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The Nasty Bedfellows of Politics
Politics has intrigued me since childhood. Or, more rightly so, plagued me! I am 69. I was in 4th grade when President Kennedy was assassinated. Like others at that same age, I have vivid images of all the events following that horrible tragic day. I watched closely how adults around me reacted. I remembered what they said and how they coped with this unprecedented national tragedy. More importantly, I watched the reactions of politicians. At the lowly level of being a fourth, then fifth-grade, then sixth-grade kid, I KNEW the Warren report was a total fabrication and cover-up of actual undeniable facts. My first reaction to what is now known as “gaslighting”.
Thus began my mistrust of our government. How can you tell that a politician is lying? His lips are moving. I have watched at least two military conflicts being waged purely for the economy. The sacrifice of young men and women’s lives was the least considered damage from the proliferation of war against the imaginary “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, foreshadowed by “the domino theory” of letting South Vietnam fall to communism. Better to send weapons (keeping our factories humming) and wage these unwinnable wars than to let our economy stagnate. The fodder was the lives of the young generation of our nation’s future.
When we left Vietnam and Afghanistan, who paid the price for the poor judgment and folly of…
