I understand the Drumpf administration’s narcissistic personality disorder and pathological lying. But why the vile ecstasy they ejaculate each time they announce the firing of another 100,000 workers? As though inflicting suffering were something to be proud of.
Before our spineless Senate confirmed Russell Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget, Vought said this about our 2.3 million federal employees: “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want to put them in trauma.”
Wow. Boss of the Year material. In hell. I’ve had bosses like that.
But deliberately inducing trauma upon millions of people and their families is nothing to be proud of.
Why has the Republican Party slurped this up and begged for more? Because of the terrifying threat of being “primaried.” That could “cost them” their sinecures, and even — horrors! — access to the Senate Barber Shop.
Pardon me for speaking sin pelos en la lengua, as we descendants of immigrants say. I’ve been on a Siegfried Sassoon kick. Sassoon was a British lieutenant in World War I, who was wounded three times in the trenches. He was awarded the appropriate medals, and while recuperating in England from his second wound, wrote “A Soldier’s Declaration,” which was published and read in Parliament.
It began: “I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those how have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe this War, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.”
With a war on, a statement like that from a decorated officer was bound to draw notice. Sassoon expected to be court-martialed and imprisoned. But a fellow officer — Robert Graves — persuaded a review board, with assistance from a member of Parliament, to declare that Sassoon was not a traitor, but a victim of shell shock, now known as PTSD.
After being sent to a lunatic asylum in England, Sassoon decided he should be back in the trenches, with the fellows, to fight again in a war in which he did not believe.
So he petitioned His Majesty’s Government to send him back to the front lines. Which it did.
Where he was shot in the head, then seconded (thirded?) home again.
Why am I telling you this? Because Sassoon’s poem, Atrocities, describes what is happening in our country today. Our government is not fighting enemy nations. It is waging war upon itself. Upon us.
These deluded jillionaires don’t need to shoot people to hurt them and their families. They just throw breadwinners out of work.
But why do they feel the need to gloat about it on TV?
Why, when they wound families, do they feel the need to dance around, on fake YouTube videos, as they piss on Palestinians’ graves?
Call me old-fashioned, but here is a poem by Siegfried Sassoon.
Substitute “throwing people out of work” for “butchering” them, and “Germans” for “Americans,” and this century-old poem sums up our rulers today. And their whole damn party.
Atrocities
By Siegfried Sassoon
You told me, in your drunken-boasting mood,
How once you butchered prisoners. That was good!
I’m sure you felt no pity while they stood
Patient and cowed and scared, as prisoners should.
How did you do them in? Come, don’t be shy:
You know I love to hear how Germans die,
Downstairs in dug-outs. “Camerad!” they cry;
Then squeal like stoats when bombs begin to fly.
And you? I know your record. You went sick
When orders looked unwholesome: then, with trick
And lie, you wangled home. And here you are,
Still talking big and boozing in a bar.