One of these things is not like the other one

[alice wellintown]

Why put so much on the Government, like the Government is supposed to
have a conscience? Governments are, as Thoreau explained so many years
ago, an expedient. Men, when they have no courage or conscience take
cold cofort in the democratic process or the vote (not even close to
the same thing) or some other foolish excuse for not standing up to
Government madness.  When a State can murder its citizens none of us
is free or safe from the chair or the gas or whatever other violent
end the the Heads in Government will use to murder enemies of the
State. Those Heads have no shortage of Bodies, the majority or Mob,
who will march inot you home or place of business, take your liberty,
property, and life, not necessarily in that order, before you can
scream B/Tuttle. Men of conscience are rare; Sloth is a US State of
Mind.

I'm not a big fan of Vineland, but that War Powers Journal in the City
Law Review, David Thoreen, made me re-read the novel twice. A Poem for
the Vets on the list:

Facing It

  My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

Yusef Komunyakaa






On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 12:42 PM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> Beyond this, the killing agency of Government, once allowed to extend to the
> usual considerations of "National Interest" and "International Diplomacy"
> that we have become comfortable with becomes a much more efficient killing
> machine. Numbers of casualties and killed become larger, seemingly of their
> own accord, like dough rising. War, ultimately, leads folks to do rather
> intellectually and morally dishonest activities. Like water-boarding in the
> name of democracy. The killing ability of the "National Defense"  industry
> of these United States is of a piece with this nation's violent nature.
> Being given carte blanche to kill "others" is its own reward for a certain
> class of "warrior."
>
> I do believe that chapter nine of "V." demonstrates that sort of behavior.
>
> On Nov 11, 2010, at 9:22 AM, Joe Allonby wrote:
>
>> Capital punishment is the perfect sentence in a perfect criminal
>> justice system. If you acknowledge that the system is not perfect, and
>> you practice capital punishment, you have to be willing to accept that
>> eventually the state will commit murder by executing an innocent
>> person. To deny this is intellectually and morally dishonest. There is
>> no way around this.
>
>