wars are hell

(Originally posted 1/26/2013. Just horrible.)

The War on the Impoverished: I see those big barriers that divide noisy highways from nice neighborhoods and I can’t help but think to myself that we need to put those up between nice neighborhoods and decaying urban areas. I’m not talking about those hip little city blocks that have Starbucks on them and everyone sits out on their stoop and walks their dogs and picks up after them when they take a crap. I mean those areas where the residents don’t know how to use a rake or a garbage can. I’m talking of course about poor people.

Since President Lyndon B. Johnson created the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program the US has spent nearly $9 trillion on ending poverty. That’s $9,000,000,000,000. Do you have any idea how many barriers that could have bought us? Hell, we could have just shipped all the poor people to New York City and then made it like Escape From New York where we have troops stationed all around it to make sure all the poor people stay inside. The roads could be mined so nobody could sneak over and apply for a job and the harbors could be patrolled from the air to prevent people from swimming across to our side to take night classes at some community college.

I don’t want to seem cold-hearted but the poor are just so completely hopeless and most of them are unpleasant to look at. I resent them making me feel guilty every time I decide to drop a few bills on liposuction for my pet tiger. Whatever happened to Darwinism? Weren’t poor people supposed to become extinct or something? If you look around in nature you don’t see a lot of animals letting other animals freeload off them or ruin their school’s test scores or rob their liquor stores do you?

I’m all for a war on poverty. I think we can take ’em.

The War on Drugs: The problem as I see it comes from the fact that people are always pointing to Amsterdam as an example of a country where drugs are legal and things are ok. They say that if drugs were legalized in the US that the same thing would happen here and I agree to a limited degree. That’s what would happen in Idaho and Nebraska. On the other hand both coasts would immediately go on a 3 year bender. I have that image of the sailor kissing the girl in the famous Alfred Eisenstaedt picture taken on V-J Day in Times Square after the war with Japan came to an end… except the guy is on a combination of meth and ecstasy and he doesn’t stop at kissing and he’s doing it to everyone. And ‘that guy’ is actually every guy in Times Square. And in New York. State.

Look at the mess we get ourselves in when we have to try and hide our various appetites. If you ask a shrink they will say that we all have repressed desires and we’d better try and keep it like that. If too many of us unrepressed at the same time there would be long lines around the adult book stores, the supermarket snack isles would be barren and you couldn’t score a pair of tickets to see the Pink Floyd laser show at the planetarium at gunpoint.

I do agree that it sucks that we have to pay all those annoying Central American countries to grow and/or make our drugs for us but if we take that away from them then there will be nothing stopping their populations from exploding. Right now I think drug lords kill about 30% of their own population every year so in a way it all works out.

Although post-prohibition alcohol consumption argues against it, I do wonder if having any drug you want on hand at the 7-11 might take away just a little of the appeal of them. Of course the point would be moot because the 7-11 would be getting robbed 24-7.

The War on War: Whatever happened to war? You know, like we read about in the textbooks. A man’s war where you declare it and then just unload on the opponent. When did the pussies take over? Now we can never unload on anyone and we’re never at war with a country, we’re just in a disagreement with their leader. In the good ol’ days we hated the Japs or Wops or the Krouts. Hated them! Called them horrible names and before every movie at the local cinema there was a little clip showing their cities devastated and smoldering away with bodies strewn everywhere and everyone at the movies cheered.

Now… I can’t even bring myself to think about it. What would our ancestors say? Now we bomb a town and before the smoke even clears we’re back and rebuilding everything on our dime while our leaders offer their deep sympathies to whomever will listen! We can never get a war boner anymore.

Doesn’t it stand to reason that if a country is ruled by a leader then that leader is a reflection of the population? If that’s not the case then it is the responsibility of that population to get their shit straight before that leader does something stupid like piss off the US. Am I wrong? I just want to root for us against them. Can you imagine a football game where after every touchdown the team that scores has to apologize to their opponent and give them 4 of the 7 points?

I guess you could make the case that we brought it on ourselves because before the US got involved in wars both sides use to just get everyone to line up about ten feet from each other and fire away until one side ran out of soldiers. We had to go and pioneer the idea that maybe we’ll be harder to hit if we fire from the trees. Next thing you know our enemies are firing from schools and hospitals and we’re sitting there with both hands tied behind our backs.

I want to go to war with another big country and just have at it. Missiles and explosions and tanks and we know who the bad guys are and we celebrate when we bomb the living shit out of them. All of them. Just one more big throwdown in my lifetime.

“One of our stray missiles hit a school bus filled with disabled seniors? Hooray!”