The Mason Missile
Kkennieth Heard
From: "John Mason" <joma...@verizon.net>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 19:58:11 -0500
Subject: [nwuphilly] The Mason Missile, March 26, 2007
The Mason Missile
The e-newsletter of
John Oliver Mason
March 26, 2007
jomason57@verizon. net
www.jomason.cjb.net
Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Please forward this to your friends)
Greetings, patriots!
I was one of the hundreds of thousands of patriots who went to
Washington
on January 27 to protest the Iraq war. The non-elite plain folks that
the
Bush gang claims as their own were all there, labor and veterans. I
went
with the US Labor Against The War contingent that left from the DC 47
building at 16th and Walnut streets.
Do you ever get the feeling the government - our own government -
doesn't
listen to its own people, that we might be beating our heads on a
wall? But
remember, the struggle has never been easy, and it never ends.
Eventually,
the establishment caves in and offers some concessions, in order to
buy time
and wean some of the rebels to its side. But we still don't give up.
We have entered Year Five of America's Shame and Disgrace. Bush and
his
crew refuse to concede that the war was a mistake, and now it has
changed
from a mistake to a disaster. IMPEACHMENT - I dare say the word.
IMPEACH
Bush and Company! This will be a sign that the American people are
rising
and reclaiming our own government.
The Right Wing has shown its true face during the Conservative
Political
Action Conference, when it cheered Ann Coulter - the pole dancer from
Hell -
as she called (from a circuitous route) John Edwards "A faggot". This
is the
Conservative Agenda - repress dissent and keep those in power in
power. But
they know a blatant attempt at destroying their enemies would create a
backlash against them, so they get subtle. They complain about
"political
correctness" and "the liberal media" when someone stands up to them.
Their
hired pundits phrase their attempts at repressing minority rights as
civil
rights efforts of their own, such as opposing Gay Marriage and
Affirmative
Action. History is also rewritten by them - the Viet Nam war is shown
as a
valiant cause, and opposition to the war among the troops themselves
is
never mentioned.
The House just voted on a spending bill for the Iraq war that sets a
deadline for withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. The problems are, the
bill
is loaded with pork-barrel spending plans that benefit congress-
members, and
the deadline is set for August 2008. Why not August 2007, THIS year,
and why
not just vote on the thing on its merits, rather than try to funnel
some
money to campaign contributors? There is a positive, though; this bill
is a
statement to Bush that he is NOT the Decider - we the people of the
United
States are, and we can lobby for a better bill, with a closer
deadline.
This election has brought about hope for progressive politics. The
Democratic candidates for President have come out for National Health
Insurance, which has been campaigned for since Truman at least.
Conservatives, however, have been wounded, but not fallen down as of
yet.
They remain in denial that their politics of
hate-those-other- people-and- ignore-the fact-the-powerful- are-
ripping- us-off
have been successfully challenged. But complacency is also our enemy,
and
they may regroup for 2008, in time for the presidential elections.
The two-party system, which to me looks more like one-and-a-half
parties,
has failed us. Our issues are not on the table, and we need, in the
long
run, to look into some new political configuration. The argument will
always
be, "If you vote for a third party, the Republicans win, and you can't
act
according to beliefs all the time." So do we have to settle for the
choice
between bad and worse, which candidate is the least nauseating? We,
the
American people, deserve better than that. We want our country to be
great
among the nations, and we need leaders who can take us there.
I have just been reading Langston Hughes' great poem, "Let America Be
America Again," and it concludes:
O, yes
I say it plain
America was never America to me
And yet I swear this oath -
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain
All, all the stretch of these great green states -
And make America again!
And on that note, I say, so long for now, and have a Happy Easter/
Pesach!