Monday, November 20, 2006

Lafayette: The New Berkeley

I'm not sure if you've all seen this hillside next to the Lafayette BART station, but I've seen it since it was first erected. The monuments stand on private ground, and are in clear view of the Highway 24.


My favorite part of the story describes how someone knocked down the sign. I'm willing to bet that this person probably drove some kind of SUV, and had one of the fashionable "Support the Troops" sticker on the bumper, and maybe...just maybe...a Calvin prayer sticker in the window.

I wonder what motivated that person? What was so upsetting to that person? Was it the fact that the number on the sign indicates that the number of Americans dead as a result of the Iraq War [...Conflict....what are we calling it now...Crusade?] now out-numbers the loss of lives from the Sept 11 attacks? Was it because the simply ugly fact that we have dead soldiers as a result of an unpopular war, thrust upon the world from a cowboy administration? Was it just upsetting to be so fired up about kicking Taliban, Iraqi insurgent, or otherwise terrorist a$$es, and to have the minor detail of dead Americans expressed through this display be so unpalatable....or if I could borrow the accusatorial tone of a certain former U.S. Senator: un-American?

Is it un-American now to make a public statement that serves to simply quantify the loss of American life on foreign shores for murky or contentious reasons?

I leave that up to you, gentle reader.

But I will give you my response: no it's not un-American. It galls me that the GOP party had used its machinery to support goals that detract from the foundations of the great country. I'm not ashamed to be an American, but I'm ashamed of this current administration. For all the "San Francisco values" that the Democratic party has, I find it terribly ironic that the Republican party and its army of neo-conservative Faith-based zealots has in its ranks meth smoking and juicy gay-love pastors, and senators who IM congressional pages in hopes of scoring. Clinton might've lied about getting a BJ from Miss Lewinsky, but given the current state of affairs: which is a worse lie told to the American people: "I didn't do it with her", or "There are WMDs over there and a bad man in charge of them, and we need to send our boys and girls, and if necessary, to ask them to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to make this world a safer and more democratic place for all our children." What's worse? What would Kenneth Starr do? What would you rather spend your taxpayer dollars on: the investigation of an illegal BJ or lying to the American people, and the mis-appropriation of American funds and lives to support a war campaign to secure an American position in the Middle East ?

Gentle reader, please thrall me with your acumen.

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