I go He goes She goes
The bombs go off they go through the wild blue yonder
I go backwards.... He goes off to war She goes, too. That’s
what passes for progress nowadays.
The bombs... are smarter than the people who drop them. Not for the first time in history.
I go to the priests of our most holy wisdom:
“Remember Munich!” They tell us. “Don’t remember My Lai!” They don’t tell us, but that is what they mean. “Don’t remember American soldiers run amuck,
shooting women and children like clay pigeons at a county fair.” “Don’t remember the Winter Soldier Investigations: Over a hundred Vietnam Vets recounting similar horror-stories
while the media turned away so we could continue to believe it was just
one village
just
one incident
just
an abberation
not
the shape of the entire war.”
“Don’t remember Buddhist monks burning themselves alive” There was no
CNN
back then. There was no
color TV. There was no
special effects industry that could churn out firey bodies on an assembly line to dance wildly across our TV or movie screens in a carefully, exquisitely choreographed and scored dance of death for our commercial-free product placement entertainment brought to you by the makers of...forgetfulness.
There was nothing to make us dull and jaded and bored. There was just a grainy black-and-white photograph in the newspaper, perhaps.
Or in a magazine?
Did it get that far? I can scarely remember myself by now.
But, it was not a gaudy, lurid MTV-Rambo-Mel Gibson-studio-franchise picture.
It was still
spare
unyeilding. A body draped with flame,
as the body itself
draped the will within A specter of
ageless and eternal suffering
asking us:
what will you do about this?
what will you do, now that you have murdered me?
telling us:
the self
is illusion
the self
that burns here
is yours
and
what will you do, now?
now that you have murdered me?
“Don’t remember Buddhist monks burning themselves alive and Madame Ngu laughing, calling it a barbeque” “Don’t remember this all happened BEFORE the war--as WE remember it--even really began.” “Don’t remember this all happened AFTER we had betrayed the Vietnamese people for 18 years since the end of World War II.” “Don’t remember Lyndon Johnson, wanting to fight a War on Poverty--however inadequate--
and getting sucked into Vietnam instead...helpless, all-powerful, showing us his scar, grinning;
we could not see our own.”
“Don’t remember every reason given for that war turned out to be a lie.
Only the degree of transparency
differed from one to another.
Only the amount of time required
for the grainy details of deceit to develop,
crisp, clear details in darkroom developer tray
not suitable for printing on the front page
not suitable for printing anywhere really. Don’t remember them. Don’t remember there even were such pictures taken, such rolls of film, such cameras, such hands that held them, eyes that looked through viewfinders, hands on shutters, available light shed on scenes that gave the lie to everything.
(Not extra-terrestrials, but ourselves the aliens, the monsters, the parasites on our own most holy dreams... Don’t remember.”
“Don’t remember we’ve been trying for a quarter century now, just to get you to forget...”
He turns the channel to the Final Four.
Unlike Iraq, this is not the Superbowl. She turns
and goes off to war.
I go
and turn off the flood of light
that comes from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, PBS.... Light than cannot penetrate my memory of what they want me to forget.
He goes to war. She goes to war.
This is progress.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"