Memorial Day and a dissolving social sphere

So I have been settling into this new apartment. It's a cool spot to be at, and everyone likes the front porch's lofty perch above Selby Avenue. However, the relaxation of summer has been disrupted by the departures of so many of my best friends from school... Peter, Tim and Chris took off over the last couple days, and it really stings to realize I won't see those guys for a long time.

On the plus side Adam Gerber and Arthur Cheng are back in town for a while... And of course there are still plenty of people around town until at least the end of the summer.

With the ridiculous charges against me still to be resolved (obstruction of legal process with force), it adds some little bit of tension to my whole situation. I have to call into my Conditional Release officer every week, or else face Something Bad Happening. Until the charges go away, getting nailed any little thing, probably even jaywalking, could send me right back to jail. That's a horrible feeling, but at least it adds... zest, I guess.

And hey, I've got a new computer now, a fine graduation gift. A G5 tower with dual processors @ 2.4 GHz should keep me occupied for quite a while. You wouldn't believe how many friggin browser windows I can have open. Top Notch.

Ok ok... so I suppose everyone would like some interesting stuff to look at. I have been piling up the links for a few days, so I think these chunks of info will have to go into a few posts.

Memorial Day: It started oddly, as I finished packing my stuff from the house at 1834 Grand Avenue, as plumes of carpet fibers and decades of dust mite feces plumed around me. My former landlord Scott, in his infinite wisdom, decided that the fetid, ancient carpets of the living room and bedrooms needed to be ripped out Right Away. I couldn't pack my stuff with all the dust, as he chopped them up with a razor blade. I left for about 45 minutes and when I returned, he had shut and locked all the windows, locking in all the trillions of particles of dust and shit. Looking back, I'm pretty sure that those old carpets (pre-1995, I learned) were responsible in part for my sniffles and nasty coughs over the last 24 months.

And I spent a while in the final embrace of Cable, sweet sweet cable. I packed all night long in the dust, and as the sun on Memorial Day rose, I watched the patriotic programming fire up. Very early, Saint Paul Network News carried a Democracy Now! special feature on "Preventive Warriors," which was really pretty damn good. Then they played ironic music to footage of American bombers cruising over Southeast Asia. The program ended with "THE EXCEPTION TO THE RULERS" on the credits, and SPNN clicked back on to bombastic music over the usual slideshow. (speaking of DN, here's a fun bit with Seymour Hersh about Israeli agents in Iran Iraq and Syria)

A few hours later the plug was pulled for good. Brit Hume is a fading memory.

So then, what about the nameless soldiers, the ones who get wiped out by an IED or friendly fire or disease or the heat or a suicide or a RPG or a helicopter crash. State Rep. Becky Lourey's son met his end only a few days ago. The war touches lots of people, it takes them away. That is the essential moral framework of the issue. The Hiawatha light rail cruises past the National Cemetery before it reaches the Mall of America. How excellent that people should be reminded of the many who left this world in the name of serving the calling for their nation, before they enter that edifice of materialism and sheer idolatry.

I curse the anti-war folks for somehow not making the connection with the rest of the country, to help them understand that we value the people of our military the most highly when we protect them from having to go to these places, before we force them to make terrible decisions and compromise their morals. To respect their sacrifice is to reduce the amount of sacrificing that the leaders deem necessary.

The argument of our time is that "he/she did what they had to do," be they the insurgent, the soldier, the settler, the terrorist, the drug smuggler, the lobbyist, the PR flack, the factory laborer. Politics and ethics these days are situational — there is no good platform to stand on anymore. To protect and respect our soldiers, we should have kept them out of the Casbah in Ramadi and Fallujah, the teeming slums that we couldn't begin to really understand. We should never have put these young folks in the irrational position of having to decide these matters of life and death, always without the adequate information, guidance and leadership from the top needed to make sane decisions.

I've met quite a few people in the active service, the reserves, veterans and the recently discharged. They're of all sorts, came in misfits and down on their luck, looking for some sort of money and some sort of structure. They got worldly whether they wanted to or not. Haiti, Somalia, parachute missions into North Korea, the base complexes of Europe. Cogs in a vast machine, leveraging its power over the whole world.

As an atheist, the tragedies that pile up, one after another, becoming all the more bitter as I realize that their souls don't get some kind of automatic nice ride to somewhere sweet — isn't that a common thread binding the true Islamic fundamentalists and their monotheistic brethren?

I want to toast those many fallen Americans and their counterparts in the living world. They are trying to do what they have to do with some kind of morality, and some kind of a goal in mind, even if it is bitterly impossible to reach. I wish their top leadership wasn't totally crazy, and I wish that they hadn't gotten snagged in Iraq, fighting ghosts. We should redouble our efforts to get them out of this mess, and rip the lunatics away from the ability to give these folks orders.