
--Sixteen Tons, Tennessee Ernie Ford

The union has made me wise
To the lies of the company spies
And I don't get fooled by the factory rules
'cause I always read between the lines
--Part of the Union, Strawbs
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Call Ranger weak-minded, but he can't resolve an issue which issued from yesterday's post documenting the gallantry of the Marines during the breakout to Haguru-ri ("Fox News").

While the same praise must be extended to our soldiers fighting, suffering and dying in Afghanistan (there is no absence of valor and dedication in either scenario), we are told that the fighting in whichever war was and is necessary to defend freedom and our way of life. But is it really so?

In December 1950 young Ranger lived in a coal company house, and his father and grandfather worked the mines to provide a subsistence-level existence. Ranger's father mined until the recessions killed the industry. More correctly -- until the Japanese and Germans killed the steel industry (another story.)

All the while, good men were fighting and dying, but it wasn't for America's freedom and prosperity. Those goods passed his house on its road march to the better neighborhoods of America; his family was free to be poor. Coal miners in '50 and '51 were struggling for unionized living wages, but the fighting Marines didn't do a thing to improve their lives.

Americans allow their corporations to bond together (see the insurance and petroleum oligarchies) but are against union organization, against their better interests. Still, they are never against war, as that would be unpatriotic. How did any American benefit from the sacrifices of those Marines in Korea?

What is different in 2009? Our soldiers follow orders, yet what does this have to do with our daily freedom and security? We think John Lennon said it best in his classic interview with Dick Cavett: The media works hard to distract us from the un-necessity of war with a multitude of red herrings. As a result of our easy distraction, we are becoming a nation of Granfalloons, missing the import of the vital issues, failing to make the connections.

Contrary to what Obama or any leader says, there is no correlation between the battlefield and freedom. All freedoms are won or lost in our backyards. The Civil War oversaw the emancipation of slaves, but it was politics, not war, that made the former slaves and miners free men.

The unions helped, too.