I was born to a white hat.....

[catnhatnh]

and losing that status has unmanned me.I just wrote that as a reply to another post, and it says so much I can't leave it alone. I can no longer hear our anthem, I can't pledge allegiance, and I can never again give myself the benefit of the doubt that my country is doing the right thing. Nothing sings in tune. Girl Scout cookies taste wrong and eagles become just circling scavengers. Virtues become suspect and vices seem less foreign. I see what Pogo saw: We have met the enemy and he is us.
I'm old now, near half a century has passed since I huddled under a school desk where in terror I knew someone else (the Godless communists) were 100% wrong. I was afraid, yet reassured that the evil of the world was named, and quantified, and them. I later lost a more conventional innocence and my white hat later faded to tan. I matured along with my beliefs and grew tired and tattered near the seams with my personal failures and lapses. Yet then, I could have died happy with my minor blemishes and good intentions.
There are words to describe the behavior of a country and two of them are "wrong" and "shameful". One describes our internal policy and the other our foreign relations. I was raised to 10 commandments and a "Holy Book". They reviled killing and mandated charity.They're not from the only religion but what they promote are universal to most. And if you can sleep at night without shame you may have missed the point, because I no longer can.
Peace, Cat.

[calimary]

1. We ARE capable of so much more.

Consider this one:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3025305

[TomInTib]

2. And I am the White Bone

I keep the Faith, Lord
But I sleep with the light on.

Tom

edited in order to recommend

[catnhatnh]

3. You're known by the company you keep....

with you and Calimary down on the thread I know I done right. Thanks, Tom.

[TomInTib]

4. You know what the man said about all hanging together

Versus simply hanging...

Alone.

What you wrote was perfect.

[TomInTib]

5. Kicking.... nt

[Stinky The Clown]

6. I'm from that same world, my friend.

Well stated.

K&R

[BrotherBuzz]

7. TO ROOT AGAINST YOUR COUNTRY

TO ROOT AGAINST YOUR COUNTRY

by Art Hoppe
05 March 1971


The radio this morning said the Allied invasion of Laos had bogged down. Without thinking, I nodded and said, "Good."

And having said it, I realized the bitter truth: Now I root against my own country.

This is how far we have come in this hated and endless war. This is the nadir I have reached in this winter of my discontent. This is how close I border on treason:

Now I root against my own country.

How frighteningly sad this is. My generation was raised to love our country and we loved it unthinkingly. We licked Hitler and Tojo and Mussolini. Those were our shining hours. Those were our days of faith.

They were evil; we were good. They told lies; we spoke the truth. Our cause was just, our purposes noble, and in victory we were magnanimous. What a wonderful country we are! I loved it so.

But now, having descended down the torturous, brutalizing years of this bloody war, I have come to the dank and lightless bottom of the well: I have come to root against the country that once I blindly loved.

I can rationalize it. I can say that if the invasion of Laos succeeds, the chimera of victory will dance once again before our eyes -- leading us once again into more years of mindless slaughter. Thus, I can say, I hope the invasion fails.

But it is more than that. It is that I have come to hate my country's role in Vietnam.

I hate the massacres, the body counts, the free fire zones, the napalming of civilians, the poisoning of rice crops. I hate being part of My Lai. I hate the fact that we have now dropped more explosives on these scrawny Asian peasants than we did on all our enemies in World War II.

And I hate my leaders, who, over the years, have conscripted our young men and sent them there to kill or be killed in a senseless cause simply because they can find no honorable way out -- no honorable way out for them.

I don't root for the enemy. I doubt they are any better than we. I don't give a damn anymore who wins the day. But because I hate what my country is doing in Vietnam, I emotionally and often irrationally hope that it fails.

It is a terrible thing to root against your own country. If I were alone, it wouldn't matter. But I don't think I am alone. I think many Americans must feel these same sickening emotions I feel. I think they share my guilt. I think they share my rage.

If this is true, we must end this war now -- in defeat, if necessary. We must end it because all of Southeast Asia is not worth the hatred, shame, guilt and rage that is tearing Americans apart. We must end it not for those among our young who have come to hate America, but for those who somehow manage to love it still.

I doubt that I can ever again love my country in that unthinking way that I did when I was young. Perhaps this is a good thing.

But I would hope the day will come when I can once again believe what my country says and once again approve of what it does. I want to have faith once more in the justness of my country's causes and the nobleness of its ideals.

What I want so very much is to be able once again to root for my own, my native land.

[catnhatnh]

8. WOW.....how inarticulate I feel....

laid against someone who worked both harder and longer to say just what I wanted to say about how I felt and then expressed it so much better.Thanks a lot BB.....

[Voice for Peace]

9. not inarticulate at all

R&K

[Viva_La_Revolution]

11. wow.

just wow.

[MuseRider]

10. K&R

Very sad isn't it? I remember those drills and the "Godless Commies" and how as a kid I felt sorry for the people there who were only told propaganda, never knowing the truth. Well, they had it quite a bit worse than we do but we are certainly headed in the same direction aren't we?

While we all have learned since those days that we were never the pure and wonderful country that we thought we were we still held some things true. No more. They are all gone. We will remember them and we tell our children and we all hope that we can restore it and then work to improve it but that restoration will take a long time. I hope I am able to see it happen before I die.

Sleeping is difficult unless I think only mindless thoughts. My dreams are not so great, worse actually than those mushroom cloud dreams that all the grade school children were having when I was there.

I don't think a dirty old white hat can be totally cleaned and maybe that is a good thing.

Sleep Cat, you are doing the right things. It stinks when so much bad is being done in our names.

[catnhatnh]

12. I say a good day, I ain't got no pain,

I say a bad day is when I lie in bed and think about what might of been....Simon & Garfunkel

They say every man needs protection,
they say every man must fall....Dylan


I love my family here....on a good night a nubile english girl comes to me.On a bad night many different things happen...

and I probably earned both.As have we all....

[catnhatnh]

13. I got a PM from someone who prefers not to post on the site....

...who objects to my dichotomy of our actions being merely wrong internally while shameful externally.The person who contacted me has reminded me particularly of our treatment of both Native Americans and Blacks.This person feels "shameful" is probably on the whole a better description of our behavior.I do not doubt this.My post refers more particularly to the late 50's and my feelings about that time.Were I black or indian I might have a different take.Realize that other ethnic groups think I'm still giving the benefit of the doubt....