Author: Matt

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Skol

Seven seconds later:

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Still Relevant

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Sanders

Editors note: it looks like this was written in Febuary, in Curaçao on vacation.  I found it in my drafts, and it was probably something I was screwing around with on the patio holding my laptop at a funny angle to get wifi so I could watch a primary debate.  Just me writing down what I wish he had said as I’m wont to do. Whatever problems it has, and it has problems, I don’t really care about anymore.  It’s not groundbreaking, but it somehow encapulates issues and a time that I find funny, sad, and ancient today – ten and a half months and a lifetime later.  So it’s going up.  This election could have been about great things, wonderful ideas that made the world a better place.

You asked me to rank the main threats to our country, I’m not going to do that.

I think that such a simplistic answer to a soundbite question not only puts this country at risk, but ties the hands of the next president.

No one would argue that Secretary Clinton is the country’s best choice to manage the foreign affairs of our country.  She was in the White House for eight years, served as a senator and Secretary of State.  Her credentials are beyond question. I hope that she’ll join my administration.

If you think that our chief threats are foreign actors then she is the obvious choice to be our next president.

I believe that those who paint the world as a place of only threat are trying to scare you.

Many of our bogymen are self created.  If we engage in a real way with other countries, rather than just ranking them on some sort of ‘threat matrix’ we might have a better chance of living in a more peaceful world.  Remember that we created ISIS by causing a power vacuum in the Middle East.  Our support of Israel in opposition of true democracy has destabilized the region for over half a decade.

We should stop meddling in the affairs of the world and focus on our values.

However I believe that the greatest threat to our republic is not a foreign power somehow disturbing the domestic tranquility: after all we spend more than the next eight nations combined in the name of defense.  Rather I think that our greatest threat comes from within.  Our nation’s very values are under siege by the financial industry and the accumulation of wealth that it creates.  The top 1% our country now controls the top 99% of our wealth.  The Republicans want you to believe that a tax on people leaving over $5 million of wealth to their  estates constitutes a ‘death tax’. Think about that: one of their main concerns is for people dying with over $5 million.  Corporations are now people and it costs over a billion dollars to become president. Why does it cost so much money if nothing’s for sale? Why are so many people clamoring to offer me money for speeches if they don’t think I’ll help them.

I want real change to come to our country, but not disruptive change: a return to American values.

Let’s focus on the things that have made America great.  A true middle class, a spirit of working together and politics that stop at our borders.  We’ve never been in a stronger position, and yet our leaders continue to say that we need to be great ‘again’.

I say we’re great now.  We’ve just forgotten that we need to be great together.

 

Posted on

For Brian Haw

This song by the XX Teens came up on random today, and I couldn’t find the spoken-word section by Brian Haw anywhere online.

I wrote it down. It feels like it should be somewhere.

good afternoon
i came here nearly six and a half years ago, second of June 2001.
i came here because i discovered what my country was doing to the children,
the children of iraq, the children of the world.
it’s called infanticide, genocide, torture, looting of nations.
bloody mess,
and I’m responsible.
see I happened to be born in Britain in a place called Woodford, Essex,
and my country’s doing this,
and I came because I couldn’t live with it,
because as a dad who loves his kids,
and this lady, this wonderful lady, who is the mother of my children,
i was taught a lot of good things in this country
and I was taught about fairness at my mother’s knee.
we know what’s right!
we have to stand up and do and be what’s right, don’t we?
I do, you do, each one of us does.
I’m an old man now of 58, I’ve been quite a few places,
and I’ve been a seaman, I’ve been an engineer, I’ve been a builder.
I used to make fine furniture,
done quite a few different things.
I’ve probably sat where you sat, I’ve probably done your work.
I probably understand you.
And you, with your experience and your knowledge, use it to know and say what’s right.
You are you, and I’m me, and we’re each individuals aren’t we?
And I talk too bloody much,
so it’s over to you now, what are you doing to do about it?
Ok?
Thank you.