Being Safe

I have an antenna, being an insect.

That antenna senses sometimes, remembers sometimes, and blends the senses and the memories - sometimes.

One of those sometimes is my grade school days.

I went to Madeleine Grade School in Portland.

We went to mass a lot.

Father Dillon always ended those masses with a prayer for a "just and lasting peace".

The Soviets were the boogie man back then.

We had to get them to change or defeat them - or something - for that "just and lasting peace".

What happened was they fell apart.

We needed a new boogie man.

To keep America great and free and by-god-right-about-things.

We went a surprising number of years flailing for a new boogie man.

Iran worked for a while.

I realize that 1977 is before 1992, but our sensory antennae already knew that the Soviets were gone.

In 1977.

Reagan promised the Iranians something they couldn't refuse (I have no idea what) and we got our hostages back and Iran faded to transparent.

The eight Reagan years were a joy.

We couldn't find a new boogie man, so we just gloried in ourselves.

And America violated the Monroe Doctrine and supported England in our hemisphere and things went swimmingly.

And time, as is its wont, passed.

We got George W.

W for short.

There was no long.

And early on his watch some planes flew into some big buildings and killed a lot of Americans and "fear" and "safe" were the watch words of the day.

I sensed a stampede to - something - but something I wasn't going to like.

Then I began to hear tangibly what I wasn't going to like.

We were all supposed to be safe.

Voila!

A new boogie man.

I don't think John Wayne ever signed up for America being a herd of sheep whose sole criterion of success was being safe.

How fucking sad.

Also, I can go on for hours about how our supposedly fellow citizens think that queueing for a pumpkin from a patch in Woodcliff Lakes is a rational thing to do.

But I won't do that right now.

But we are in real, real trouble.