My social life is not what it used to be, so let me put this as a question: Is America, as President Bush and his apologists keep telling us, really at war?
The last time I was in a room with a group of suburban, mostly professional people, nobody was talking about Iraq or Washington, for that matter.
Last week’s Congressional disgrace was in the news, but did constituents care? Were their “public servants” hearing from them? If they were, could so many Republicans in “the people’s House” have kept parroting their absurd party line?
During Vietnam, there were massive protests, campus riots and people setting themselves on fire in front of the Pentagon: body rhetoric. Now those who care are venting on the web: words.
Vietnam, fought by draftees, was touching almost every family. Iraq, for most Americans, is being waged by some anonymous, volunteer “them.” Yet the blood is just as real.
Nobody would want that public turmoil again but, particularly on a day when we commemorate our patriotic past, the silence is eerie.
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