Fortunate and muddy

Taking yesterday’s caravan down memory lane got me thinking about music from the end of the sixties; especially about anti-war stuff.

John Fogarty’s “Fortunate Son” has probably always been true, but it seems painfully relevant in the post-9/11 world, when Congress-at-the-trough is so eager to send our military to war to defend corporate interests. In Vietnam, it was a conscripted military; now it’s volunteer. But the bulk of the ranks are filled with people who are not the sons and daughters of politicians.

(Props to Senator Tammy Duckworth, R-Ill., who lost both legs flying a Black Hawk helicopter in combat in Iraq, and to the sons of Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Tim Kaine, D-Va., who are both USMC officers. They are the very rare exceptions.)

(By the way, if you look at the rosters of those who served in Vietnam—or, you know, take a stroll along the Vietnam Memorial on the Mall and look at the names in that black granite—you’ll see Hernandez, Sotos, Echevarria, Calderon…all those “somebody else’s babies” that scumbags like congressmoron Steve King (representing the heartland Iowa Fourth District, which would collapse if its Latinos left the area) warn are going to ruin the nation.)

Then there’s Pete Seeger’s “Big Muddy”. Man—this one is so viscerally painful, I can’t even listen to it. It brings to my mind’s eye not only the idiocy of Vietnam, but every battle fought in World War I in France and Belgium after September 1914. The classic definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.

And, yeah—that was Vietnam, too. With some variations, just doing the same old shit over and over, pouring more blood and treasure into a different sinkhole.

Don’t even get me started on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And now Syria. Just don’t.