RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,086
(rabid incendiaries, I liked to say)
I never cared about Vietnam,
even when it was hot. No one
had ever been able to coherently
explain to me what in the world
was going on; history teachers,
civics guys, Mr. Brown, Mr.
Konick, and Mr. Gabriel either.
These were the guys who ran
things - the sorts of thing that
hang over a kid in senior year
high school and all that. They
held the hammer; we had nothing,
except for the fake kids who
played that whole game along
with them as if it mattered: The
essay kids who'd enter the Elks
contests for some 600 dollar
piece of crap scholarship for
the best paper about 'What It
Means To Me To Be An
American.' They'd fall for
all that and resound with their
stupid speech about Freedom
and Liberty, meanwhile never
knowing anything about it, no
more than a breast in a brassiere
knows about freedom anyway.
All the while the suckers had
their versions of 'Vietnam'
willingly staring them in their
faces, and that of their friends
too. It was tough being a boy
in June of 1967. Like being a
deer in the height of hunting
season - you kind'a knew
you'd probably end up on
somebody's wall.
-
Not for me, any of that palaver.
I was already staying low and
running under the radar, and by
the time I got out of that Woodbridge
hell-hole I made a straight run for
the border. 'Evading' the Draft was
evidently a no-no, but evading the
truth could get you a medal, or
death; true to home, patriotic,
and final. And what's any of that
worth? All the preparation in the
world - school, theory, logic,
rhetoric, mathematics, and law,
had never prepared anyone for
being lied to, used, squandered,
and left to die. It was all bullshit
anyway. No one was ever even
able to pronounce, let alone
explain, Dienbienphu and the
French, back in 1954, and how
the whole mucky-mess started
and long before the USA popped
in. Ho Chi Minh, Diem, Colonel
Ky, Cambodia, Laos, China and
the rest - a huge batch of horse
shit to die for so Monsanto and
the rest could make millions
producing poison and napalm
and death, and the rest of the
USA industry world could grow
fat from the profits they garnered
from explosives, bombs, guns,
ammo, tanks, transports, planes,
fighter jets, coffins, transport,
military clothing and effects, food
and provision, pornography for
the soldiers, cigarettes, defoliants,
Nature destroying incendiaries
and blasted flame-throwers that
decimated forest, jungle, animal
life and hum life too, which was
somehow there judged to be worth
less than animal life if it were yellow,
slant-eyed, traitorous to the cause,
sneaky, armed, and rural. Their
world ended completely, if not
forever, with their own deaths, then
at least for 40 years, as their lands
and waters and fields recovered.
To envision myself in the midst of
any of that was a betrayal of every
principle and belief I'd ever held,
and - to tell the truth - went
against every and any thing those
smug school-bastards had been
supposedly teaching me, or
trying to instill anyhow.
-
Death as a romanticized loss
for cause; death as a romanticized,
patriotic maiden dressed in the garb
of Miss Liberty, who, at the same
time, in every monthly issue of
the military-issue Playboy and
cigarettes re-supply was probably
provocatively posed and bare-breasted
on page 76 for every Corporal Wank
and PFC Onan to drool over between
forays back out into the delirious
ricefields of those maniacal, killer
gooks. Someone ought to have
explained this entire halter-top
of 1960's doom, death, and
destruction, to me; clearly,
succintly, and loud. It had
become a cause with a life of
its own, and those convinced of
of it became venomous, and
vehement, in their violent (lots
of V's; we like' em) reactions to
any opposition. Not so far distant
from the same sorts of degeneracy
that have spread deeply within
today's 'Democracy' - which
was supposedly 'saved' by the
loss experienced in Vietnam.
58,000's later. But we got a
bunch of good memorials out
of it - until the cause turns
against them too - mark my
words - and they are destroyed
as well. It's not far off. Heck,
nothing's far off!
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