Posts Tagged ‘military excess’

Is the United States of America is the world’s largest dealer of illegal drugs?  What about the world’s largest gun runner?  For years our government has used the CIA, NSA & other super-secret ‘intelligence’ agencies to cultivate drug harvest and distribution in SE Asia and Afghanistan.  We offer ‘aid’ and ‘trade’ to countries in the forms of weapons and ammunition.  The drugs come home to the US to poison and kill our own population.  The weapons we sell are used either against us directly by people to kill others, who then seek to kill Americans.  Did the founding fathers envision a country that would become the world’s largest debtor and blood merchant?

Image courtesy of cesr.org

This post begins a series to recognize people that speak about the world in terms of what they observe and what they can prove.  Their voices stand out in the crowd.  In their words, they speak not of fantasy, delusion and rationalization.  Instead, they utilize the gifts of human cognition, awareness to observe what is here in the world around us.  They are not dogmatic, but analytic and take in the world ‘warts & all’ for what it is and what it is not.  They do not separate humankind from nature in any form of grandeur.  In short, they look at things the way they really are and not what we would have them be.

I’ve been thinking about something for a while now, and I just feel the need to call things out the way I see them. Namely, the near constant use of the “cowboy” persona in American politics. I find myself compelled to say something about it now, because I think that John McCain is the latest (maybe the last) but likely one of the worst performers of this hackneyed role. I’ll get to him in a bit, but let me tell you how I got to this conclusion.

As a child, I sat with my grandfather in his living room, watching westerns on TV. Bonanza, High Chapparal, Gunsmoke and John Wayne movies. He fought in Patton’s army and came home to live out his life on his farm with his dogs and his wife. He died when I was 8, but he lives on for me whenever I sit down to watch one of those old shows.