War: What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing.

Need I say it again?

Fun Edwin Starr references aside, I'm being completely serious. War is ridiculous.

Firstly, it perpetuates the ridiculous amount of nationalism coursing through the blood of today's society. This nationalism is pure hubris, in the most tragic sense. For those who don't know hubris, while also meaning pride or arrogance, is a common concept in Greek style tragedy. When one has hubris, they have an excess of arrogance, ambition, pride, etc. that ultimately leads to their downfall. America is too prideful. We're so convinced that we're the most advanced, most powerful, richest, most important country in the entire damn world, that we're essentially blinded to both the plights and advancements of other countries, unless paying attention to them helps our reputation. America's head has gotten so damn fat with ego, that her eyes have swelled into narrow slits, allowing her to only see what she wants to see. Now, America has a little lap dog (Or shall we say lap Fox?) called the media that she keeps on a very short leash. By exacting control over the media, you, obviously,at least partially control what information the people receive. And that allows the government to essentially manipulate the masses into believing what they need them to believe in order to go on with their own agendas. In this case, the agenda is war.

Let's look specifically at good ole George W. Bush and the Iraq "war". I say "War" because, like the Vietnam "war", the Iraq "War" is not ACTUALLY a legal war, it is a military action taken by the president, that does not need the approval of Congress. (Thanks, War Powers Act!!!! /sarcasm)

Now, I can't find the exact quote, as it's from an old article given to me my freshman year I have since lost, but Bush was once quoted saying something similar to "We attacked Iraq, because the enemy attacked us." in response to attacking Iraq after September 11th. Now, who is this "enemy" you ask? Is it Iraq? Mmm...nope. Let's take a look at the nationalities of the September 11th hijackers. They were mostly Saudi, and there isn't a single confirmed Iraqi on the list. Nice word play there, Georgie boy! You almost had me fooled. Almost. So, why not Saudi Arabia? Let's take a peek at some statistics, shall we?

In 2001, Saudi Arabia sold the USA a total of 588, 075 thousand barrels of oil. That same year, Iraq sold the USA a total of 289, 998 thousand barrels of oil. ( Source ) Now, dwell on the fact that the leader of Saudi Arabia was often jokingly called Saudi Bush.

One argument for the Iraq "war" was to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Guess who backed him and gave him military assistance in the first place? The US of A! In fact, if you've seen Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Coulmbine, you'll know that America seems to have made a habit of backing foreign dictators, and once they start doing their own thing and not obeying our every command, claiming they're cruel and having them taken out. Of course, the dictators are generally actually being cruel, but that's beside the point.

George W. also claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that they had to be destroyed. This proved to be untrue. Even so, the government claimed that Iraq's "purchase" of yellowcake uranium from Niger proves they plan to make weapons. This was also utterly bogus. No uranium was ever purchased from Niger by Iraq.

The gist of all of this: The Iraq "war" is basically an intricate web of blatant lies to the entire public so we can invade a country that we ideologically oppose and has something we want(oil).

Your school history books are most likely lying to you.

World War II: The books I've seen try to pass off our involvement in it as being a response to finding out about the Holocaust and the concentration camps. And the ignore the fact that A. WE KNEW ABOUT THE CAMPS AND WERE TURNING JEWS OUT OF THE COUNTRY and B. We were doing something really fucking similar to Japanese Americans. And then we dropped not one, but two bombs on Japan and gave thousands of people leukemia, including unborn fetuses, killed countless more, and destroyed two entire cities.

Vietnam "War": We were fighting "TEH EVUL COMMIES!!!!1111!!!1!!!!1", supposedly. Basically we wanted to combat an ideology the government found threatening, and oh yeah, we wanted to boost the economy, so, hey let's go fuck a country up, kill innocent children, and wear there tongues around out necks! And the body counts were usually fabricated, and included not just Vietcong, but animals and the Vietnamese civilians that were ON OUR SIDE. All to make it look like we were accomplishing something. Not to mention we killed acres of forests with Agent Orange, then denied that it gave the soldiers skin cancer.

World War I: Just a great example of why having massive military power sitting around, and a convoluted group of alliances is a BAD THING.

And my second point against war: Money. Worldwide, 700 billion dollars are spent on defense. Worldwide, 100 billion dollars are spent on education.

WHAT THE FUCK, WORLD?

Here's an idea. Pull out of Iraq, Afghanistan, what ever other countries we're currently fucking over, stop giving so much fucking money to the military, and fund our schools.

WE ARE GIVING POORLY EDUCATED PEOPLE WEAPONS.

Maybe if we gave people good educations, they would stop being so damn xenophobic, and this would be less of an issue.

If the military has to exist, it should be purely for defense, and only when there is SOLID UNQUESTIONABLE PROOF we need to defend ourselves.

I realize I'm being biased and idealistic. But this is simply my opinion on the matter.

I shall leave with this clichéd, but relevant note:

Can't we all just get along?

We Need Another Woodstock

Last night I was up until 2 am talking about politics and society with my mom, and I came to a conclusion I've come to several times before. This country needs another Woodstock. And I don't mean that we need to have a massive concert full of era defining artists, pot, granola, mud and camping. Although it might help loosen everyone up a little. What we need are the feelings that era carried. My mom was a teenager in the late sixties and early seventies. She petitioned for Cesar Chavez, she was the go to girl for information about feminism at her high school, she hung out in Berkeley. And she said that, back then, it felt like any little thing you did could make a difference. You really could change the world. And, it seems to me, that feeling isn't there anymore. We can throw protests and rallies but it doesn't seem to do anything. And you certainly don't feel like you can do something on your own.

In that era, people had hope. The sixties were ABOUT hope. Yeah, they were also about mind expanding drugs, and free love, but maybe we need that back to. The music was about hope, everything in that culture was imbued with hopefulness and the need to change and the people enacting that change could see it and feel it and know that it was happening.

Today, not so much. The need to change is there, that's for sure. But that never ending fountain of hope that seemed to be around in the sixties? It's turned into a never ending fountain of cynicism. And I'm just as guilty as the rest of the world. I'm angry, I'm disenfranchised, and I'm trying to do my bit to help, but I can't help but feel it's going nowhere. Society has reached the point of no return on it's path to ultimate downfall. I want to believe change is possible. I want to believe we can fix this. I want to believe we can take this sham of a democracy we're living in, and make it at least an actual democracy. By the people, for the people, not by giant corporations, for giant corporations. I want to believe that people are capable of socialism, or anarchy. But I can't. And that's the problem. We, as a culture, have stopped believing in the people. Because, we don't seem to have a reason to. It's 2010, and racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, hatred of the homeless, sexism, size-ism and any other number of useless and unfounded prejudices run rampant in society still. People need to realize that a person is a person, no matter how small, how tall, who they sleep with, how they dress, where they live, or what they do for a living. And they need to treat all people as people. We need to stop thinking violence solves anything, because it doesn't. We need to stop trying to assert our own race or gender as the best race or gender, and we really need to stop being such a nationalistic country.

I don't know how we're going to do any of that. I don't know how much of it will ever happen. And I don't know when. But I do know that in order for it to happen, we need to have hope. And if that means we all need to get together, and sit in circles and play acoustic guitar, or march down the streets of this country with flowers in out hair and singing, or if we need to throw massive protests and hand out leaflets, so be it! Let's do it! Let's write new music because, as much as a I love political music nowadays, it's often loud and angry. I think what we need right now are a few more singer/songerwriters like Sandi Thom.

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too lead to a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

When the head of state didn't play guitar
Not everybody drove a car,
When music really mattered and radio was king,
When accountants didn't have control
And the media couldn't buy your soul
And computers were still scary and we didn't know everything

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too lead to a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

When popstars still remained a myth
And ignorance could still be bliss
And when God Save the Queen she turned a whiter shade of pale
When my mom and dad were in their teens
and anarchy was still a dream
and the only way to stay in touch was a letter in the mail

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too lead to a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

When record shops were on top
and vinyl was all that they stocked
and the super info highway was still drifting out in space
kids were wearing hand me downs,
and playing games meant kick arounds
and footballers still had long hair and dirt across their face

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too lead to a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

I was born too late into a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair