host

Two things came to mind when I read your OP, especially the sentence above.

The first reaction conjured up memories from a long, long time ago, and the second was about something I was examining in the last hour.....

I have never felt so alone, so different from all of those who I personally came in contact with, than I did when I was a college freshman, wrestling with, and then committing to the idea of not participating in selective service registration during the latter part of the vietnam war. There were big things...was I doing it as a counter-reaction to the influence of the strong personality and political views of my former USMC father, or were my beliefs formed more from studying history and reading the NY Times weekday editions, daily from the beginning of my senior year in HS.

I couldn't talk about it with anyone as I wrestled with it, and there were the subtle, "little" things....handing back the college (military draft) deferment app, along with all of my male freshman peers...they had all filled theirs out, and I slipped mine into the pile, blank.

I doubted the stance I took, regarding willingly participating in the military draft, for six years, discussing it with fewer people, and only in the later years of the six, with less friends than I could count on one hand. I dismissed Gerald Ford's amnesty offer, it was tied to "restating allegiance to the US", and a "community service" "sentence like" condition.

I stop following closely any of the proposals to deal with "that prolem" that were proposed by candidates or elected officials.

Seemingly out of the blue, in late Jan., 1977, a friend who had just passed the bar exam, and who I had discussed my legal status with, came up to me and asked me if I was celebrating the pardon just announced by newly innaugurated President Carter. I had not been aware of it.

It changed my life, and how I think about politics. It seemed like, in one day, I had gone from a sense of hopelessness and resignation, a reflexive, "looking over my shoulder" condition....resenting that I had to shoulder the convictions about the war and the government that I had....didn't choose, because if I chose, I could put the convictions down....and that never seemed to be an option. I always know what I have to do, what stance I have to take, where I have to "draw the line", I just don't like it, and it comes with second guessing that is more like resentment, than actual second guessing.

It's a feeling like, I must be wrong because what I so firmly think is opposite what almost everyone else is supporting, so...where do I "get" this "stuff"?

So, after I heard the news about Carter's proclamation, I became who I am politically, and I can live with it....and it's great to the opportunity to discuss my views, with you, rb, and others here....you know who you are.

That experience made the constant introspection that I still do, not seem nagging, or as abnormal. The "why me"? element was dispelled. It's alright to dissent, to be overwhelmingly at odds with "everybody knows".

The second thing was my reaction to a post on another thread, this afternoon, an opinion that Cynthia McKinney's candidacy for the Green Party's 2008 presidential nomination, would only "hurt the party".

I did some searching. The Capitol police "assault" was not approved by the investigating grand jury for indictment. She was against Gulf War's I and II. I read a comparison between her and Rep. Tom Lantos. Lantos seems to have hidden his knowledge that the "nurse witness" he arranged to have testify before a congressional committee to drum up support for US involvement in "taking back" Kuwait....she testified that she saw invading Iraqi soldiers tearing infants out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital and dumping the babies on the floor as they looted the incubators and other hospital equipment.

I read that Lantos's closest associate on the committee claimed that Lantos knew in advance, and did not tell him that the "witness" was the then 15 year old daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the US.

McKinney confronted Rumsfeld and Gen. Meyers, seeking their admissions that there were a series of war games conducted simultaneously to the 9/11 attacks. She questioned the official version of events of 9/11, and, when she organized a day of testimony on Capitol Hill from experts who agreed, her district's newspaper, the ajc.com, ran an inaccurate piece claiming she was blaming president Bush for the attacks, and refused to allow to print her own account.

From the day she arrived at the capitol to take her congressional seat, in 1993, she had experienced a long series of incidences of discrimination by capitol police....compared to other members of congress...mostly white males. Race relations among the capitol police, and promotions to higher rank are documented as lacking, resulting in a class action lawsuit by black officers,m, and the threat of a second suit.

McKinney has questioned authority, sided with the powerless, come out against both Gulf wars, questioned the veracity of government officials, been subjected to a federal court redistricting ruling that transformed here congressional district from mostly minority to 94 percent white, and, after she still won re-election, was targeted by a primary blitz of cross-over republican voters (it was allowed in GA, but cross-overs were disqualified from voting in other republican primaries for a year after...), and she had talk show host Boortz describe her on the air as resembling a "ghetto whore".

My 39 years experience, following American politics, impresses me that up is actually down, and right is actually wrong, that we live in a pathologically militaristic society where there is little justice for the powerless, and nearly a complete distortion of right and wrong, to the point where we openly endorse "greed as good", and resent and actually target the least wealthy and powerful, while we "highly respect" the most wealth and powerful who have done the most to subvert the best interests of almost all of us.

But most here would agree, I'm absolutely sure, that Cynthia Mckinney is "the problem", and open supporter of the military industrial complex's continued opportunity for growth, Obama, is "the solution".

....and I just learned yesterday, that Clarence Dillon, described as the wealthiest man in the US in 1957, owner of the only US owned "old growth" French vineyard, Haut-Brion, was the father of JFK US treasury secretary, C. Douglas Dillon. Clarence bought Haut-Brion in 1935, because they made his favorite cabernet.

We did it then, we're doing it now. Clarence Dillon lived to be 97, and Martin Luther King Jr. was shot down at age 39.

rb, you and I are centrists, the country we live in is extreme right, thinks it's "centrist", spends more money annually on the rest of the world, combined, and even some of our closest sympathizers on this board, believe that Obama, openly committed to increasing the size of the military and to "taking the fight to the enemy", (or they choose to overlook it....) is a "progressive solution" to the "Bush problem".

rb stop your introspection, sit down, pop some corn, watch our brethren bankrupt us, destroy what remains of the middle class, scratch their heads, call for a military solution to the collapse of the dollar, and then blame someone else for what happens next. You, me, and Cynthia Mckinney must "hate America".

....on edit, I just read the three posts that appeared here between the time I hit reply, and clicked "post". My reaction is, that words fail me....except to post that I feel like I've come from another planet, because I don't see how one can "take in", or completely ignore just the one issue of gargantuan US military spending, and still proceed to post what I see posted here, between the OP, and this....and do it so non-chalantly, almost as if "Wallace Hartley and the orchestra", were playing in the background....