Off the keyboard, camera and microphone of RE

Published on the Doomstead Diner on July 10, 2014

Discuss this article at the Podcast Table inside the Diner

A few weeks ago right after I got the new Electric Wheelz, I took them on their first major Test Drive in the Colony Days Parade held every year in Palmer. Along with the July 4th Parade in Wasilla and the Alaska State Fair Parade when it opens in August, these are the 3 main Parades held in the Mat-Su Valley during the Summer.

Parades are a traditional Celebration of Victory of one sort or another, beginning of course with Military Victories, but extending to Sports Victories too of course, every time the Mets or Yankees win a World Series, they of course get a Ticker Tape parade down Wall Street, despite the fact nobody uses stock tickers anymore with paper tape output, the Piglets view all the latest HFT Data on their Bloomberg Terminals these days.

What Parades here in the FSoA have evolved into is mostly a Celebration of the Consumer Culture, and every local bizness gets a Float to advertize their biz as they march down the parade route, passing out Candy to all the kiddies long the route. Along with the Biz Floats though, there always are Political Floats for various Candidates for local political office, Boy Scout Troops, and invariably also a group from the local VFW with a Support Our Troops float.

In this parade, our Biz happened to be marching directly behind such a VFW SOT group, who while they didn’t have a float, did sport a dude in a Polar Bear costume, a Disabled Vet of probably the Vietnam War era, and an Amplified Music System playing non-stop “Patriotic” Music. Cruising behind them, I got a couple of Vids with the “Scooter Cam”.

The tune on the Loop which got to me the most was a Toby Keith “country music” type song I had never heard before, “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue”. The lyrics are an unabashed glorification of militarism, a complete propaganda piece selling the idea that we send out our soldiers only after being attacked for our “Freedoms” (cough, spit, PUKE), but man if you do attack us, we will light you up like Vietnam on a Summer’s Day in 1969.

Now this nation that I love
Has fallen under attack
A sucker punch came flyin’
From somewhere in the back
As soon as we could see clearly
Through our big black eye
Man we lit up your world
Like the fourth of July.

And Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list
And the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist
And the Eagle will fly, and it’s gonna to be hell
When you hear Mother Freedom start ringing her bell
And it’ll feel like the whole wide world’s raining down on you.
Brought to you courtesy of the red, white, and blue.

Here’s the Full Official Music Video of this tune, for those of you who like me may have never heard it before:

Gotta love the Cheering Soldiers and Patriots attending Toby’s concerts here, shaking their fists at all the appropriate moments.

This sort of War Propaganda Patriotic Music has a long history, you could go at least as far back as the Battle Hymn of the Republic to get a stomach full of this shit.

My particular favorite in this genre is Johnny Horton, who died pretty young back in 1960 but had huge popularity with his Amerikana Songs, Sink the Bismark being one of my favorites of this type.

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What you will find if you go over and view this on You Tube is that the Ads that come at the beginning are all basically RECRUITMENT ads for joining the Military. These songs get those Patriotic Juices Flowing, be a HERO, defend our FREEDOMS! A complete crock of shit of course, none of these wars were ever about fighting for Freedom, all were about fighting for control over global resources.

What the Face of War really looks like is none so glorious as any of this propaganda makes it out to be. These days though, besides the stuff you can pull down from Social Media sites and the Iphones of various locals being Bombed Back to the Stone Age by our Glorious War Machine, you don’t see any of the gruesome outcomes of war, unless it is our Propaganda machine trying to demonize the other side by showing the outcome of the latest “Terrorist” bombing. Who’s the bigger terrorist here, the guy with a few sticks of Dynamite strapped to his chest, or the Drone Pilot delivering Death From Above with Cruise Missiles with explosive power in the kiloton range, and that is just the non-nuke stuff!

When we saw the horror during the Vietnam War era, it helped mobilize an anti-war movement, so nowadays you don’t get to see such things anymore. That was the Past. Now we do “Surgical” strikes with little collateral damage. More total bullshit of course. It STILL looks like this!

You don’t think so? Here’s a pic from a few days ago of an Israeli Air Strike on the Gaza Strip:

War is not about Freedom for anybody, EVER. War is always about CONTROL, not Freedom. If you are on the “winning” side in a War, whatever freedom YOU got out of it came at the expense of Freedom LOST by some dead guy on the other side.

The whole pathetic nonsense of this kind of War Glorification inspired a Rant I recorded right after the Colony Days Parade, but it has been in the cooler for a while here as a whole lot of other stuff has been going on, and I haven’t had time to put together all the vids and so forth to work up an article until now.

Snippet:

…Our Biz was marching right behind a Support Our Soldier Group playing non-stop Johnny Horton type Freedom and Democracy songs, and not only that sporting a WWII era Veteran in a Wheelchair as well. Still not sure how parading the maimed victims of War works to help perpetuate it, but in just about every parade of any type, even a parade celebrating a Mets Victory in the World Series you get your Veterans marching, or being wheeled in display along the parade route.

How long will these Parades continue onward here, celebrating Victories that are in truth DEFEATS? Over in Iraq, the great Victory of Desert Storm 1 & 2 has devolved into further Civil War there, nothing was won other than to keep Oil flowing out of Iraq a few years longer, so Happy Motoring could continue on here. How long will it take the parade marchers and parade spectators to actually see the TRUTH, that Industrial Civilization is collapsing right before their very eyes?…

For the rest, LISTEN TO THE RANT!

WAKE UP AMERIKA! DON’T BUY THIS PROPAGANDA ANYMORE! DO NOT ENLIST, DO NOT ACCEPT CONSCRIPTION.

This message coming to you

COURTESY OF THE DOOMSTEAD DINER

So do your duty, boys, and join with pride
Serve your country in her suicide
Find the flags, so you can wave goodbye
But just before the end even treason might be worth a try
This country is too young to die

HEROES OF THE REVOLUTION EDWARD SNOWDEN. AARON SWARTZ, JULIAN ASSANGE

8 Comments

overthecliff

July 10, 2014 8:37 am

War sucks. There are no winners . I agree. However, there are people out there who will force their will on you. You must resist them whether on an individual level or a national scale. We may not win victory but we must prevail. The choice we must make is whether subjugation to an evil man is better than the brutality of war. It is simple but not easy. War is about who is going to impose their will on whom.

old guy

not to forget country joe and the fish “I feel like I’m fixin to die rag”, always liked that song.

Tommy

July 10, 2014 9:42 am

I’d be cool with war if the old fuckers in congress who felt so strongly about going to war, would lead the charge knowing they’d be the first to get it. Nope, please send your children and grandchildren for the effort – cowardly old fucks are the problem on both sides. Not old people, just old cowardly fucks – and yes there sure as hell is a difference.

John & Yvonne

July 10, 2014 10:42 am

Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses

Fucking war pigs

GilbertS

July 10, 2014 11:15 am

I hate that Toby Keith song. I always felt like he was just cashing in what that and the rest of his 911 crap came out. Hannedy loves running that song on his show.

Marc

July 10, 2014 4:10 pm

Washington rode at the head of an army to suppress The Whisky Rebellion. No other president has led military forces in any way , shape, or form except through directives from a plush office or, in more recent years, a comfortably padded golf cart seat. If the practice was made mandatory, an excellent idea, I’m sure that future wars would be quickly prohibited forever.

Sink The Bismark was indeed a catchy ballad. Few at the time the song was released realized, however, that the crippled helpless ship was repeatedly blasted at close range after clearly surrendering and that most of the crew was left to die.