Pogo and the Visigoths

Difficult to say nothing, indeed, saying nothing spells cowardice the other side of the Bully coin and as guilty. LAX shooter, shopping mall shooters, bombers, bullies, suicide bombers at Iranian embassy in Beirut kill at least 23, shooters at schools, Richie Incognito bullied as a boy, now obscenely, perversely a contemptible racist bully himself. LaPierre and his goons in the national Capitol. Taliban and al Qaeda self-righteous bullies and center evil of the universe, breaking into a hospital in Syria, dragging out a wounded soldier, decapitating him and gleefully dancing about with his head, only to find out he was one of their own soldiers being treated in hospital. IRS. Assad in Syria, all who support Assad, all who oppose Assad, Assad himself. Netanyahu for U.S. Secretary of State? NSA. Everyone with power over others, God help us even kindly National Park Service rangers during The Shutdown showing bully colors vice gentle heroes in sheeps clothing.

LAX shooter not unlikely had a grudge against TSA, if not personal then for their publicized arrogance bullying children, crippled, elderly, tormenting people at their mercy in the name of rules and regulations. Whoever favors bullies and cowards getting their just desserts on the scaffold or from the barrel of a gun struggles to sympathize.

Our bent as a bully society is to punish: punish the symptom but ignore the cause lest rights of the fringe be infringed, or we be compelled to admit error - impossible for a nation so self-righteous that narcissism is being taken off the cuckoo list, we are that legion. Shooters get tried, terrorists assassinated and we strut off having executed justice like a gang of brown shirt fascists while problems creep that a century from now will have consigned bully America the fate of bully Roman Empire, bully British Empire of Brigadier Dyer and his April 1919 Amritsar massacre as in, "General, if you could have gotten the armored car in would you have used the machine gun (against the women and children)?" Dyer: "Yes." My Lai, Kent State, Iraq and Afghanistan. Sgt Barbera murders deaf, unarmed brothers Ahmad, 15, and Abbas, 14, as they tend cattle in Iraq and we wonder why we are so hated. Following 9/11 Mayor Guiliani rebuffs a relief donation from Prince Al-Walid bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz - nephew of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia - because of remarks relating 9/11 and U.S. foreign policy. Narcissistically best at taking offense and placing blame, as a nation we don't get it, too thick for introspection and realization, much less confession and penitence, we learn zilch from the Goths or from Adonai and the Babylonians. Police state of New Mexico (what, no comma?) firing on a fleeing minivan with a mother and five children ayfsm? Zimmerman the Innocent arrested again for domestic violence while the United Methodist Church convenes the ecclesiastical trial of a pastor who officiated the marriage of his gay son: bully reign of the canons in the Kingdom of the Pharisees. There is no help or hope, relief only in returning to oblivion and leaving all to future generations of the certitudinously self righteous.

"We have met the enemy and he is us." "For lo, his doom is sure." The firing squad are here, any last words, Pogo?

“... tyrants and murderers – and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it – always . . . When you are in doubt that that is God's way, the way the world is meant to be . . . think of that.” Gandhi.

A Mighty Fortress ... Rise and Fall