During the year of 1979/80 I had the privilege of being accepted on to a teacher exchange scheme. I was allotted a teaching role in Norwalk High School in Los Angeles. My family and I, wife and three kids, lived in Downey and spent all our holidays touring around the States (and down to Mexico City) in a VW van. We had a spectacular year. America is a beautiful country with some amazing scenery. The people were friendly and generous.
The High School I taught in was probably 50% Chicano, 10% black and 40% white with a lot of gang problems. I found the kids fabulous, friendly and outgoing even though the American education system was terrible. I was using teaching materials that in England would have been appropriate for twelve-year-olds with my top class seventeen-year-olds.
This was Carter’s election year and also the year of the Iran Hostage scenario. The Iran Revolutionary Guard had stormed the US embassy and was holding all its staff hostage.
My students were on the ceiling. I’d put a large map of the world on the wall and one of them had stuck a pin with a flag in Tehran saying ‘NUKE IRAN’. The prevailing mood was one in which they all wanted the President to storm into Iran, kick ass and teach them a lesson. There were many derogatory terms flying around.
I have no doubt that if Carter had invaded Iran he would have been re-elected.
However, fortunately, he didn’t. The reality of a war with a huge country like Iran with its multitude of tribal ethnicities and religious fervour is highly complex and unpredictable. The effect on the world economy and destabilisation of an already febrile area is substantial.
You roll the dice, throw the cards in the air and try to predict the outcome.
Carter wisely chose not to invade. He sent in an abortive desert rescue mission to free the hostages that crashed and went horribly wrong. He wasn’t elected.
Back in my classrooms there was war fever. As an outsider I tried to organise a rational debate – taking account of the region, Russia, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, oil, economies and unpredictability. My debates turned into hostile shouting matches. All my students wanted to do was bomb these ‘primitive Arabs’ into oblivion. How dare they kidnap Americans, threaten America and burn US flags. They needed nuking and putting in their place.
Forget alliances and the difficulties of attacking a country of that size, they were Americans; the Arabs should kow-tow and know their place. America was the greatest power on the planet. How dare they! Nuke ’em!
I tried pointing out a few home truths – despite America’s huge military power it had not managed to win a single war – got booted out of Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia (later booted out of Iraq and Afghanistan) – for all its fire power it cannot even win against opponents armed with out-of-date rifles and a ball of rice. Taking on the religious fanaticism of a country like Iran was a major undertaking that would drain the resources of even a superpower. American bravado was not going to prevail.
My students did not want to debate these points. In their opinion the USA was so mighty all they needed to do was wade in and wipe out those mad Muslims, free the hostages and blow the Iranian regime to kingdom come. Simple. The USA was all-powerful. NUKE IRAN!! They chanted death like the most fervent Iranian acolytes.
I hadn’t experienced anything quite like it. The war fever was immense. I wondered if it had been like that at the start of the Vietnam war or Korea? How quickly reality sets in. War is death. War is maimed bodies. War is misery. War is destruction. War is incredibly expensive. War is primitive. War is utterly stupid.
I came back from the States lamenting the stupidity of war fever and saying that fortunately it couldn’t happen here. Then, blow me, it did. A short while later I was in English classrooms trying to hold sensible, intelligent debate with enflamed students who wanted to nuke Argentina for daring to take the Falklands.
The only people who benefit from war are the politicians who gain power and the elites who profit from the weapon sales and eventual rebuilding. They get rich and powerful on the blood and agony of others.
The people who pay for it (apart from the dead, maimed, traumatised and homeless soldiers and victims) are ordinary people whose taxes are spent on destruction. They get less money, worse health care and poor education.
What a stupid way for intelligent people to behave.
I greatly admired Jimmy Carter. He put rational intelligence before gung-ho politics.
I was reading this article on Quora and it seemed to explain it very clearly. This is the stupid, irrational, macho mentality we are up against!
The question was posed, “Why do people continue supporting Trump no matter what he does?” A lady named Bev answered it this way:
“You all don’t get it. I live in Trump country, in the Ozarks in southern Missouri, one of the last places where the KKK still has a relatively strong established presence.
They don’t give a shit what he does. He’s just something to rally around and hate liberals, that’s it, period.
He absolutely realizes that and plays it up. They love it. He knows they love it.
The fact that people act like it’s anything other than that proves to them that liberals are idiots, all the more reason for high fives all around.
If you keep getting caught up in “why do they not realize this problem” and “how can they still back Trump after this scandal,” then you do not understand what the underlying motivating factor of his support is. It’s fuck liberals, that’s pretty much it.
Have you noticed he can do pretty much anything imaginable, and they’ll explain some way that rationalizes it that makes zero logical sense?
Because they’re not even keeping track of any coherent narrative, it’s irrelevant. Fuck liberals is the only relevant thing.
Trust me; I know firsthand what I’m talking about.
That’s why they just laugh at it all because you all don’t even realize they truly don’t give a fuck about whatever the conversation is about.
It’s just a side mission story that doesn’t matter anyway.
That’s all just trivial details – the economy, health care, whatever.
Fuck liberals.
Look at the issue with not wearing the masks.
I can tell you what that’s about. It’s about exposing fear. They’re playing chicken with nature, and whoever flinches just moved down their internal pecking order, one step closer to being a liberal.
You’ve got to understand the one core value that they hold above all others is hatred for what they consider weakness because that’s what they believe strength is, hatred of weakness.
And I mean passionate, sadistic hatred.
And I’m not exaggerating. Believe me.
Sadistic, passionate hatred, and that’s what proves they’re strong, their passionate hatred for weakness.
Sometimes they will lump vulnerability in with weakness.
They do that because people tend to start humbling themselves when they’re in some compromising or overwhelming circumstance, and to them, that’s an obvious sign of weakness.
Kindness = weakness. Honesty = weakness.
Compromise = weakness.
They consider their very existence to be superior in every way to anyone who doesn’t hate weakness as much as they do.
They consider liberals to be weak people that are inferior, almost a different species, and the fact that liberals are so weak is why they have to unite in large numbers, which they find disgusting, but it’s that disgust that is a true expression of their natural superiority.
Go ahead and try to have a logical, rational conversation with them. Just keep in mind what I said here and be forewarned.”
I wrote this antinovel as a flow of consciousness. It was a spotlight into the convoluted internal world of a mind. All life and death. Everything. This represents a position on a map, fixed in time. Nothing more.
Excerpt – 53 and imploding:
I love those Neolithic mounds, shrouded in mystery.
I believe in love, laughter, awe, wonder, friendship, fun, respect, empathy, craziness, sex, help, friendliness, highs, contentment, change, responsibility, tolerance, kindness, happiness.
I believe that if we were able to build a mound based on these sorts of things it would be a truly happy fulfilled mound.
It’s just a list but it’s what I build my life on. I don’t have to think about it, plan it out, or strive towards it; it comes naturally to me. I don’t have to form a sect, join a cult or follow anybody, believe in the divine or the mystical – I merely stand back and look around me.
I am the watcher.
I used to believe in spirituality but that’s been replaced by a sense of wonder and mystery. I try not to hold it against anyone but I don’t want it shoved down my throat or imposed on everybody. I am angered by the blatant indoctrination of children. If you believe it then accept that it’s a personal thing – write it in a book, talk to anyone who enquires but shut the fuck up when you’re on my doorstep, in my schools or running my mound! Keep your fucking endorphin rushes for your own junky heaven leave me to my own dope!
I don’t believe in violence or retribution even though I feel them strongly enough within myself. I often want to kill the people who are carrying out the barbarous acts and not one of them has killed one of mine! I can’t imagine. I am infuriated constantly by cruelty and selfish greed. I am infuriated. WHY WHY WHY!!!! There has to be a better way. Hurting doesn’t make you happy. But it seems to for a lot of people. We love pain!
I repress my anger because I have no wish to be consumed by hatred. I have no wish to become violent.
I hate religion. Religion is probably equal with nationalism as the joint most evil inventions of mankind. Sure it would be nice to have a purpose in life. But a special, personal relationship with God – the chosen ones, the true believers, the spawn of the deities – come the fuck on! Hasn’t history, littered with dead religions, chosen ones fallen by the wayside, decapitated statues of gods, taught us anything? Religion is made by people for power.
It makes me laugh when I hear the twats talking about the mighty Allah giving them victory, God wills it, and all that ridiculous shit. You don’t hear them asking why God hates them when someone else bombs the fuck out of them and they lose. You don’t hear the ones in the mine say ‘why me?’ – ‘Were my prayers not good enough?’
Ha.
I love friends, conflicts and argument but I feel the need to be alone a lot of the time.
I’m 53 and have discovered that age brings some perspective but not necessarily any greater clarity. The complexities you discover cloud the certainties you used to hold dear.
Every second ticks. Every step is closer to the final step.
53 and imploding eBook : goodwin, opher: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store
So he won’t rule out using military force against his own NATO allies?
Is this dementia?
Just think, if he actually does make a move against Greenland or Canada we could find ourselves at war with the USA! That’s the reality of the NATO treaty.
Greenland is sovereign. It’s part of Denmark and has been since 1814. Denmark is part of the NATO block. Any intrusion into the sovereign land of a NATO country automatically initiates a response from all NATO countries – The UK, France, Germany and others would be duty-bound to wade in and protect that country.
This is absurd!
Canada is part of NATO too. Canadians have no wish to become part of the USA, to be relegated from a fully autonomous country into the status of a mere state. They certainly don’t want to be subsumed into the gun-crazy, religious-extremism of what is rapidly becoming a basket-case of poor education, mad conspiracy and complete stupidity – a festering racist, Nazi madhouse!
Has America gone completely nuts?
Perhaps the UK should reactivate its claim to the whole of America, take it over and bring some sanity back into play?
We’ve got much more right to it than the USA has to Greenland or Canada!
