Veteran's Day Rant

I didn’t register with the Selective Service System back in 1983 when I turned 18. Then I wrote letters to the Selective Service System and others, explaining that in the age of nuclear weapons the whole idea of war was dumber that before. I felt and still feel that if you have a weapon, you are more likely to use it. I didn’t want to be a governmental/military weapon used to “protect our global interests”(this asshole is nuts) Back then, I just thought that worlds politics were just so screwed up and irrational that just by not participating I was helping out in a small way. I still feel pretty good about that decision.

Now it seems more than ever, everyone is chest-thumping about vets serving the country. I think service to the country is great, but reading the history of the US military interventions in other countries ever since the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, when The War to End All Wars ceased doesn’t really give me cause to join up. And as we see more and more military resources used to infringe on our rights it may even be counterproductive to protecting our freedoms. “If you love freedom thank a vet” certainly won’t be true if we have private first class John Doe throwing people who disagree with politicians and their sycophants in jail with no writ of habeas corpus.

I now realize, or have sold out to idea that the military isn’t going away. Not here, not anywhere. But we have a slight advantage over the dictators of the world by having civilian control of the military. We need to get rational civilians back in control of the military, we need to keep the military severely non-political, and we need to support other forms of service to this country that in the long run may actually be of greater good for us all. END

I gots to go chop wood to reduce my dependence on hydrocarbons and free up the military.
Here in the valley, it will be nice and cold soon and the damned lutz spruce will split easier. Now I hack and hack at it with the maul intil it gives. Small victories!

Oh yea, both the damn kittens died. Jib and Genoa, gone. This kitten ranching thing sucks.