Tomas Young saved me from myself.
William Rivers Pitt | Waking From My Moral Coma13 March 2013
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/15088-waking-from-my-moral-coma
From the moment the Supreme Court decision came down in 2000 that gifted the White House to Bush, to the moment he was finally and forever out of power, I resisted him and his works, because I knew what he represented, what he was about, and what he was doing to my beloved country. My instincts were finely honed, and I gave probably a million words - in print, and spoken aloud on the road for some 800,000 miles - to the cause of thwarting him and everything he stood for.
And now? Now I'm suddenly wondering where that guy has been. He sure as hell isn't the one I see in the mirror. He lapsed into a moral coma, lulled by his idea of America and by the election of someone who can talk the birds out of the trees even as the lumberjacks clear-cut the forest.
Make no mistake, now: that's not an "Obama is the same as Bush" argument. Nobody is Bush, because Bush stands alone, and whoever makes that kind of equivalency either slept through the first eight years of this century, hit their head and forgot what those eight years were like, or is trying to sell you something.
The issue is not about Obama being the same as Bush. The issue is the fact that it doesn't matter a tinker's damn who sits in that fine round room. I believe Mr. Obama to be a better man than his predecessor, and if we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.
I believe in the idea that is America, but I also believe in Tomas Young, who was re-introduced to me by way of a Chris Hedges article that should be mandatory reading for every sentient American on the continent. Young was shot through the spine and permanently paralyzed during his deployment to Iraq, and later went on to be one of the first veterans to actively and publicly denounce the war...and now? Now, after a number of physical setbacks, he actively seeks his own death, but lacks the capability to do it himself, and will not allow anyone to finish things for him. So he sits in hospice and waits to die.
I believe in the idea that is America, but Tomas Young is dying because he believed, too. He is dying, and the people who delivered him to the slow sunset of his death remain utterly unmolested by the rule of law we Americans take so much misguided pride in. I live with my idea of America in one hand, and the dying light of Tomas Young in the other, and when I look in the mirror, I cannot meet my own eyes. I spent all those years fighting against everything that is ending Tomas Young's life, I made documenting their serial crimes my life's work...and then I let it slide, because Bush was gone, and I couldn't summon the necessary energy to remain outraged over the fact that they all got away with the crime of the millennium scot-free.
It is enough.
I am finished with the moral geometry that says this is better than that, which makes this good. This is not good; this is, in fact, intolerable. Allowing the perpetrators of war crimes - widely televised ones at that - to retain their good name and go on Sunday talk shows as if they had anything to offer besides their ideology of murder and carnage is intolerable. Entertaining the idea that the billions we spend preparing for war cannot be touched, and so the elderly and the infirm and the young and the weak and the voiceless must pay the freight instead, is intolerable.
The pornography of America's global killing spree is intolerable, and, by the by, I am sick of hearing about drones. A child killed by a Hellfire missile that was fired from a drone is exactly, precisely as dead as a child killed by a Hellfire missile fired from an Apache attack helicopter, precisely as dead as a child killed by a smart bomb, precisely as dead as a child killed by a sniper, precisely as dead as a child killed by a land mine, or by a cruise missile, or by any of the myriad other ways instant death is dealt by this hyper-weaponized nation of ours.
Exactly, precisely as God damned dead, and the blood is on our hands regardless of the means used to do the killing. The issue is not the drones. The issue is our hard, black hearts, and the grim fact that the debate in this country right now is not about whether the killing is wrong, but about the most morally acceptable way of going about that killing. Drones are bad, but snipers are better, because you don't hear the buzzing sound in the sky before your lights go out forever. Or something.
It is the killing, it is the permanent war, it is our deranged national priorities. It is the system we live under which requires the serial deaths of all those innocents to maintain our economic health that should appall us. We sup upon the blood and bonemeal that is the byproduct of the idea that is America, and we sleep. And we sleep.
I mean to face the stranger in the mirror tomorrow, and so I must acknowledge my own culpability in all this. I am to blame; I went to sleep, because I have an idea of America that I cling to desperately, and so I bought into the soothing nonsense of cosmetic change even as the sound of the same old gears ground on around me.
I am sorry.
I still believe in that idea.
And I am awake.
Thank you, Tomas, for my life and from my soul. I'm so sorry you're gone. Rest easy, good sir.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Tomas for inspiring this extraordinary column, and you for writing it.
We are all morally guilty for failing to remain enraged at the perpetual carnage.
No words, except thank you, Will, and rest in peace, Dear Thomas.
We seem to have forgotten the reason along the way. This form of representation called ''government'' that we started with over 200 years ago was a great start. But only a start. We weren't meant to stay there but to evolve and make life even better.
Instead we allowed the same rich asshats to control us with their bizarre bullshit economic system (casino) and we just made things worse.
- Now it's time to grow-up, toss these clowns onto the historical heap, and move on.......
K&R
There are People Out There ....Who don't want to Hear....or Revisit History...or They are Looking Forward to "Hillary 2016" who don't want "Turds in Punchbowl" of our American Actions in Other Countries..and our Endless Wars.
It's ALL GOOD for BOTH PARTIES........those "ENDLESS WARS."
......with a Repub Senate there's NOW lots of ROOM to DISSENT! Obama is Lame Duck and not running anymore.
WE NEED TO ATTACK THESE WARS........and do Better Reporting now that Obama is no longer Running for President.
Time to peal back the "Cloak of Compliance" and Reveal the Rot that has been ...Not Exposed so that the NEXT President has ACCOUNTABILITY........for Past DEEDS for which there is NOW a long Track Record to HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE. Of Course I'm talking about theMIC/Media Industrial Complex.
