Monday, July 23, 2012

Love of Country Seldom Requited

A Brass Pole in Bangkok cover

I’m trying to understand love of country. It’s hard hoeing. Maybe some things just ain’t understandable. Or maybe it’s ‘cause I’m from West Virginia and don’t have shoes, ‘cause they ain’t any that fits people with twelve toes. How are you supposed to love a country where you can't get shoes?

I’m not even sure there’s any such thing as a country. Mostly my country seems to be a bunch of brigands in Washington who send you tax forms to get money so they can kill people in some place that never did anything to you and you probably don’t know where is. When did I ask them to do that?

It looks to me like a country is just a temporary mood ginned up to get everybody hooting and hollering behind the grenade industry with other people’s money. People just naturally like to get together in packs and kill each other, or beat each other full of concussions like in football, or have gangs and zip guns and ball bats and smack hell out of each other. A country’s just a teenage gang with older teenagers and better zip guns, I reckon. All you got to do is get them riled up about something that probably don’t exist. You send the dumb ones to get killed and the smart ones cash the checks at home. That’s what a country is.

Think about it. Isn’t it true? When the gummint wants to go kill folks we mostly never heard of, in Halfghanistan or Eye Rack this week anyway, it acts like the country is one solid thing, a big happy family, and has to think the same things. If the gummint hates Halfghans, or wants their oil or something, we all got to hate them because we ought to love our country. It makes as much sense as lug nuts on a birthday cake.

More @ Fred On Everything

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