These filthy politics are affecting how I feel about some of my family members. I am losing patience and respect for dearly beloved persons in my life. Hate radio and TV are no longer things I can tolerate. I make a BIG scene and leave whenever I see or hear this junk. Are there any other persons who have similar experiences? I sent this to my Mom via snail mail so I know she gets it, out of frustrated and angry love.
Dear Mother,
Every single day I have this discussion in my head with you. It has been incessant for years now finally reaching a point lately where I cannot function normally much of the time any longer. I cannot seem to stop it, like a tidal wave hitting my world. My blood pressure increases and I am so weary, stunned and depressed by this recurring daily nightmare that I believe this thing is eating me alive. There are days when I place both hands on my ears, eyes closed tightly, begging it to stop.
I have tried to speak to you, as a son to his mother, about things that truly and deeply disturb me, about things that scare me. I cannot help that certain things which bother me are notions you resist, nor can I help who my mother is. It is natural for a person to seek solace from his/her Mother. Dismissive is the word that comes to my mind in your responses. Mostly what I am talking about here are politics and current events, but it could just as easily be anything unpleasant. Each time I have taken the difficult effort to present a careful and thoughtful synopsis, You change the subject, are offended, or simply say I am wrong and present no proof of your stance. I should be so lucky as to have your ear the way hate radio does. Hello Mrs Ideologue, is my mother there?
The reasons for this being so important are as follows: Simply put, Our nation is in utter disarray. With your own industry in shambles,(real estate) our manufacturing base nearly gone, banks failing, foreclosure rates still increasing. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one a war of choice. Future planned wars with Iran, and possibly Russia, This is madness. We are on the edge of unspeakable global environmental catastrophe whether you believe it or not Mother. Our news media, because of Republican consolidation efforts, are completely corrupt, blinding a nuclear armed electorate. How many Corrupt Republican scandals can you name from the last eight years? This paragraph could go on endless......
Here’s where you come in: You are a big part of the problem, and have chosen to ignore your responsibility to your grand children’s future. Some of this is understandable, you work hard and have little time. Where it is driving me to anxiety lies in your denial and my constantly rebuffed attempts to present you with some reality and facts. The fact is, This mess we are in has been brought to us by the Republican party. Deregulation, privatization, (profitization actually) free trade, foreign policy fiasco’s for oil, were done largely by Republicans. They stole the first Bush Presidency, through Bush’s contacts in Florida, and probably stole the re-election in 2004, with vote suppression tricks and Ohio’s crooked Republican machine; There’s a lot more rot in your Republican party than I could list here.
Search your memory mother, I have tried to tell you about these things for years. I told you over two years ago that this housing and real estate market was in a deeper hole than the "experts" predicted. (you were one of them.) I tried to impress upon you the wisdom of using less gasoline with a perfectly reasonable solution. Get a Prius that gets 50 mpg, and get 25-40% of the car payment back with gasoline savings. There is plenty of leg room for customers in the roomy back seat. A real patriot would want to stop throwing money to Oil companies and hostile foreign governments. I mentioned compact flourescent lights, and how much electricity and money you could save and help the environment and you say they have mercury in them. Do you know how many things have mercury in them? Flourescent lighting uses 1/3 the power of Incandescent lighting for the same candlepower. I told you all this and more. or tried to but was dismissed...
Here’s a tactic of yours that makes me want to ask: Who are you people? The other day when you asked me what I thought about Sarah Palin and I called her a "liar" (which she IS, and I have the goods on her) all you could say was: "you don’t think Obama’s a liar? That ploy of yours is tiring. First off it isn’t addressing the accusation I made. Second it is like answering a question with a question, which isn’t an answer. Third, it is like saying it is okay for one party to lie, as long as the other one does. Forth, Barack Obama is NOT a liar, and fifth You assumed I liked Obama and attacked him simply because I attacked your party. This is one example of an oft used ploy of yours, and is nothing more than empty rhetoric. Dangerous too.
And the hypocrisy of these war mongering Christians makes my stomach turn. You can find most of these urchins in the far-right of your Republican party. "Thou shalt not kill" unless they disagree with us or have brown skin and live in a land of oil; They say they are pro-life, but I say they are only pro-birth, because from the moment we are born, these so called "conservatives" are reducing governments role in the well being of people. These same people would ship babies, eighteen years later to wars of choice. These same people, who preach abstinence only sex education, jump for joy that Sarah Palin’s minor daughter is pregnant. These same people don’t flinch when Sarah Palin says that God sent our troops to Iraq, failing to realize that the dichotomy between "thou shalt not kill" and god being for war is sanctimonious in the extreme. These people are the base of the Republican party. Your party Mother.
I also realize that Democrats as a party are just about worthless. something you are more than willing to discuss, as long as no one dare trash Republicans. This is some of your own glaring white hot hypocrisy, and I for one cannot take it any longer. So, while the Democrats may be worthless, the Republicans are down right evil. you fail to take any Republican blame. How anyone could vote Republican now is beyond me. I never will respect it. It is no longer just a matter of opinion..... By the way I am no damn Democrat either...
If you google "based on lies" Iraq war you get 91,300 hits. The reason given for the Iraq Fiasco, Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, is forever debunked. Even if you believe the weapons were there, they are gone now and presumably more of a threat than ever since they were not recovered. This leaves only two possibilities on how we became entangled in the fiasco in Iraq: A mistake in judgement or an outright lie, NEITHER of which is acceptable. You do not get a pass for a mistaken war, and you are a war criminal and mass murderer for starting one based on lies.
Which begs the question: How could you? I have no memory of your stating what you so love about your Republicans. You only attack Democrats and "liberals", because the Republican party cannot run on its own achievements. You are dangerously close to being a Republican first at the expense of being an American. How am I to respect that? How should a man deal with this crisis of conscience between love of his mother and his love of country?
Behind smiling unruffled eyes I see one million dead Iraqi’s covered in red white and blue.....
From ABC news
Exclusive: Curveball, the defector whose lies led to war
March 13, 2007
The Iraqi defector known as Curveball, whose fabricated stories of "mobile biological weapons labs" helped lead the U.S. to war four years ago, is still being protected by the German intelligence service, an ABC News investigation has found.
Intelligence sources, who provided ABCNews.com with the first known photo of the man, say he has been resettled in a small town near the Munich headquarters of the German service, which has continued to honor its original commitment made when he fled Iraq in 1999.
Curveball's false tales became the centerpiece of Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech before the United Nations in February 2003, even though he was considered an "unstable, immature and unreliable"...
source by some senior officials at the CIA... read more at:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/...
from USA Today Dec 10, 2003
Iraq's Health Ministry ordered to stop counting civilian dead from war
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) —— Iraq's Health Ministry has ordered a halt to a count of civilians killed during the war and told its statistics department not to release figures compiled so far, the official who oversaw the count told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
The health minister, Dr. Khodeir Abbas, denied in an email that he had anything to do with the order, saying he didn't even know about the study.
Dr. Nagham Mohsen, the head of the ministry's statistics department, said the order was relayed to her by the ministry's director of planning, Dr. Nazar Shabandar, who said it came on behalf of Abbas. She said the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which oversees the ministry, also wanted the counting to stop.
"We have stopped the collection of this information because our minister didn't agree with it," she said, adding: "The CPA doesn't want this to be done."...
Read more at: www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-12-10-iraq-civilians
there’s more from the British perspective here:
Iraq War - Based on Lies and Deception
from the insider.com September 12, 2008
Before the war, to justify their plan to invade, the US and UK governments repeatedly informed us that they were certain about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq:
"Intelligence leaves no doubt that Iraq continues to
possess and conceal lethal weapons"
- George Bush, US President, 18 March 2003
Before the war, the US and UK governments accused the Iraqi government of breaching UN Resolution 1441 by failing to disarm:
"We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy
those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably
absurd"
- Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister, 18 March 2003
Before the war, senior American and British politicians claimed that purpose of the invasion was to disarm Saddam Hussein:
"Saddam's removal is necessary to eradicate the threat
from his weapons of mass destruction"
- Jack Straw, UK Foreign Secretary, 2 April 2003
After the war, now that the US government is in full control of the oil industry in Iraq, although the rest of the country is in chaos, the US government admits that Iraq probably had already disarmed, so apparently Iraq did comply with resolution 1441, a suggestion which the British Prime Minister himself had called "absurd" only a few weeks ago:
"It is possible Iraqi leaders decided they would destroy
them prior to the conflict
- Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary, 28 May 2003
We will never know the truth because, just when the international team of UN weapons inspectors had announced that they expected to verify within "a matter of months" that Iraq had disarmed, the American and British governments declared war and forced the inspectors to leave.
SOURCES:
[1] The Independent (UK), "The case for war is blown apart", front-page, 29 May 2003.
Tony Blair stood accused last night of misleading Parliament and the British people over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and his claims that the threat posed by Iraq justified war.
Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, seized on a "breathtaking" statement by the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, that Iraq's weapons may have been destroyed before the war, and anger boiled over among MPs who said the admission undermined the legal and political justification for war.
... Meanwhile, Labour rebels threatened to report Mr Blair to the Speaker of the Commons for the cardinal sin of misleading Parliament - and force him to answer emergency questions in the House.
Speaking in the Commons before the crucial vote on war, Mr Blair told MPs that it was "palpably absurd" to claim that Saddam had destroyed weapons including 10,000 litres of anthrax, up to 6,500 chemical munitions; at least 80 tons of mustard gas, sarin, botulinum toxin and "a host of other biological poisons".
But Mr Cook said yesterday: "We were told Saddam had weapons ready for use within 45 minutes. It's now 45 days since the war has finished and we have still not found anything.
"It is plain he did not have that capacity to threaten us, possibly did not have the capacity to threaten even his neighbours, and that is profoundly important. We were, after all, told that those who opposed the resolution that would provide the basis for military action were in the wrong.
"Perhaps we should now admit they were in the right."
... Peter Kilfoyle, the anti-war rebel and former Labour defence minister, said he was prepared to report Mr Blair to the Speaker of the Commons for misleading Parliament. Mr Kilfoyle, whose Commons motion calling on Mr Blair to publish the evidence backing up his claims about Saddam's arsenal has been signed by 72 MPs, warned: "This will not go away. The Government ought to publish whatever evidence they have for the claims they made."
Paul Keetch, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said: "No weapons means no threat. Without WMD, the case for war falls apart. It would seem either the intelligence was wrong and we should not rely on it, or, the politicians overplayed the threat."...
read more at: theinsider.org
UPDATE Sept 21, 2008:
Received my mothers reply, right back at me through snail mail. I must have inspired her to think inside the box. It hurt her, so keep that in mind folks but I do not regret it. She answered none of my questions satisfactorily, seeing only the attack, not the factual base I believe I offered. It has become clear to me now that she is completely unable to take ANY criticism period. Zero personal responsibility for our mess. I believe we, each and every one of us, has at least a part in our environmental, political, social, and financial failures and solutions. What good is a mother without a country, and what good is a country without a planet's environmental cradle. Just an excerpt:
"...In this country, I have a right to also say what I want, buy whichever car I want, go where I want, be what I want. Every person that lives in this country has those rights. I love my PT Cruiser, its paid for and I worked hard to get it. I don't have a car payment and I don't want one. I haven't bought flourescent bulbs because they are a lot more expensive than regular ones. Maybe someday I will buy them, but not right now. You save money on the light bills, and I save money on the bulbs."...
Please keep in mind that my mom is no ogre, not even close to a horrible person. She is a good person inside. And she is correct more or less, we do have those rights. Sort of. That is the crux. Good people making terrible decisions.
By the way, not one word about Iraq.
This is my final attempt to reach out to her on many or most if not all subjects requiring thought. And these days I have no time for trival pursuits.
I want to thank all the good folks from Kos whose feedback from this is really what heals. be it good or be it bad, the truth sets us free....