Homeland

[poliphilo]

Yeah, but it's the wrong story.  The real story isn't "Oh my God one of them might sneak over here and harm some of us". The real story is "Lots of us are over there and harming them on a daily basis for no particularly good reason". The real story is about Afghan shepherd boys being killed on the hillsides by US drones and Afghan families murdered in their beds by US soldiers. The real story cannot be told without shame. And there is something shameful too about turning away from the real story and telling an entirely confected one in which we, not they, are the ones under threat. 

Comments

[heatherp8.livejournal.com]

Amen. Well said, brother.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I made it as far as episode 4. I think that will be enough.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I haven't been watching this, but I note that it's based on an Israeli series. In which case, although what you say still applies, at least the fear of attacks at home has some foundation.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's true.

I could wish Channel 4 had chosen to show the original.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Yes, we need to get out of there.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

For what little good it did, I was vehemently opposed to Afghanistan even before the first palette of greenbacks and Viagra hit the ground. It was a hideous strategic blunder, willfully committed by some of the dumbest sociopaths ever to steal their way into national office.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

One expects politicians to be sociopathic; it's the dumbness that comes as a surprise.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Exactly so! It is sadly rather easy for me to explain why the Bush junta was the dumbest leadership team of any country in the developed world. There is a reason they lost the election, after all, and at least in aggregate even the American electorate wasn't quite that stupid. What genuinely puzzles to this day is why Europe, especially the UK, enabled Cheney's murderous designs.

Then again, looking at the stupid and self-inflicted damage Europe's leadership is doing to their economies, right now, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at all. They certainly didn't rise to the top through personal merit, obviously.

[chochiyo-sama.livejournal.com]

I feel so overwhelmed by this.

while I was growing up, I was so firmly convinced that we were the "good guys." That everything my country did was for the good of everyone in the world.

Then I started thinking for myself. And that's when the realization hit me that we were NOT the good guys. Not only are we not the good guys, we are most certainly beyond doubt some pretty damn bad "bad guys."

The saddest thing of all is that I cannot see a way out of it. I don't think it will ever change. Our government is too corrupt, too infiltrated and controlled by immoral money-hungry corporations. I just wish there were a way of communicating with all the other people in the world who are being victimized that there are those of us over here who know the truth and who are so so sorry about what is being inflicted on them.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth I don't think the government of the USA is any worse than any other government- it's just that it has more opportunities to spread its evil.