(Photo: Dave Barger / Flickr)
In my own country I am in a far off land.
I am strong but have no power.
I win all yet remain a loser.
At break of day I say goodnight.
When I lie down I have great fear of falling.
- Francois Villon
There is a certain miasmic symmetry to the fact that America passed the ten-year anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war in the same week that the assault weapons ban went down to dirty defeat in Congress with nary a vote passed.
The war in Iraq was a crime, as was the Sandy Hook massacre that temporarily inspired the ban.
The rank and ravaging cowardice of those who should have known better allowed the Iraq war to happen, just as the rank and ravaging cowardice of those who know better allowed the Sandy Hook massacre to happen through their inaction and indifference, and then allowed the ban to fail in the aftermath.
No one - not the politicians, or their hyper-enabling media whores, or the "defense" contractors who robbed the country blind, no one - has been punished for the crime that was Iraq, just as no one - not the gun manufacturers and sellers who armed the shooter, or the NRA shills who empowered them all, no one - has been punished for Sandy Hook.
And some got very well paid: the cash shelves in the Treasury are barren and empty because of Iraq, just as the ammo and weapon shelves in almost every gun store in the country are barren and empty after a season of heady and hearty sales. Cleaned out, pocketed, thanks very much, you pack of numb suckers.
Some got paid, no one is faulted or held accountable, and the dead lie still and voiceless in the cold ground.
That is America.
Sandy Hook is a microcosm of Iraq - the slaughter of innocents writ small and large, and both a payday for low men - and the failure to do anything of any weight or import about the former taking place during the ten-year anniversary of the crime-of-the-century latter tells you all you need to know about where we stand as a nation and as a people.
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