Peddlers and Meddlers

Romney is the frontman and apostle of an economic revolution,
in which transactions are manufactured instead of products,
wealth is generated without accompanying prosperity,
and Cayman Islands partnerships are lovingly erected and nurtured
while American communities fall apart  
--Greed and Debt, Matt Taibbi 

They’re peddlers and they’re meddlers
They buy and they sell
They destroyed your city
They’ll destroy you as well 
--Early Roman Kings,
 Bob Dylan 

Yo, we at war  
We at war with terrorism, racism  
And most of all, we at war wit ourselves  
--Jesus Walks, Kayne West 

____________________

"One Nation Under God" and "In God We Trust" have been co-opted as the mottos of today's Republican Party and express their vision for America as voiced in their recent national convention.  Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan even bemoaned the fact that we were not MORE Christian: 

Slate wrote, "Ryan wants the Obama administration to explain why the Democratic platform doesn't include the word God in it. 'It’s not in keeping with our founding documents, our founding vision,' the VP hopeful told Fox News this morning. 'I’d guess you’d have to ask the Obama administration why they purged all this language from their platform.'"

But what about those of us who do not Trust in God?  Who speaks for us?  Why am I bound to their beliefs?  We are not "One Nation Under God," but rather a pluralistic society founded upon a humanistic philosophy which transcended the mandatory belief in a personal god.

Our government was not based upon religious belief but rather the freedom from any imperative -- governmental or otherwise -- to believe or not to believe.  Separation of Church and State was the watchword; citizens could overdose on religion, or not, depending upon their own predilections.  The bible is not the Constitution, and the Constitution is the seminal document for the United States -- a document not to be contravened by any other dogma.

The U.S. is no longer a bastion for White Anglo Saxon Protestants; their domination has been thrown to the charnal house of history. Try though the two Republican nominees might, the days of what they are peddling has past.  They cannot legislate morality any more than they can live morally.

Mitt is right: We deserve better.  But their convention did NOT tell us is how we can achieve the fabulous wealth and security that will supposedly come of bootstrap-pulling and dogma-adherence.  The Republicans say that the government has failed us, yet in a non-sequitur, advocate cutting food stamps, a program which has been successful in alleviating hunger in a nation in which one of ten of us suffers from "food insufficiency" (=hunger). For such a religious platform, their proposed policies are awfully penurious and punitive toward the poor.

Among a sea of believers in the Prince of Peace, why have we none but advocates for Warriorhood?  When did the worldly paid warrior enter into a neo-pantheon of gods? While our nation flounders while needing to create millions of jobs, it instead borrows money to fight elective and meaningless wars.  Why is war the only foreign policy we consider?  When did warfare become the American way of life?

Reason and logic had left the building in the RNC.

Warriors Collect Booty

--Rape of the Sabine Women,
Peter Paul Rubens

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord
And when you ask them, "How much should we give?"
Ooh, they only answer More! more! more! Yo!
--Fortunate Son,
Creedence Clearwater Revival

She poppin' she rollin', she rollin'
She climbin' that pole and
She trippin' she playin', she playin'
I'm not goin' nowhere girl, I'm stayin'
--I'm N Luv Wid a Stripper,
T Pain

You can't leave,
'cause your heart is there
But you can't stay,
'cause you been somewhere else!
--Family Affair,
Sly and the Family Stone
______________

The WPPA (West Point Protection Association) comes through again, rescuing Colonel James Johnson from the exploits of his johnson.

Colonel James H. Johnson III, former commander of the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, has pled guilty to 15 charges, including bigamy, adultery and fraud, stemming from an extramarital affair with an Iraqi woman Johnson met while on deployment in 2005. For this he has been slapped smartly on the wrist with a $300,000 fine by a court martial presided over by five Colonels:

"He had faced possible decades in prison and dismissal from the Army as a maximum sentence. The panel of five colonels who presided over the court-martial . . . did not explain their decision"(Colonel found guilty of fraud, fined $300K).

He might have faced 54 years, a dismissal from the service, total forfeiture of pay and allowances and a fine . . . but we are talking a West Point graduate with a pedigree, here. Was Col. Johnson a war-fighter, a nation-builder, or a politico-military hybrid? Since hearts and minds were the mantra of the wars, can we really blame the Colonel for taking it to heart, and trying to nail a little Iraqi heart and mind for himself?

Why do we hold soldiers to a higher code of sexual conduct than that which apply to our political leaders? An officer is sworn to be a gentlemen, but what constitutes that designator? Does a gentlemen do the dirty work of using his body to invade and fuck nations, but may not use that same body to fuck another person? What about a warrior? Can a warrior be a gentleman, too, and can it be concurrent with his term of service?

Interesting that these same charges were leveled at the man currently being vetted for the ambassadorship of Iraq and few raise an eye. Brett McGurk committed adultery with Wall Street Journal reporter Gina Chon while posted in Iraq during George W. Bush's second term, with Chon trading sex for access to classified materials from McGurk. Yet McGurk is considered appropriate high-level State Department material, while Johnson's career has ended.

Read more here: http://www.macon.com/2012/06/14/2060411/us-army-col-found-guilty-of-fraud.html#storylink=cpRanger suggests double standards, and more importantly, a misunderstanding of a KEY TERM: Warrior. Warriors have a different ethos than do soldiers: They are NOT gentlemen; they DO collect booty. Warriors have historically taken concubines while on campaign. Warriors interbreed with captured females. They have always declared privileges denied the common man.

If we are truly warriors then let our warriors have concubines (or, "forest wives" -- "dessert wives" (?) -- as the Bielsky partisans took); such is the privilege of the warrior. If we are warriors, we must accept behavior that goes beyond the boundaries of soldierly conduct. Yes, bigamy and adultery are the accepted charges, and they are illegal behaviors in the U.S. -- but maybe warriors should get a pass?


Johnson is also charged with paying tens of thousands of dollars of contracts to his mistress's father for things that "were neither produced nor received." The panel also found him guilty of giving the family an Army cell phone on which they ran up more than $80,000 in charges. But all of these things are stuff that warriors do: They knock a little off the tops for themselves and their nearest and dearest, including their New Best Friends and her family.

It is more than a bit galling for Ranger to find himself effectively arguing for Johnson's behavior; clearly, his privilege of having a proxy marriage in Montana and house plans for his new honey is beyond the grasp of most ordinary fighting men. But he is using it to bring the question of warriorhood vs. soldiering to the fore.

Is warriorhood the devolution of soldiering? Until we decide the answers, it is best to keep our dicks under strict control.

After reasoning this out, a part of Ranger now secretly wishes he had been a "warrior", too (if we decide there will be no repercussions, that is.)