Friday, January 07, 2005

Teach Your Children Well

Their parents' hell will slowly go by...



Or not. The madness. That the adult human beings of my generation are allowing the government to lie to their children leaves me nearly speechless. (Okay. I'm rarely speechless.) That each and every one of my cohort generation has not already schooled their children in the idiocy of enlisting in the military leaves me crying out to the bartender for another double vodka. But yet, here it is. Yet again fresh from the New York Times, no less... Leave No Sales Pitch Behind (Use this if you need to from BugMeNot: login: nty42322; password: nty42322)
"Hard-pressed recruiters have stepped up the sales pitch to meet wartime manpower shortages. One sergeant filmed by the NewsHour on PBS recently sounded like a salesman from David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross as he exhorted a campus group: "I mean, where else can you get paid to jump out of airplanes, shoot cool guns, blow stuff up and travel, seeing all kinds of different countries?""

Whoopie! Your children can be the government fodder in their own personal Oval Office action video! The ShrubCo cabal has managed to push its way, via the lying piece of shit No Child Left Behind Act... mother of the Cosmos help us!!!! ... is there no irony left in the world?... into schools for the purposes of recruiting YOUR children. YOURS. But take heart. They can get a spiffy uniform, learn to shoot (not a bad thing), learn to hate and kill the enemy, and anybody else close by, and get nearly unredeemable money for college. Yes, Mom and Dad, your babies. You too can have a star hanging from your front room window.

I feel like we're under the insane influence of some runamok Wayback Machine. Where is Mr. Peabody when you need him? This is 2005, isn't it? It's not 1965, right? I do know better, because my own sister sold both her sons out to UnclefuckingSam in the late 80s and 90s, 'cos she didn't want to bother with them, or in her abject denial thought it would be "good" for them. Another story, another sideways rant.

So, do you want your high schoolers proselytized and promoted by the military hucksters? No? Would you rather have them grow up without PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) for the rest of their lives? Or do you think your lovelies will never see combat? You might want to rethink that based on what's happening with the "Natural", I mean National Guard and reserve troops... You want the apple of your eye to pull a two-year stint in Iraq?

Mom and Dad. I'm giving you the advice that Nancy Reagan gave. Just say no! says Hulkette in a roar, her normal tone of voice.

And for Sir Richard: We are so screwed!
Updating and editing as the spirit moves me.
For example: I've just removed the extra "o"s from "soooo" to conform with the requirements of the Google bomb. ;-)