DELVING BETWEEN THE TOES OF LIFE....I AM TOEJAM

2003-01-13 - 5:46 p.m.

“We are talking about two different things,” Yossarian answered with exaggerated weariness. “You are talking about the relationship of the Air Corps to the infantry, and I am talking about the relationship of me and Colonel Cathcart. You are talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive.”

“Exactly,” Clevinger snapped smugly, “And which do you think is more important?”

“To whom?” Yossarian shot back. “Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.”

Clevinger sat for a moment as though he’d been slapped. “Congratulations!” he exclaimed bitterly, the thinnest milk-white line enclosing his lips tightly in a bloodless, squeezing ring. “I can’t think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy.”

“The enemy,” retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, “is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don’t you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.”

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

(really, when I was composing this entry in my head it was much better and WAY more organized...)

This morning on the radio I heard an announcement for a bus trip to DC this weekend for an anti-war rally. At first I kind of sat up in my seat, thought, “You know, you should go to that, you should really, really take a stand on this Whisper because you really, really believe strongly that there should be no war and no one is going to hear that plea if you just sit here on these idle village streets and do nothing.” But then I really got to thinking about it and realized...what good would my attending a rally do? Sure, I would add another body to make a statement, I would add to the numbers, but I believe that even if every single person in the U.S. went to this rally GI George would carry out his intended plans to destroy part of his “Axis of Evil”. So I got to thinking...okay, so if a rally, if just the mere action of standing against war won’t do anything, what will?

I came to the conclusion that we all need to stop paying taxes. Without money how could he fund his war games? Right? And then I started thinking....well, if we stopped paying taxes, those of us who are anti-war, if we all just quit our jobs and found freelance stuff to do so we wouldn’t have an income to report and pay taxes on, if we all joined forces and started walking to work so we didn’t have to buy gas, what would that do to the economy? And then it hit me...absolutely NOT ONE of the material luxuries I enjoy by living in a country with an economy (that I was so worried about) as “rich” as ours is worth a human life, not even one human life. Economy be damned. I will live in a paper box and eat grubs if I have to, if that is what it takes to make sure that no more innocent lives are taken.

I believe Bushy baby is my enemy now, because he is setting my country up to be something I do not believe in, he is setting us up for more danger, more fear, he is taking away from me the non-material luxuries that I enjoyed by living in this country so why should I bother supporting this country any more by paying taxes? What it boils down to is that no one seems to have a focus on what really matters anymore. LIFE is what matters, not gas lines, not vindicating a horrendous occurrence in our history by killing even more people in the name of justice. If we had been less focused on those luxuries we are afforded by living in this rich country, none of this would have happened anyway. If people hadn’t been so bent on getting richer, getting more stuff, driving gas guzzling cars, if people had just LIVED their lives instead of becoming greedy bastard money grubbers, WE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN BUTTING OUR NOSES INTO OTHER COUNTRY’S AFFAIRS AND SETTING OURSELVES UP AS POWER HUNGRY SONS OF BITCHES WHO THE WHOLE WORLD HATES.

This is my life... I work as much as I need to in order to feed myself and the other beings I have taken responsibility for. I don’t care if I am ever rich and the only reason I would WANT to be rich anyway is so I could NOT work so I could focus ON LIFE BECAUSE THAT’S THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS. I am an honest person, I don’t do bad or mean things intentionally. I take care of what I have, I don’t bother other people or butt into their lives unless I am asked to. And I am happy. I am alive. I don’t want to live a life in which I am in constant fear that a bomb is going to be dropped on my country. I don’t want to live a life in which I have to watch the mockery people in other countries make of my country. I don’t want to be hated merely because I am an American. I don’t want to live in a country who seems to be play acting something from a comic book. I don’t want to live in a country where I have to pay, unwillingly, for a war I don’t believe in. I understand that at this point in time we are in grave danger of more terrorist attacks, in grave danger of something really really horrific happening...I don’t like the idea of Iraq having the power to blow us up...but blowing them up, again...causing them more devastation, IS NOT GOING TO MAKE THINGS BETTER. I understand that there have been wars, like WW2, when some crazy, mind controlling person somehow managed to brain wash too many people into believing something totally ludicrous and unfounded and killed millions of innocent people based on their religion...okay, I probably would have gone to fight myself in that war....but there are times, like this, when we need to take a step back and say, “Enough is enough, there will be no more bloodshed.” It isn’t going to end until someone says that, until someone just takes a hit and let’s it be. It’s just going to keep going and going until everyone is destroyed. That’s what scares me. The prospect of this war scares me, but the prospect of what comes after this war scares me even more.

I don’t know a lot about the intricacies of this whole Iraq thing, and I don’t care. I don’t care if you tell me there is nothing else we can do at this time except destroy Iraq, I don’t care if you explain to me that North Korea bailed on part of its agreement with us first and that’s why we didn’t supply the aid we had promised...I don’t care about any of that, all I care about is that these god damn men stop being so god damn VIOLENT and so god damn STUPID. WHY CAN’T WE JUST LIVE IN PEACE? I swear (and yes, yes I KNOW there are women out there that have committed terrorists acts but if you really look at it I can almost guarantee that these women had a justified REASON for killing and were probably backed into a corner with no other option) that men should be eradicated from the government for at least 25 years. If there has ever been a time when I wanted actually get involved in politics, it is now. I wish every single female on this planet would overtake our god damn barbarian government and just let THERE BE SOME PEACE FOR ONCE. Jesus.