I’ve been angry at people before but never so angry that I made plans to murder them. I’ve been in combat; there was nothing about it I wish to re-experience. Nor do I wish to subject anyone else to such experiences. At the end of days spent in combat, I was glad that I was a medic. Yet being a medic was horribly frustrating and depressing because people die in combat and medics/corpsmen/nurses/doctors can’t prevent or change that no matter how hard we try.
There is a great anger in the land of America with its foundations in many problems. No one group of people elected to represent and lead us created all these problems although my opinion is that the Reagan and Bush administrations are largely responsible for more of them than are the Clinton and Obama administrations. The GOP, when in control, has elevated greed to a credo, allowed the Christian fundamentalists to gain far more prevalence and political power than they deserve. The GOP has essentially encouraged racism and bigotry by marketing to the populations most likely to believe racist and bigoted propaganda. The GOP has made false patriotism a measuring stick for the public behavior of citizens and elected officials. The GOP has supported illegal and un-necessary wars in Granada, Panama, and Iraq while underfunding and understaffing the armed forces it claims to admire. In fact, the GOP has presided over the creation and employment of mercenary forces to perform tasks that the armed forces once performed and paying them at much greater rates of pay than the troops who wear our uniforms.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have made patriotism into a thing to be scorned, have alienated many veterans, and have insisted that illegal aliens be provided housing, food, education, and health care that many citizens cannot afford. Many Democrats and voters on the extreme left want to do away with borders, object to any mention of English as a national language. They tend to champion gun control and look down on people who hunt and fish as “knuckle-draggers,” hicks, and red-necks.
There is no common course or common cause in our land today.
There is no political party for many Americans.
I reject the greed, corruption, bigotry, theocracy, false patriotism, and willingness to destroy our government and our nation that characterizes the Republican Party.
I reject the failure of the Democratic party to understand the need for a strong military presence, for their inability to understand that we must secure our borders, that we must stop illegal immigration, for their inability to act in concert when they have control of the legislature.
I reject the Libertarians for their utter lack of concern for the bulk of the populace, for their failure to recognize that public schools, parks, forests, and national services such as DCD & FDA are necessary and good for all of us. I reject them for their continual waving of the 2nd and 10th amendments in our faces as if ownership of firearms and the insistence on a literal 18th century interpretation of federal powers vs. states’ rights; as if that problem hadn’t been settled by the Civil War.
And they all reject me for fitting none of their molds. I believe in social safety nets, public education, and health care for all citizens in a manner similar to the models of Canada and France. I believe in a strong military presence – we need the biggest stick. I believe we need a national education standard – no more Kansas or Deep South models. I believe we need to declare English our national language, repeal the anchor baby clause in the 14th amendment, and send Mexican illegals back to Mexico so they can protest and rebuild their country, using Spanish if they like. We need to jail employers who hire illegals. We need to remove all religion from government, school, and public matters. I don’t want a Christmas tree on public land in December. But I don’t want a Chanukiot (candle stick commonly mislabeled a menorah) there either. Religious holidays should be celebrated at home or in places of worship by people who honestly believe in that particular faith rather than be the impetus for maniacal shopping sprees.
For most of us, there really is no political party that welcomes us by matching what we believe in. The GOP comes closest to matching the theocratic oligarchy its leaders, financial backers, and remaining base call for. I don’t want them in power, ever again. 1929, 1987, 2008, you’d think we might have learned not to let them run anything having to do with money. But we haven’t yet. I don’t know that we ever will.
One thing I know is that we must have some influx of jobs to reduce the unemployment rate or we will never recover from the depression that Reagan, Cheney, and the Bush’s dug for the nation. The private sector, despite all the GOP posturing and imagination of the tea party idiots, will never forego profits for the good of the nation. They’ll be off shoring jobs when the last flag is hauled down and burned by jobless citizens, in order to get that final billion dollar bonus. The jobs are going to have to come from the Government and as of now, the GOP’s scorched earth policy and the Democrat’s inability to work together continues to block that avenue of recovery.
The neighbor across the road has a flag staff at his gate. We have one in the driveway island. We are currently flying the third flag I’ve purchased since we moved in. We won’t fly a torn flag. It’s against the U.S. flag code as well as wrong at several other levels. His flag is barely recognizable as a U.S. flag. If it were anyone else but him, we’d buy another flag and drop it off. From earlier conversations, it is clear that he regards this scrap cloth as some sort of “last real American symbol. Guess who he voted for. Guess why. See what we’re up against.
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin!
Thunder Road Convoy
Waiting for the MP's to open up the gates,
All gassed up and lined out, each one with its load
Drivers and their shotguns waiting for the go ahead,
Up endless klicks of highway that we call the Thunder Road
Have you written home today? Have you made your will out, troop?
Are you the lucky bastards with the ordnance in your load?
Are you hauling mogas, diesel fuel or JP-4?
God ain't riding any truck that's running Thunder Road
Black smoke coughing skyward, multi-fuelers rumbling,
Passing through the gates you hear the shotguns lock and load.
Helmets weighing heads down, flack vests zipped to sit upon,
Sandbags on the floorboards 'cause they're running Thunder Road.
When the war was younger, wasn't any open road,
Jungle brushed the sidestakes and blocked out the overhead.
Set up in the brush nearby, ambushes were hard to spot,
Troopers running Thunder Road too often wound up dead.
Enter high technology, Monsanto, Dow and chemistry,
Sprayed it with defoliants that burned the jungle back.
Agent Orange, Agent White, one of them will work just right,
Turn the Thunder Road into an open, safer track.
Next the Rome Plows came along, tore the dying jungle down,
Opened up the land one hundred meters either side,
Left an open area of stunted brush and head high grass,
200 open meters for the ambush teams to hide.
From Lai Khe up to Loc Ninh, anxious damned kilometers,
Ain't a single klick that can't be ambushed, sniped or mined.
Lead off with a jeep that mounts a single .50 caliber,
Close the convoy with another .50 back behind.
Every single pothole is the one that hides a waiting mine,
Lots of ruts and potholes form in Asian laterite
Follow in the tire tracks of the truck that’s just ahead in line
If we make it through, we'll sleep in Loc Ninh's wire tonight
Paddies line the lower road, water boo and wooden plows,
Slow down through the hamlets where they try to steal the loads,
Children running after us, "Souvenir me C rats, Joe!"
All of them are VC and they're watching Thunder Road
Women mob the market place, old men squatting in the shade,
Counting 4 by's, 6 by's and the fuel trucks as we go,
Accelerating, roaring north, up highway 13 toward Loc Ninh
Bound to where the mines are buried out on Thunder Road
Trying to relax a bit, hands and arms are cramped and sore,
Tension and the road ruts knot the muscles in our backs,
Someone plays a radio, barely heard above the noise,
Of diesel engines crawling up the twisting, climbing track.
Quon Loi turn-off falls behind, heading for Cambodia
Defoliants have lost their grip; the jungle's closing in,
Rolling through the Michelin, Rome plows never made it here,
Can't upset the planters who still live outside Loc Ninh.
Haggard faces in the trucks caked with thick red laterite
Sweat trails turning dust to mud and not a breath of wind,
To blow the dust away from us as the truck tires churn it up,
It clogs our mouths and noses and it infiltrates our skin.
Every one is twitchy now. If they ambush, should be soon.
Road is down to just one lane and daylight's getting thin
Thunder Road is nearly run; we've survived another day,
Stop! The tanker has to back and fill to make the bend.
Jungle slowly falls behind, sudden tropic nightfall near,
Racing up the final klicks while fading daylight shows.
Road has opened out again, lifting tension from our minds,
Flash! The fuel truck up ahead is blown right off the road
Windshield shatters suddenly, fragments slashing into skin,
Shit! He's hauling Mogas; see the fire consume the load.
Driver never had a chance, torn and burned, cremated there,
The thunder of the mines was why we named it Thunder Road.
Black smoke blowing over us, brings the stench of burning flesh,
B-40 from the tree line detonates another load
Popping of the 16's as we crouch in weed-choked ditches,
Firing 'cross the evil ground that borders Thunder Road.
Choppers strafe the tree lines but Charlie isn't hanging round,
He's killed some long-nosed devils and destroyed a couple loads.
Heading back to safety he can hear the secondary sounds,
Of ammo cooking off in dying trucks on Thunder Road.
Policing up the dead then, nothing left that looks like men
Zip 'em in a body bag and write the letters home.
"Sorry 'bout that, folks, your son got greased below Loc Ninh
On a convoy running highway 13 known as Thunder Road."
Have you written home today? Have you made your will out, troop?
Are you the lucky bastards with the ordnance in your load?
Are you hauling mogas, diesel fuel or JP-4?
Listen to the mines exploding out on Thunder Road
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