Feb 24

Written by:
2/24/2010 8:19 AM 

As 2010, two-oh, one-oh, rhymes with Apolo Ohno, gropes its way onward my gut revolts. The feeling is somewhat like one gets from television when some inane clip is repeated like a dripping faucet. But the images and words that have me this morning were not on television and were not inane. Nor were they strictly repetitious, as the details were new. I had thought I could read carefully for ever, but my gut revolts. I know that hundreds upon thousands upon hundreds of people are being killed and worse because of high muckety muck planning. I know that children are being thrust into hell not youth. I know that veterans are being discarded like used cars. I know that we are being lied to as a matter of course. I have needed to read the daily versions of these, these, demonic churnings because I was writing a weekly column and could tell myself I was doing my part in protest. And yes, I read before as well, but that was before the full force of the enormity of evil hit me. I would jokingly refer to the unfolding as peeling an onion. And this was true. It took me a year to realize that the big lie had permeated America like tendrils of fungus, and that we the public were willing stewards. I became more discriminating, had to, because of other things that had to be done. Well, menwomen, the desire to read followed by the need to read is now the fear to read. I am sick of heart and sour of gut.

It’s perhaps one result of this depression that little things irk so, like Britain’s Gordon Brown refusal to admit a Palestinian olive farmer to a conference on fair trade. So mean, so unnecessary, so revealing. Something far worse was delivered last evening by an android news anchor for the military: the Trident submarines now have room for women. I’m still rolling that around to find a grip but already can tell you that it appears to be a diabolical move to drive us to permanent insanity.

Now here’s the point. I could handle the news and worse if only this island would take a good long look ahead. Roger, bless his heart, is still poking at windmills. Bill is impatiently seeking dragons to kill. The Spirit of K-2 is still trying to make money, to hell with something useful. The boosters of Vashon Pirates still don’t believe in skate parks and soccer. The coming mid-terms afford an opportunity to get rid of the war goddess of Easter Island, but electoral process, so worthwhile, can also detour Vashon Island from the only course we have half a chance to control and that we need more than anything else, resilient self-sufficiency.