I know plenty of people with battle scars from nightsticks and tear gas who did it out of a love for this country and dedication to its founding principals [sic]. Kent State proved to all of us that we didn’t have free speech. Our country, our National Guard would open fire on any student and not just those who protested. If we didn't agree to die in Vietnam - they'd kill us here instead.
We got the message Mr. Brokaw. Our country killed our heroes and was taking aim at us. It would have been safer to go along with the establishment. But these were people of conscience, people of great courage. They were patriots in the truest sense of the word.
Brokaw goes on to say that most people were pro-war and cites the election of Richard Nixon as proof. Richard Nixon who promised to end the war in six months, and then let it drag on for another five years. Richard Nixon who defeated a Democratic Party that was torn apart by the assassination of our primary candidate Robert Kennedy.
Mr. Brokaw the people who survived the depression and won the war and freed the Jews from Nazi concentration camps were our parents. When they came home from the war, America had the only functioning economy in the world. The television said "See the USA in your Chevrolet" and they did. The made up for what they lost by going on a buying binge. They discovered GI loans and bought houses and cars and shiny new appliances and boats and kids, lots and lots of kids. But life in those identical houses that lined suburban streets was not always as good as it looked. Some of those soldiers brought the war home with them. Some of those soldiers made war on their families. Some of those soldiers made homes that were concentration camps. And we were those children.
We wanted no war. We knew that all the fancy gadgets in the world would not buy happiness. But most of all, we hated the lie, the smile for the photographs lie.
The women, who had kept the home fires burning and kept the rivets in the planes during the war, were told to remember their place and sent to the kitchen. Soldiers who had fought bravely were denied the right to vote in the county they defended. The black soldiers were sent to ghettos that looked a lot like concentration camps.
We looked at the black soldiers and said, isn’t that just like what the Nazis did? Aren’t we better than the Nazis? We looked at women who had been capable of building airplanes and were now being told that they couldn’t turn on the television properly. We wondered why.
We watched the Nuremburg trials and swore never to be Good Germans. We never wanted to commit atrocities simply because we were following orders. We questioned authority. We rejected inequality everywhere we found it. We fought, peacefully at first, to make our country better. More just.
Yes, Mr. Brokaw, we are the children of your Greatest Generation. We are their creation. So if we failed, so did they. But you’re wrong, we didn’t fail.
Look around Mr. Brokaw. See the colors and the beautiful diversity? Inequality still exists but very few people try to justify it. Very few people say it's "God's way." We made our presence known. We made this a better country even if you are blind to it.
Mr. Brokaw, I thought I saw you grin when you announced that Bush had defeated Gore. You turned away quickly but I'm sure I saw it. Is that why you were so very slow to see that Bush was incompetent? Or were you, like him, itching for another game of war?
Apparently, in the land of the Kosmonauts, unless the radical left is in charge of the government, America is a predator nation that should be hated. Even now, with Obama and liberals in charge of Congress, these people still spit at the alleged awfulness of Americans to see the radical light. On Monday, a blog by "One Pissed Off Liberal" unloaded on the country, since nothing has changed yet from the hellish Bush-Cheney era:
Back in October a poll was published declaring the USA to be the world’s most admired country... Assuming there is any substance to the poll results at all...I hate to ponder what it means for the rest of the world.
Sure, we overcame our racism enough to elect Barack Obama, but beyond that what have we really accomplished? We are still living a nightmare...
Bush is gone. Cheney’s gone. But sadly, somehow, some way, for some f---ed-up reason their brainless criminal moronic a--hole policies are still very much with us. Tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires? Check. Bush wars? Check and double check. Lobbyist infestation of government? Yessirie bob. Secrecy? Domestic spying? Gitmo? Torture? Police state tactics? Yep, yep, yep, yep and yep.
And now suddenly, supposedly, we’re the most admired nation in the world? Go figure. The land where war criminals and torturers get off Scot-free? The country that didn’t have the common decency to impeach Bush/Cheney? The country that gave up single-payer without a fight? The land where the opinions of war criminals are deemed worthy of publication in prominent national magazines? 37th in healthcare, 19th in preventable deaths, 16th in secondary education, first in warmongering imperialism, first in the imprisonment of its own citizens, unemployment, homelessness and foreclosures through the roof, world’s biggest debtor nation at 12 trillion dollars and counting, home of Fox News, corporate personhood, compulsory health insurance, those awesome teabaggers, the dead-assed dollar and way more than our fair share of the dumbest motherf---ers on the planet – what’s not to admire eh?
