Another Independence Day?
Philip Farruggio
Maybe I should say ‘Co-Dependence’ Day. This writer was never a gung ho fan of Bruce Springsteen, but some of his songs do hit home. How about this one:
Born down in a dead man’s town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up
Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A., born in the U.S.A.
Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man
Born in the U.S.A.
Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man said “son if it was up to me”
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said “son, don’t you understand”
I had a brother at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They’re still there, he’s all gone
He had a woman he loved in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms now
Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I’m ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go
Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A., I’m a long gone daddy in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A., born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A., I’m a cool rocking daddy in the U.S.A
The power of those lyrics resounds so well for a product of the turbulent 1960s.
To have lived as a teenager morphing into a man during that Vietnam debacle and horror show, Springsteen’s lyrics cover lots of ground. He alliterates the plight of young, low-income working stiffs from dead-end towns across this nation…then just substitute Afghanistan and Iraq for Vietnam, and nothing has changed.
It is mostly the working stiffs and uber poor who kill and die in phony wars. The song implies that both the job market and our Veterans Administration didn’t give a rat’s ass for returning GIs from the Nam. The most saddened lyrics are those that remember the poor soul who returned home in a box. Nuff Said.
As the 4th approaches, the movers and shakers of empire are making sure that the suckers are served a bundle of propaganda along with their burgers, dogs, soda pop and brew.
The army of flags will appear, along with the others already hung up by worshippers in this temple of war. You see, our great MAGA is still fighting back against the terrorists and brown-faced aliens, all of whom wish to destroy our great ‘Land of the 1/4 of the 1 %’.
The great journalist Greg Palast renamed our country the ‘Armed Madhouse’. Yet, so few of our fellow citizens realize they are being had by phony celebrations of our military strength and resolve.
Trump wants a mega ‘march of the Pentagon’ complete with even tanks on the Capital Mall, to frame this con that we are a nation at war. WE HAVE NOT BEEN AT WAR SINCE WW2!
When the effects of either your electronic gadgets, alcohol, cigarettes, 24/7 sports and news gossip, and of course opioids, wears off a bit, maybe then you working stiffs will see more clearly.
The clock is ticking towards the end of this empire… morally, financially and physically. Those who rule always need the co-dependence of their serfs. Put that in your firework and light it!
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Singing songs of rage against wars in other lands while earning obscene amounts of money from the “entertainment” industry leaves one feeling an uncomfortable truth that somehow we are being distracted away from the reality of the political hopelessness within our comfortable existence. When I first heard the Boss and Born in the USA it sounded to me like a rock anthem extolling the virtues of US triumphalism and pride and nothing like a protest against the death and destruction which America has engaged in throughout the world.
This is a great article from Caitlin Johnstone:
“Jingoistic Military Fetishization Is As American As Bald Eagle McNuggets”
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/jingoistic-military-fetishization-is-as-american-as-bald-eagle-mcnuggets-bceb80186db2
Like the CNN anchors w**king themselves off over “our big beautiful missiles.”
“WE HAVE NOT BEEN AT WAR SINCE WW2!”
…maybe is just my poor english an the phrase above means something different…but on my book what the US goverment has never been is in PEACE….
I don’t think is necessary to list all the wars US goverment has wage since 1945…or you could just simply ask latinamericans…
Been at for 93% of it’s existence.
Yes, that idiotic claim, that we haven’t been at war since WW2, makes me think the author is not worth reading at all.
I think you will find that the usa regime has not ‘declared war’ against anyone since 1944 – it doesn’t mean that they have not carried out vile and despicable acts around the world for its own pleasure and financial gain, it’s ideological hegemony and pure greed. I think they call it looking after its own interests and thse of its allies …. no?
It’s war, no matter what the U.S. regime wants to call it. Also, “extraordinary rendition” is actually kidnapping, and “enhanced interrogation” is actually torture.
Bob..I think you mean looking after the interests of their masters in Israhell?
I like it that the potus wants to put the non stop US war machine ‘in your face’.
The population has been fooled into believing that they are not at war. They are fooled into believing they are not militarist adventurers with overwhelming mega weaponary deployed to murder innocents daily across the planet.
The population are fooled into beliving they are jackbooted, baby crushing, bomb dropping thugs not just bad but the worst in human history.
Hell yeah put ALL their POWER on display so the people can see how they have been fooled for over a century.
I’m sure the murdering grunts love to play the Boss as a means of warming up to their daily ‘work’.
I watched a movie this morning, sort of SciFi comedy/action…..a stupid hollywood.. another one….
There was this guy, very handsome, brave, courageous, strong, funny, gentle, an amazing friend and a better father (uuuufffff….gosh!!!)…he has to save his son from Aliens, he is a US Rangers sniper…anyways… at some point somebody ask his ex-wife about the guy. The woman goes on detailing all the missions, deployments, battles, medals and the outstanding moral statue of the guy…in passing she literally said :
“He has 13 certified killings” (!!!!!!)
…of course then everyone accept the guy as their leader….
The thing is that people watch this things and they unconciously swallow the ’13 certified killings” as a VIRTUE (!!!!!). That is, 13 human lifes taken and this is something to be PROUD OF, this is COMMENDABLE!!!!…. that’s how US population (…..and large parts of the world through US ‘culture’ consumption) have been indoctrinated… that’s how ‘torture’ came to be justified…and all other things, too many to detailed here.
A world, a society where taking a life is accepted as MORAL, and GOOD…is a SICK SOCIETY…..and then those with these ideas pretend to be the Leaders…the indispensables, the guides and ligth of this world…
No wonder why we are living in such DARKNESS!!!!
Lala land, innit’, in the ‘darkness on the edge of town’, down by ‘the river’,
in an extinct volcano of this here ‘badlands’, I recall ‘something in the night’ I used to chat about with Ivan D’NATO sniper in Afghanistan & Iraq, about the reality of War, for over 10 years, i tried to ‘prove it all night’, that NATO was a ‘factory’, and the ‘promised land’ was just ‘streets of fire’, trying to help him come to terms with his inner turmoil & recurring Telescopic visions of his remarkable ability to kill at a huge distance, having witnessed more gore & genocide than him, he listened, occasionally …
He was recruited for his ‘talent’, that he honed from childhood hunting:
a thoroughly normal case of PTSD, Drugs, Alcohol, broken bones & soul,
anyways, he died earlier this year … in his mid 30’s, the son of a colleague
where my wife schools … The caretaker’s daughter is in Afghanistan now.
She loved Ivan … and I did warn her dad, who now has a new metal detector,
looking for gold.
That’s reality …
and I’ve been warning people here against NATO, long before NATO arrived,
whatever the weather ! whatever the tool or electronic equipment,
people never listen until it’s too late.
Guns are toys for brainwashed kids. There are far easier electronic ways to kill
& achieve the military goals and NATO does this: but, open discussion of military Tech.
would ruin their designs to occupy minds elsewhere and religion is no longer the opiate of the bacchanalian masses, and the opium wars never ended.
R.i.P. Ivan, your matter met the anti-matter that surrounds us all & diffused,
into ground zero.
Bluntly said ‘Adam raised a Cain’ …
NATO your Boss ! ?
Didn’t one of those Iron Man movies feature the line, “I have just privatised world peace”?
Interesting proposal. I wonder how it works. “We will ensure world peace …but only for those who pay enough and who will therefore be considered saintly souls. The poor will be branded terrorists for the offence of not having the money to ensure peace.”
Shameless politicians use whatever leverage they can be it war or civil rights.
Occasionally they are caught out – here Michael Crick takes Theresa May’s revision places it over his knee and spanks its arse (after May tries to pretend her party were not pro-apartheid, and anti-Mandela).
The look on Mays face as she is fistfucked by reality is quite delicious.
Link seems to have gone AWOL – try again
Excellent link, Harry,
especially for anybody who likes to profile characters &
analyse body language & micro-facial expressions.
I’ll wager there was not much further exchange between them,
after the cameras stopped filming, lol, maximum mutterings . . .
Mandela was no hero.
He sold weapons to Suharto.
Also Mandela awarded him with the order of good hope.
(South Africa’s highest award)
That’s an entirely different point to the one I am making.
Philip’s post is about cynical exploitation, indeed complete revisionism of history to promote certain political ends – be it senior figures in the US pretending to give a damn about the collateral fall-out from illegal wars (such as the way vet’s were treated after Viet Nam) or tory politicians trying to kid people they supported progressive change when at the time they actually vilified certain individuals struggling to improve conditions in their own society (because, in this case exploiting of Britains economic needs in S Africa trumped the aspirations of the ANC).
Fair enough Harry, but many people do not know this about Mandela.
For the downvoter
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/596459/Suharto-to-get-top-S-Africa-award.html
The ‘Boss’ was made subservient a long time ago.
Marianne and her band own John’s song on this clip.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3N_rNz2oAGA
John ?
Well, we’ll probably never know the truth of that tragedy.
The ‘boss’ spends a lot of time on Obama’s yacht and picking up the takings from his $900 each ticket prices from his Broadway, one-man show
OffG – I think it’s time you sorted your voting system out… How can you say I have already voted for Bob when there is nothing scored????
Did you refresh ?
Springsteen’s Born in the USA song was once chosen by the Reagan camp to represent them – until Springsteen told them to bugger off. But this indicates that the Reagan lot realised that most people – or, at least, a substantial number – don’t get too bogged down in the lyrics. Indeed, I’m sure that many Americans probably interpreted the lines as meaning the song was about how everyone kept picking on the US i.e. they would hear the song through a Right Wing prism.
I read a story once about how someone made a documentary showing Reagan visiting a school for disabled kids. The voiceover made it clear that the Reagan administration policies were running such schools down. Afterwards, the film maker was bracing herself for a nasty call from the government. When it came through, she was astonshed to hear herself being congratulated. She asked why and was told (paraphrase) “You media people just don’t get it. Nobody is listening to the words. You’ve given us a nice film of the president sitting with a bunch of needy kids. That makes him look like a nice man. And that’s all anyone is going to take from it”.
Walmart’s man.
Bloody sell out.
Like raging against the machine, eh . . . ?
Toy computing determines ‘their’ continued success,
and who may rise or fall, at any given moment – simple science.
Always Military First …
If the Boss’s message were to become in any way threatening to sales,
and broaching the truth in terms of sharing Knowledge,
the bosses would nullify & bury the ‘Boss’ and he’d be buried somewhere in
The Darkness on the Edge of Town. 😉