In Italy, a man at the ceremonies bringing back the dead soldiers from Afghanistan got on the podium and started shouting through the microphone.
What he said was:
"Peace, right now!"
More than 60% of Italians agree with him.
Italy has something that I envy.
Italy has a peace movement.
Here in the USA, we're too anesthetized to have a peace movement.
I was part of the peace movement in the 60's, after I got out of the army.
The peace movement then here in the USA was alive. Now, we are so dulled with TV and bullshit that we couldn't possibly have one.
We haven't yet understood that we are being robbed, to the tune of 5 trillion dollars, of what we need, such as health care.
If we didn't have these two useless wars, health care would be a foregone conclusion. But Bush made sure that his friends in the health and insurance business would be OK; he spent so much money that there's not enough for necessities.
Oh, and there's another thing that they have in Italy that I envy;
Socialized medicine.
Heck, even Mexico has socialized medicine.
Meanwhile, the wars, totally useless except to arms manufacturers and companies like KBR, grind on, robbing us of good people, good inernational will, and money.
I still wear a peace symbol. But I feel very lonely.