I have been listening to Ozzie Osbourne lately, watching this video on U-Tube. This one song, Dreamer, says so well what many of us want to say here at Daily Kos.
Please click on this link, and listen to this song. I suggest you listen to it two or three times. Then read the rest of the diary, if you wish.
Ozzy Osbourne - Dreamer
What we have here, within the five verses of this one song, Dreamer, is five great Daily Kos diaries.
First, a green diary from Ozzy.
Gazing through the window at the world outside,
wondering will Mother Earth survive.
Hoping that mankind will stop abusing her
sometime.
In verse two, we have Ozzie's peace diary.
After all, there's only just the two of us,
and here we are still fighting for our lives.
Watching all of history repeat itself,
time after time.
That verse makes me cry.
That verse makes me want America to pull out of Afghanistan. Because I see a young US Marine, and a young Taliban, and I see them facing each other, and they may well feel that in that moment there is just the two of them. And they may even realize, as Ozzy suggests, that history is repeating itself, because all war is the same. If VietNam was a mistake, maybe all wars have been mistakes, even the American Revolutionary war, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, all wars. Just repeating the mistakes of history.
But one of them is killed. And the mother of the dead fighter cries, as I am crying now.
Of course, I cry easily, since I saw my father die of cancer in 2001, and watched my wife of 30 years slowly die of her genetic muscular dystrophy. She died in March of 2008.
Back to Ozzy.
Verse three is about sustainability in general, thinking of those who will live in the year 2080 and beyond. See this link, and click on the link within the link, for the book, The Limits To Growth.
The Limits To Growth
So, here is Ozzy on sustainability.
I watch the sun go down like every one of us,
I'm hoping that the dawn will bring a sign
a better place for those who will come after us
this time.
Now we get to my favorite part.
Like many here at Daily Kos, I am a non-believer. I do not believe in anything supernatural. No gods or goddesses, no angels or demons, no heaven or hell. My god is you, and all my other fellow humans, because that is all we have, each other.
Ozzy sings it so well:
Your higher power may be god or jesus christ,
it doesn't really matter much to me;
without each other's help there ain't no hope for us,
like living in a dream or fantasy.
In the last verse, Ozzy reminds us that we must put aside our anger we feel for each other.
Period.
We must.
I say that the way to do that is to accept that humans do not have free will, so anytime you hate the behavior of another human, you can deal with it in a practical manner, arresting those you can arrest, and gradually persuading any group of millions that you cannot arrest, like jihadists in general, those who hate your country in general.
That is the only way I can see to set aside the grudges, to give up our false belief in free will and evil behavior.
Anyway, here is Ozzy, in his last verse, calling for that turning away from hate:
If only we could all just find serenity.
It would be nice if we could live as one.
When will all this anger, hate and bigotry
be gone?
I will close with the feeling I get, the feeling Ozzy expresses so well. The feeling that there is no hope that any of the ideas promoted in this diary, in Ozzy's song, will ever make much progress. I feel very little hope. So, all I really want to do is sit and listen to this video, watch this song. I want to sit and dream my life away.
Of course, my dog, and my girlfriend, and my job at Walmart, those things call out to me, and I get up and do other things.
But in the quiet hours, I go back to Ozzy:
I'm just a dreamer.
I dream my life away.
Today.
I'm just a dreamer.
who dreams of better days.
Oh, yeah.
I'm just a dreamer
who's searching for the way
today.
I'm just a dreamer,
dreaming my life away.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
UPDATE
Link to Ozzy's bio:
Link to Ozzy bio.