This is a pretty dismal day to live in America or more accurately to live in The Homeland. The America that we knew has been gone for quite some time now although enough remains - at least in cosmetic terms to pretend that one day it may come back - that is not going to happen. The vicious, sleazy, politically motivated and most of all cowardly attacks on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the US Army prisoner of war just released from five years of captivity in a deal that Obama struck with the Taliban is evidence that any vestiges of a free and fair country are now gone. The haters have always been there but this disgusting display of venom is a place where even a cynic like myself didn't think that they would go. It is so completely anti-American, even Naziesque that it will leave a coating of toxic scum upon all of us long after Bergdahl's name has faded from the media and the never ending traveling carnival of perversion of political hacks and media assassins have found newly vulnerable prey to ambush and rip apart.
The collapse of our political system has been evident for quite some time now -- any country that manages to not only elect but re-elect charlatans like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama is one that is thoroughly fucked. Throw in a corrupt gaggle of incompetents, perverts, clowns, criminals, de-facto lobbyists, racists, cranks and religious fanatics in the US Congress and top it off with the cherry on the sh*t cake of a Supreme Court that is a rubber stamp on corporate looting, torturing people, mass warrantless surveillance and the restricting press freedom and you have a land destined for the scrapheap of history and hellbent at getting there as quickly as possible. The real problem is that the journey there is going to be one of great pain and if the past five days of 24/7 "Two Minutes Hate" piled upon Bergdahl and his family are any indication it will be one that must be navigated through a gauntlet of apple pie authoritarians who will make Hitler's brownshirts look like pikers when the sh*t hits the fan and they are the ones who are brought in as muscle to protect the corrupt system.
The nadir of our post September 11, 2001 descent into the abyss of fear, loathing and moral bankruptcy is that the berserkers - as instigated by the neocons and their fully weaponized media machine have intimidated Sgt. Bergdahl's home Idaho hometown of Hailey to cancel the celebration of his release after threats of violence became too much of a danger to the citizenry. The small mountain town, with a population of around 8,000 faced the very real possibility of being descended upon by hordes of revved up right-wing goons who would not have been satisfied until Hailey was ransacked and burned to the ground. While one can't blame the city for calling off the event - the safety of residents is first and foremost - it sets a very dangerous precedent in that this time the terrorists won. When a wild animal catches the scent of blood it will keep on running rogue and killing until it has been stopped by the use of equivalent force which is not going to happen. The thugs are far too valuable to the oligarchy to reign them in now, especially with the potential for social collapse if the US-EU-NATO Axis of Aggression continue to push towards a war with Russia.
But I digress.
The predatory attacks on Bergdahl, a proxy for the hated Obama has been building to a crescendo all week with absolutely no resistance from any national leadership figures, religious leaders or rational voices within the system. They have been content to continue to pour more gasoline on the fire to see just how much that it can burn and then step back to marvel at their destruction like pyromaniacs. This is sheer vengeance and the real reasons behind this horrific bursting of the festering, pus-filled wart on the ass of America is explained pretty well by Antiwar.com's always excellent Justin Raimondo whose recent column entitled "Hating on Bowe Bergdahl" exposes the arsonists behind this latest and greatest pyre of hate. I excerpt the following:
Embittered by double defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan, driven out of both countries with their tails between their legs, the War Party is looking for scapegoats, and has found one in the least likely place -- the ranks of the US Army. That's right: the "support the troops" contingent is now intent on re-torturing Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a 26-year-old Idaho native held captive by the Taliban for five horrific years.
A concerted campaign, stage-managed by "Republican strategists" -- i.e. Richard Grenell, former Romney foreign policy consultant fired for being too gay -- is pitting some of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's former comrades against the just-released prisoner-of-war. The former claim Bergdahl is a "traitor" who deserted his post: a 2012 Rolling Stone piece by Michael Hastings implies as much. Yet we really don't know what happened: in a Taliban propaganda video Bergdahl says he was caught after he "lagged behind" on patrol. And this US government cable posted by WikiLeaks contains intercepted Taliban communications hailing his capture and claiming it occurred in the course of an attack on Bergdahl's base while he was using a latrine.
We don't yet know the circumstances of his capture, and so these calls for prosecution are premature, to say the least. Not that legal niceties like evidence matter to the baying wolves of the neocon media: they want vengeance for the war they lost and were widely blamed for. Having lost on the battlefield in Afghanistan, the War Party is seeking a victory on the home front.
The persecution of Bowe Bergdahl is just the first chapter in the neocons' ongoing revisionist history of the Afghan war. And we know the theme of this work of fiction from the very first act: it's a tired replay of the old "we-were-stabbed-in-the-back" myth promulgated by failed Napoleons in every country. In the American version, they said -- and still say -- the same thing about the Vietnam war -- we were prevented from winning by squeamish liberals and anti-American war protesters, who secretly (and not so secretly) supported the Commie cause.
Now of course it is the usual anti-Muslim, anti-American hatemongers like the insipid shreiker Pamela Geller as well as the bottom-feeding scum at Front Page Magazine, the Stormfront for neocons that along with FOX News are leading the pack in working to incite pogroms in the US. Some Republicans who actually hailed the freeing of Sergeant Bergdahl until the Khmer Rouge enforcers of the Red Elephant Team forced them to purge any such sentiment or face exile or worse. Pol Pot Palin - who thrives on being the high priestess of cultural populist American dumb-assery has predictably crawled out from under her rock to feed the hate machine and the Canadian born Senator Ted Cruz is pounding the pulpit over new legislation barring any further transfers from the torture gulag at Guantanamo Bay. The haters eat it up too and the very real prospect that they are finally getting close to the peak of their long, hard fought struggle up the American political Mount Everest now that they may have finally found their Fuhrer in Cruz has them in a supremely orgasmic state.
In the ongoing vilification of Sergeant Bergdahl and his family we can see all that America has been transformed into by travelers, ideologues, war profiteers and the swine who serve them as they eat away at the foundations of this once great country like a column of ravenous Formosan termites. America has failed the moral test of modern times of simply preventing the spread of fascism - which on the 7oth anniversary of D-Day begs the question as to why so much blood has been sacrificed in vain only to allow what our grandfathers and great-grandfathers defeated in World War II to take root in The Homeland? That will be a question that will keep historians busy for decades.
As for the right-wing lynch mobs - when it all comes down to it and if Bowe Bergdahl did walk off his post in Afghanistan then that only makes him a deserter which in the hierarchy of what passes for "patriotism" towers above the chickenhawks who never had the guts to serve in the first place.
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