I have a few friends who served in the military, and it never ceases to amaze me that almost all of them have a healthy disgust for authority. You'd think that being in the military would have the opposite effect, but not so. It's a pattern, though. People who work in government grow to hate government until they realize what they're doing is possibly evil and must be stopped.
I talk a lot about corporate greed, but it's not the only thing destroying America. The politicians are doing a good job of it, too, and they enable those corporate suckfish to boot. I forgot who said it. Maybe it was Daniel Ellsberg? But exposing government secrets is rarely about national security. It's almost always about showing ineptitude.
(Ellsberg died when I was on hiatus. I thought I'd write about him sooner, but things happen. Anyway, if you want to know more about him, you should read this. It's very good.)
Whistleblowers always get the shit end of the stick for doing something to help the American people. Look at what happened--and continues to happen--to Edward Snowden. They're publicly crucified for their heroic efforts at showing how the American government is fucking over its people. Whistleblowers are run to the ends of the earth, and if found they suddenly . . . disappear? Whoops. How could that have happened?
Ellsberg got off lucky because Nixon, who I previously mentioned as a political beast, took his own beastliness to the edge and beyond. Perhaps if he hadn't offered to make the judge in this case the head of the FBI, the hammer might have come down on Ellsberg. Instead the case got dismissed at the 11th hour.
Ellsberg revealed, via the Pentagon Papers, that the US had known, practically from the beginning, that the Vietnam War was not winnable. That they were sacrificing America's able-bodied sons for JACK FUCKING SHIT. They knew the war would end in America's defeat, and they still committed thousands of lives to the meatgrinder for no good reason at all.
You'd think that would have ended US involvement, but no. That was in 1971. The war ended in 1975. Just think of how many young men's lives could have been saved if the American people had taken him seriously at the time. Both on our side and theirs. Instead Nixon tried to ruin Ellsberg's life, and it was one of the many things that lead up to the president's resignation. He gave his all to fuck Ellsberg over. It was so bad that Nixon was considered the most corrupt politician we've ever had until Trump.
(You could argue that Clinton unseated Nixon as champion, but no one really gave a shit about that blowjob. No one. Even his bitterest of enemies will admit that deep down, they really didn't care about it. Same for Dubya and the war. While he may have done some shitty things, they were all shitty things that he got away with. Suspicion of corruption does not equal corruption. It's a pretty good barometer, though, if you ask me, but it's legally not the same.)
Vietnam was an open festering wound on the American soul for the early half of my life. It could have all been avoided if one president thought maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't be doing this. But it should have ended when Ellsberg handed over the Pentagon Papers to the NYT. Full stop.
It's a goddam shame that whistleblowers always get fucked by the people they're trying to save. Not all of them get to die a hero, like Ellsberg. How do you think Snowden's obituary is going to go?
It's kind of fucked up that the best heroes America has to offer are whistleblowers taking on government corruption at the highest levels, but here we are. And I can't help but notice it's been a while since Snowden. I can't think of someone else continuing his good work.
I hope it's not the end of an era. If so, we're all pretty fucked.
Pretty fucked, indeed.
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