Had to kind of shake my head a few times this week at the thought that Robert Kennedy’s assassination was 40 years ago. I mostly remember the morning after he died of his wounds, more than a day after the actual shooting, I woke to the 
sight of my mom pulling the Kennedy bumper sticker off my bedroom door, her grave expression rendering the news superfluous. A sliver of the sticker remained on that door for some time. Nasty days indeed.
So are these, of course, only the pain seems more concentrated in the lower echelons of society than it was in 1968, as polarized as we were in those days. Today, only volunteers are sent to war, and they are drawn overwhelmingly from the working class and poor… so a needless war like the one we started in Iraq can grind on year after year without any sign of ending, just arrogant squawkery about how much more successfully the enterprise is proceeding. Likewise, income inequality is now so extreme that those with the greatest insecurity are hobbled by even moderate rises in fuel prices, for instance, while those at the top reap the benefits of unprecedented corporate profits.
There is such a profound separation between the rulers and the ruled in this country that it seems there’s no longer any expectation on the part of ordinary people that they will have any significant voice in the conduct of public affairs. Our political leaders can literally get away with mass murder, flaunt their guilt, and remain confident in their immunity from sanction. How much more does anyone need to know about what was said and done in the lead up to the Iraq war? Is there really, really any question remaining about the Bush administration’s distortions and misrepresentations of intelligence on WMDs and Saddam’s purported links to Al Qaeda? And yet no attempt is made to hold these people accountable – not even symbolic gestures. The Bushes, Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Abramses, and Rices of the world assume that we will do nothing. Thus far, they’ve been right – probably one of the only things they’ve gotten right up to now.
We need to fix this – this tendency we have to sit on our hands while outrageous crimes are committed in our names. We need to stand up when we’re being ripped off by the pirates and speculators whose representatives currently occupy the White House and halls of Congress. Failure to do so only encourages them to continue doing the same thing. Even now they’re talking about Iran almost constantly; even now they’re blackmailing the Iraqi government into allowing permanent U.S. bases in that country. They feel confident in doing all this (and more) because, aside from a little harmless unpopularity, their crimes have cost them nothing.
Time to crash Bush’s party. Can you say “censure”? How about “The Hague”?
luv you,
jp
