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Mutterings Over the Graves of Soldiers

Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2008-05-21 23:42.

By Garrison Keillor, Salon

May. 21, 2008 | The Current Occupant tossed Nazis into a speech last week, something he rarely does since it only reminds people of Dick Cheney. He likened those who would negotiate with terrorists to those who tried to appease the Nazis, an awkward comparison, since Nazis were self-defined and wore the swastika proudly, and terrorists are anybody we nominate to be terrorists, who may include terrorists, people who know terrorists, people named Terry, or people with wrists. One reason Guantánamo is kept top-secret is so you and I won't know how many innocent people have been locked up there and how little the bureaucracy cares about innocence, which might remind people of the Nazis.

The Nazis have served us well as an embodiment of evil even after they're all dead and buried, thanks to wonderful movies with cruel men with bad skin and guttural voices -- and the word itself, which has an ominous buzz to it, unlike the gentle "communist," a cousin to "communion" and "community," though when it comes to outright hardcore evil, communism outdid the Third Reich hands down. Stalin was the most murderous man in the history of the world, having had a larger victim pool to work with, and yet "Stalinist" is not the epithet it should be.

That's because communism was exploited for short-term political advantage after World War II by Richard Nixon and other weasels of the right, much the way "terrorist" is today, to scare people into acceding to unprecedented secrecy and concentration of power and freedom of bureaucrats from any accountability whatsoever. Spooky old hammerhead politicians found anti-communism to be wonderfully profitable and they rode that horse for years and cheapened the language.

The war on terror, to most people, is a lame joke, and Republicans who've been embedded in Washington too long are now finding that the word "terrorism" has lost its tread. This multitrillion-dollar war is going to wind down, one way or another. The Occupant will hand it off to the next president, who can then negotiate with people who know people who know terrorists and work out a way to extricate our people from the desert.

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Garrison Keillor is amazing

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2008-05-22 08:06.

I would like to personally say that listening to the Prarie Home Companion and hearing German spoken in the Lutheran prayers by Garrison humbled me. For never in my life did i hear German spoken, the first language i learned, said and spoken in terms of grace, god, and mercy.

all my life i could never forget that i was german and what hitler brought.

the most horrible irony is that growing up, the bush family was held up as very upright people, that the americans, meaning mr. bush sr., was keeping the peace in south america and that the communists would never let the kgb take over Venezuela.

WHAT A JOKE....!!!!

Bush comes from a Nazi family.

everyone, i mean everyone was fooled.

here's some german for my beloved america. it's all good.

Diese Neo-betrügerischen Nazistischen Truppen werden vereitelt. Ihre Gefangenen wie die Gefangenen davon werden vor mehr als 60 Jahren befreit. Diese Offiziere werden alle zu den Kriegsproben gesandt. Und derjenige, der viel von diesem Befreien tut, der Gott fürchtend, Freiheit liebend Amerikaner.

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