An Incoherent Post-Colonoscopy Rant

One thing I've learned over the past few years is that if GOP senators Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Arlen Spectre, heck any GOP senators act as if they are opposing GW Bush on something, they really aren't it. It's all theater. This last episode involving torture is just the latest example. Not one of these guys has any character at all, so if they look as if they have character, you have to know it is a trick. They really piss me off. They don't want to stand up to the regime. They are the regime.

Of course, their counterparts in the Democratic party aren't much better. I remember watching John Kerry "debate" GW Bush. He allowed Bush to desecrate the memory of the fallen soldiers by justifying the war based on not wanting to say they had died for a mistake. All Kerry had to do was say something like: "Shame on you, Mr President, for trying to exploit the fallen soldiers and airmen. They're sacrifice was worth far more than a cheap political point. You don't want to tell the parents of a fallen service member that their son or daughter died for a mistake. Unfortunately, that is the sad duty of an honorable and courageous leader. You are clearly not up to it." But he let it slide, playing it oh so cautious, and he let the election be close enough for the GOP to take it by fraud in Ohio. The Democrats are still playing it safe and failing to mount any kind of effective opposition. They make me sick. They don't want to stand up to the regime, either. They want to be the regime, and they wouldn't mind having all those gnarly powers the GOP has usurped when it's their turn.

I often hear or read some columnist or talking head talking about how "we" lack "political will" to do this or that or the other. If only we had had the political will to win in Vietnam, or now in Iraq. All that is wanting is the "will". To my way of thinking, to will means to want, to desire. If someone says that the problem is a lack of will, he is more or less saying that the public's failure to desire something is problematic, not the pursuit of the thing that the public disdains. We're talking grade A arrogance here. The problem with the Iraq/Vietnam/Omicron Delta 3 war is that the American people don't want to be in it. The solution is to make them want to be in it or to make their desires irrelevant. The public is stupid, and the pundit knows best. The pundits can bite me.

I use to be hooked on cigarettes. I reckoned that I ought to quit for the longest time, but I didn't have the will. I didn't want to quit, so I kept smoking. Nobody made me smoke. There was a subset of my personality, whom I called "Smoking Guy", who was really persuasive about having that one last carton or how maybe just a few cigarettes, like when I drink or have coffee, would be OK; however, he was still me. I didn't have to buy into his arguments. When I decided that I wanted to quit, I quit, seven years ago this month. Perhaps I should have wanted to quit much earlier, but I didn't. And it's nobody's business but mine. Political will is the same. Should I want my country to be in a war in Iraq? I don't think so. On the contrary, I think there is something seriously wrong with you, a kind of moral retardation, if you want your country to be in a war in Iraq. I lack the will, as do most of my countrymen, not because I am foolish or overly tenderhearted (both of which I likely am), but because being in a war in Iraq is, to anyone with an ounce of sense, both idiotic and immoral.

And another thing. Doctors have got to come up with some less medieval way to prep for a colonoscopy, for crying out loud. A gallon of purgative, laxatives and magnesium citrate?! At least they put me under for the actual probing part. Kudos to the highly professional and solicitous personnel at Same Day Surgery at St Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie.