Reply #29: I was going to post, again, Buffy, but I can't do it

[Tansy_Gold]

As too many commenters have written on the various videos of "The Universal Soldier," the song is all about personal responsibility. If there are no soldiers, there can be no war.

But this morning it's about, imho, another war, and that war is being fought here, without guns. It's the war against honor and integrity all in the name of WINNING.

I am not a pacifist to the point that I think it's honorable to do nothing in defense when attacked. I believe deadly force is even justified in defense.

But I am absolutely sickened at this Penn State horror even while I look at it as just -- JUST -- another symptom of a society gone insane with greed. The insane greed to win win win at all costs. A society that has complete demonized "the other" in virtually every situation. Herman Cain seems to see all women as "the other" and ripe for his conquest. Police departments everywhere see OWS as just a bunch of targets. Ditto with the drones. "They're brown people." "They're black people." "They're Indians (choose which continent)." "They're women." "They're poor." "They're not like us."

Joe Paterno is 84 years old. He should have happily retired years ago and enjoyed his life. Instead, as far as I can see, everything to him was about winning. WINNING. Defeating someone else, even in a game. And it looks like the whole game got out of control. Penn State administrators lost sight of their mission because it was all about winning. All about getting tv contracts and the money that comes to winners. WIN = $$$, and the more wins, the more $$$, and no matter what you have to do win, do it. So they asked Paterno to retire at one point and he growled at them and refused and they backed down. And they knew Sandusky was a pedophile but they didn't really do much to stop him because they wanted to win and maybe revealing what was going on with Sandusky might cost them $$$ or make them lose. Mike McQueary played with Sandusky's kids and worked for Paterno and was so brainwashed apparently into a culture of authoritarianism that this massive former quarterback DID NOTHING -- NOTHING to stop what he suspected was the rape of a 10 year old boy. Instead, like the good little soldier in the war to win, McQueary called his daddy. And they waited until the next day to tell Paterno and when nothing happened to Sandusky, McQueary said nothing more. He has hidden for almost a decade behind the shield of "required notification" that he did the absolute minimum that was required of him and therefore he's absolved.

Jon Corzine claims to be a Democrat, and yet he appears to have presided over a massive theft of his clients' money. Jon Corzine is a winner, a rich man, a former governor who survived a horrendous car crash that should have killed him. He's a fucking thief, and we will never know how many lives he and his soul-brothers Bernie Madoff and Andy Fastow and Alan Stanford and John Thain and the ongoing list of Wall Street mobsters have destroyed. Because Barack Obama wanted us all to look forward, not back, and so the forward we looked into when the boooshies and the traders and the Joe Cassanos and the Bernankes and the Norquists and all the rest of em got off with not even a scolding was a future just like the past only worse.

I've always considered 11 to be a kind of lucky number for me, though I'm not particularly superstitious. Today, though, it seems kind of a bummer. From that hopeful Armistice Day when the war to end all wars was ended, things haven't always gotten better. There are still wars, the Handsome Johnnys are still dying, still coming home maimed and psychologically impaired, and they're coming home to a home deteriorating before their eyes.

And I don't know what to do about it.



Tansy Gold