Happy 4 July

It’s that most irritating of situations– a July 4th (or Christmas or New Year’s Day) that fall on a Wednesday, more or less screwing up the possibility of a long weekend for many, but nonetheless, still interfering with the flow of a week. Yes, we’re supposed to celebrate that day some 236 years hence when a curmudgeonly Boston lawyer and a slave-owning Virginia Renaissance man, both of whom would go on to be Presidents of the United States, collaborated on a Declaration of Independence cribbed from John Locke and other Enlightenment philosophers.
And it kind of worked for quite a while, all things told. A little trouble over that slavery thing, especially when it seemed to conflict with the industrial ambitions of the rest of the country, and a few bumps and bruises otherwise, but by and large, a pretty good run until the ascendance of an Ayn Rand acolyte to our most important and powerful position (in a country whose raison d’etre is “money,” that would be the Fed Chairman, of course)… when, you know, “sado-monetarism” became the official policy, no situation did not call for monetary expansion and hence, capital (especially Big Finance) benefited at the expense of labor (not to mention the environment, or much else)… and, well, things are where they are… throw in adopting the Soviet playbook for the last ten years, right down to “invade Afghanistan and then don’t leave until you’re destroyed”… and, well… it won’t be long now.
And so… we’ll jump right over to Afghanistan, and note that, shades of Nixon in ’72/’73, Team Obama is thinking about re-starting talks with the Taliban to, you know, “end the war…” significant to this blog of course is a proposed “reduction in the GTMO census” to do it. [hat tip to Candace on that one, btw.] As always, rather than the harmless nobodies we’ve long “cleared for release” but still hold in life imprisonment– these would be genuine Taliban leaders. But hey… sometimes you have to break some eggs to cook next to that hash we’re making of everything else.
And in “bury the lede” news… note Bowe Bergdahl, American POW and captive of the Taliban.
Yup: very few people know about Bowe Bergdahl: perhaps there would be, you know, a public outcry that steps be taken to secure his release such as, you know, genuinely negotiating to end the freaking war (i.e., surrendering portions of Afghanistan to Taliban control… which, of course, will be the ultimate outcome.) Of course, you can be sure if Bergdahl were being genuinely mistreated, say, the way our country behaves these days toward its prisoners of war, that you would have probably heard about it, though quite frankly, operating under their best Edward Bernays “engineered consent” playbook, we have no real idea of his circumstances one way or another (nor, of course, does the Power want us to know.)
Where am I going with this? Well… maybe there should be, you know, an outcry to end our nation’s longest-in-duration war, and bring home Mr. Bergdahl, and send home the GTMO, Bagram, and “black-site” prisoners causing us ongoing national embarrassment… and the saved expenses of not having perma-wars everywhere might, you know, enable us to fund the unbelievably expensive health care debacle that the Supreme Court has just permitted.
Perhaps a little too much holiday cheer on my part– or perhaps I’ve fried my brains in the warm weather preparing for Sunday’s NYC Tri… don’t know… just saying. Happy 4 July.