Unease Pervades a Peaceable Town

[Rose Siding]

BERWICK, Pa. -- On Day 1,088 of the war on terrorism, the high school cheerleading coach got an idea. "This town needs a boost," Bernadette DiPippa decided.

All summer long, the news here had been unsettling, from the day in June when police stopped a mysterious van as it bore down on the nuclear power plant at the edge of town, to the day in July when a soldier from the next county was killed in Iraq during a mortar attack, to the day in August when 670 area workers lost their jobs when yet another factory shut its doors. "A boost," DiPippa repeated....
........
The boys are Joe, 31, Brian, 30, and Andrew, about to turn 21. All are members of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. Just before they left for Iraq, their mother says, Andrew was given the option of staying home, but "the three of them made a pact that if they would go, they would go together."

Thanks to the layoff, then, they were all able to go out for pizza before the boys went off together, and now their mother stays away from the TV news and hates it when the phone rings and wipes her eyes with a Dunkin' Donuts napkin while sitting in a break room across from a worker named Bessie Guzenski, who is saying under her breath, "We shouldn't be there. None of the American boys should be there."

To which Lukashewski, who doesn't like the war, who doesn't know why her husband had to lose his job, who doesn't know whom she will vote for, says nothing. She just keeps wiping her eyes and looking away......

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60822-2004Sep29_4.html

[Voltaire99]

1. What can she say? That everything in which she has been led to believe...

...is a rotten fucking lie?

That she and he and they and we have all been had?

That her people are the pawns in a vicious game, pushed and knocked off the board as our masters see fit?

That this is how life is under assholes and liars and killers and creeps?

That this is just the beginning?

That this new Murrica doesn't bear much resemblance to the America of before, of long ago, of the movies, of the TV shows, of the advertisements, of the fairy tales?

[aaronbees]

2. What a .....

hearbreaking article. And that's a snapshot, in some ways, of the whole country.

[oldhat]

3. She obvious hates America.

She should stop saying those mean things about America and Preznit.

Seriously, what a poor woman. All the more reason to vote for Kerry.