Tantrum

Empty words
 empty verses
stupid children
  shouting curses

Must do what
 the babies say
all the bad
 will go away

Hearts of stone
 could only doubt
serious faces
 angry pout

Dancing on
 glowing screens
empty-headed
 puppet teens

There is Freedom in Fire

There is freedom in fire
  dancing spinning
    wild abandon
cleansing, pure

Burning away the blight of filth and dross

Lighter than air
  the ashes fly high
    to the stars
beyond our grasp

Released from Terrestrial Restraint

There is freedom in fire
  eating feeding
   voracious hunger
clearing paths

Tearing out Thickets of Obstruction

Crumbling to dust
  we step over
   onto highways
previously denied

Unrooted we tumble, stumble then we run

There is freedom in fire

R.P.

You Had Us at Hello

You Had Us At Hello

By P.B. Rage from USA (More Kurt -- too rad) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

   More than 20 years ago the rock landscape had languished in a sea of regurgitated sameness. Carbon copies. Pretty boy bands that looked like girls singing about Girls Girls Girls. Half naked girls singing about virginity and prayers.


 Thrash metal was scratching the itch that glam could never satisfy. Rap was another venue for expressing angst and becoming quite lucrative, in a way metal was not.


  Edgy and cool was listening to classic rock. Boston, Aerosmith, Triumph were the alternative to the Lipsticked Pretty Boys prancing on MTV.


   The Purple Rain had become a foggy memory, replaced by a long-haired ginger in a bandana snake dancing to a guitar charmer in a top hat. The class of 90 was made of this. The rose that bloomed with a bang soon also faded in a cold November rain, and there we were.


  Our eyes fed upon Alice in Chains. Red Hot chili peppers were trying to get us to put them in us, and some of us were satiated. The rest of us hungered for more spiritual manna in this musical wasteland of pop and rock.

 What new thing could we find to listen to in our apathy and malaise? "Here we are now, entertain us."  "Hello hello hello, how low?"  We were suddenly hearing our decade put in words we never could have found on our own, growled and howled over the pounding high school marching band drum beat.

  We heard the voice in the wilderness saying come as you are, and we covered in mud soaked in bleach opened our ears and minds and souls to this new sound. We were all ugly here, and it was ok. We lit our candles in a daze because we found our Nirvana.

20 (plus) years later we are back in the wilderness and where is our voice? Married, buried. Weiland could tell you but he is not here either. Layne is truly the man in the box.

Our pop-giant killers were slain in fields of poppies.

 Who will be our hero to chase away the twerking, jerking, hordes of circus performers that vie for our attention now? The shallow rivers of saccharine flow from our speakers and earbuds, yet we are starved. A constant repeating parade of boy bands that look like girls singing about girls while naked girls sing about respect and degradation simultaneously.

I do sometimes wish I were that easily amused after all.

oh,

whatever

nevermind.

Wrong message, wrong stage

After doing a little self analysis, I’ve come to realize that my initial reaction to all the kneeling during the anthem was based more in personal reasons that seemed valid to me but deep down, something else was gnawing at me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

My visceral reaction was based mostly on the obvious disrespect being shown to both our country and our men and women who have served and still do. As a veteran, I take that kind of thing much more seriously than the average American might in some cases. I let my heart take the lead in my disgust for this display and I can see now that this might not look rational to some people.

I finally got to the heart of my problems with protesting the anthem yesterday when I posted this,

“Protesting police brutality at a football game is a bit like protesting abortion at a grocery store.

The message might be valid but the choice of venue is just stupid.

And you kind of look like an asshole doing it.”

That bounced around in my mind for a while and the whole thing crystallized for me. I also saw someone compare this to the struggle of Rosa Parks and that’s when it hit me full.

It’s the venue being used that bothers me but more than that, it’s the person at the center of the protest that bothers me more.

Rosa Parks chose both the moment and the stage for her protest based on the ill treatment she had faced her entire life because of the racism and segregation she had been born into.

Colin Kaepernick has not dealt with even a miniscule amount of the prejudice and hatred that Parks had. From the moment he first held a football, he had been groomed to be a star by coaches and his family. He has been given every opportunity to succeed despite his ethnicity and background. That’s not to say that he’s never experienced the sting of racism but it goes without saying that he has never been disallowed to sit where he wants on a bus or at a lunch counter.

This is what I believe many viewers to his protest may feel outwardly and why they might find it so distasteful.

Put simply, how can a man who has never known oppression suddenly be so moved to protest something he’s never personally experienced?

Prominent figures like Parks, MLK and Gandhi stood up to very real oppression and hatred to effect change in the brutal reality of the times they lived in and the mere fact of mentioning Kaepernick in the same breath as these titans of social justice, I feel, cheapens their memory and does a gross disservice to their individual struggles.

They chose to stand against unfair treatment by society at a time when that treatment was being directed at them personally.

Not so with Colin. He chose to stand against unfair treatment that he’s never known.

That’s not to say that when injustice exists we shouldn’t all stand against it. This is fundamentally why his protest seems more like a spoiled child's tantrum.

His protest also fails because of his choice of venue. MLK used the reality of racism as the impetus for his movement but he created his own stage for it. He stood alone at first and worked tirelessly to grow the movement that would eventually motivate and define his whole life just as Gandhi did.

Kaepernick is using a stage that other people have paid for literally. The very people who celebrate his talent also pay for the stadiums in which he plays and to use them as the stage for his protest is both cowardly and lazy.

He is essentially “raising awareness” by using a social medium as his vehicle, a practice made popular by Facebook in particular and one which I also find lazy and cowardly. Raising awareness has quickly replaced actually doing anything concrete to effect positive change in society. It’s become a way to feel better about yourself without actually getting your hands dirty.

If Kaepernick truly felt so strongly about the cause, he could have joined many of the national movements dedicated to highlighting police brutality in the black community. Those groups, while not entirely pure in either their motives or the basis for their outrage, have at least forged a path on their own merits.

While many people may not precisely realize it, I suspect they too take issue with his choice of venue for his outrage. While the outrage about police brutality and the hew and cry about unfair treatment of minorities don’t square with the facts and the actual numbers, the agenda is pushed almost nightly in the media and from politicians and celebrities alike. The fact that the movement sprang from the death of Michael Brown, a criminal who attacked a policeman and attempted to take his weapon away from him, puts the movement on shaky ground at the outset. The “gentle giant” as he was portrayed every night on the news was in fact the same person who had just robbed a convenience store only minutes before his run in with the law. The now famous but wholly inaccurate meme of “Hands up, Don’t shoot” proved to be a complete fabrication but that didn’t change the minds of those who held him up as some sort of sainted martyr above reproach for his actual crimes.

This is the movement Kaepernick has attached himself to and by virtue of his choice of venue he has attached the NFL to it as well.

His choice to use the NFL as his chosen vehicle is the coward’s way out to promote a false narrative and when you add those two facts together, we begin to see why this protest was doomed to failure from the start. The country, for the most part, is already weary of the violence and mayhem surrounding the BLM movement. A majority of Americans find advocating or dismissing the murder of police to be reprehensible and counterproductive to addressing a problem that many see as manufactured by the media or taken completely out of context by those who promote it.

This is the great failing of Kaepernick’s protest. He’s chosen to protest something that many Americans believe is untrue. He’s also chosen to use a platform that he had no hand in erecting to it’s potential demise if the ratings and public outrage are any indication.

He brought his political statement to an entity that had been a safe haven from politics by the millions of viewers that have kept it alive and vibrant for so long.

I am one of those people. I turned to football because it was the last part of my life that would be free from politics. Now, ESPN has turned into MSNBC for their incessant attempts to foist the political views of the people who work there upon people who turn to them for entertainment.

I watch football for the exemplification of excellence and personal effort that it represents, not to be either preached to about social issues or the exorcism of personal demons by any player or individual associated with the NFL.

For the same reason that I turned away from broadcast television, I find myself turning away from the NFL. The constant belittling of my beliefs and the never ending social commentary that is counter to those beliefs.

To borrow a quote from Ronald Reagan and alter it ever so slightly to fit the times, “I didn’t leave the NFL, they left me.”

Why Kathy Griffin Isn't Responsible For Her Actions.

I’m going to do something I never thought I’d do. I’m going to help Kathy Griffin in her bid to assign blame for her current predicament. At first glance, one would make the assumption that she alone is responsible for what is happening to her. I made the same assumption myself but after careful consideration, I have come to understand that this conclusion may in fact be incorrect. There are larger forces at play here. Forces that may indeed have driven her to do what she did and thus suffer the consequences for it.

Follow along as we delve deep into the rabbit hole of madness that drove Ms. Griffin to her descent into insanity.

There is a larger cause that explains why she did what she did but it is not Mr. Trump and his family who are responsible as she appeared to claim in her recent press conference.

She is wrong in that belief but in her defense, she is not far wrong.

If we examine the recent past and put it into context, her actions begin to make a sick sort of sense. We need only to start with Trump’s inauguration to see where the seeds for her actions were planted. You  remember the scene, don’t you? The images of people, mostly women and millennials, crying and flailing about as if being subjected to electroshock therapy. The scenes of violence and rioting that nearly engulfed the streets of DC were ubiquitous that day . Cameras panned to the images of a burning limo, broken storefront windows and people running through the streets as if possessed by demons. The ensuing weeks brought more images of violent protesting. It was if someone had cranked America’s violence level up a few notches and then stepped away from the controls. It seemed the whole country was gripped by a madness that was not to be controlled. Well, not the whole country to be honest but half at least to be sure. The side that lost was simply unable to cope with defeat. Not just defeat but defeat at the hands of man who, by the time of the election, had been denigrated and compared to Hitler and even Satan himself.

Hordes of the unhappy descended on DC to march and protest in a never ending bid to both deny Trump his rightful victory and deny reality. The “Resist” movement cranked into high gear and began to spread like wildfire spurred by the inaccurate and deceitful reporting of media organs who had previously spent the months preceding the election assuring the country that there was no way Hillary could lose. Trump was too extreme, too damaged and too imperfect to ever be elected by a thinking electorate.

In the aftermath, it was clear their predictions had been wildly wrong on so many levels that the truth of all their polling and prognostication had been 180 degrees out of phase with reality. In truth, Hillary had run perhaps the worst presidential bid in American history. Beyond that, she was easily the most flawed candidate ever proffered by a political party.

There was nearly a 70 day period when she simply vanished from the campaign trail. She held no rallies, made no speeches and ignored huge swaths of America that she would ultimately need to be victorious. Trump, on the other hand, was a dynamo of political energy, crisscrossing the country, pressing the flesh and making speech after speech to anyone and everyone who would listen.  His campaign was unorthodox, to be sure, but it resonated with average people who felt tuned into his “Make America Great Again” message.

The rest is now history as the resident of the White House now proves.

Usually so good at political post-mortems, the media chose instead to ignore the truth revealed in the election results and engage in a non-stop, daily hate-fest for all things “Trump”.

They didn’t merely make mountains out of molehills, they invented molehills and then went into overdrive to morph them into mountains. They claimed that smoke was everywhere while throwing matches onto the dry brush of everything Trump said or did. The Russian “meddling” story began to fall apart almost immediately despite their best efforts to keep it alive and relevant.

The lack of proof seemed to have the opposite effect on the media. Instead of backing away gracefully, they doubled down on the lies with more lies. Somehow, the lack of proof was actual proof of wrongdoing. The lack of evidence was evidence of a massive cover up and all they needed to do was keep digging to find the “real” truth.

Except, it wasn’t there.

What they did find ultimately was proof of the illegal use of intelligence agencies by the Obama administration and the illegal umasking of subjects of a probe that sought to influence the outcome of the election.

There was in fact an attempt to meddle in an election but not by the Russians. The meddling was done by a sitting president and others who sought to deny Trump a victory because he represented something that the DC elite feared most of all. Real, tangible change to a system so corrupt it could not afford to be exposed to the light.

I’m telling you what you already know and you’re probably asking yourself how Ms. Griffin fits into this little political morality play.

I believe she too was swept up in the Trump hate promoted by the media, the left and the professional protestor class. Her own network, CNN, was perhaps most culpable in the constant barrage of negative press coverage. While not alone in their journalistic malfeasance, they lit the torch and held it aloft for all to see and became the banner that everyone who hated Trump could flock to and find comfort.

No one, in that climate of hate and intolerance, could be unaffected for long.

When one is fed a steady diet of sugar in excess, diabetes is sure to follow. When one is fed a steady diet of cholesterol or fat in excess, heart disease is the ultimate result.

Ms. Griffin was fed a steady diet of hatred, fear and intolerance and irrational action was the result. She may not have actually believed that the picture of a beheaded Trump was funny but she certainly thought it was well justified. It’s the age old battle of nature versus nurture on public display. No one, who is sane or rational, wants to behead someone and hold the head aloft as some sort of disgusting trophy. One must assume then that this hatred of Trump and her desire to portray him beheaded to his family and the rest of America is the result of being nurtured by  forces outside of herself.

One need only to look at liberal television shows like “The View” and others to see the seeds of Griffin’s actions.

It is perfectly acceptable to wish violence on Trump and his supporters these days. Actors and media stars across the country have openly advocated the deaths of anyone who voted for or supports Trump. The cacophony of Trump hate is daily trumpeted by nearly every media source in America including social media.

Griffin was merely channeling that hatred believing that it was completely justifiable to mainstream America. If your entire circle of friends and associates all think Trump is a monster, it is impossible to be objective about your own feelings.

My guess is that Griffin simply doesn’t know anyone who doesn’t hate Trump. Armed with that knowledge, her actions begin to make a perverted sense. We all know how deeply liberal Hollywood is and what it does to those that step outside of the mindset they all seem to live under.

So who, ultimately, is to blame for her actions? Let’s start with Hillary Clinton herself. She has openly advocated for the “Resist” movement and keeps up her claims that the Russians colluded with Trump to deny her the head seat at the table of power in America. Let us also call to task CNN and the NYTimes for their roles in stoking this irrational hatred. In fact, there are few media outlets who can escape a part in the blame. MSNBC itself has morphed into the “Hate Trump” network with endless screeds and tirades devoted to exposing him as some sort of monster. Since there is plenty of blame to go around let’s also save some for Obama himself. Most former presidents simply leave DC and blend into the woodwork to allow the country to get on with its life but not him. He has remained in the spotlight in order to contribute to Trump mania and to hide his own misdeeds before the election I suspect.

His narcissism is legendary by now and true to form he sees his chance to once again “save” the country from its own bad decisions while in truth he may just be trying to save the legacy he sees Trump dismantling with alarming rapidity each and every day.

Griffin had no choice but to act as she did. It was simply the inevitable conclusion to the amount of hate she has been receiving on a daily basis. She has been inculcated into the cult of denial that currently grips the left. She is bombarded on every side by a madness that still has not found its bottom. Until now it seems. She plumbed the depths and found the bottom when she posted that picture of a bloody head. Her career is in complete freefall now with her appearances being cancelled and her public persona being burned in effigy. Even CNN has decided to cut ties with her. That alone speaks volumes about the depth of her depravity. When the network that holds its viewers in sway with a never ending diatribe against Trump has to cut you loose then you have finally gone too far. What she did cannot be called scathing political commentary nor can it be called comedy. It was neither. It was a vicious attack on the office of the President of The United States, not on Trump himself. Let’s leave aside the fact that Trump’s son Barron, was nearly traumatized by the image of his father’s head, covered in blood, being held gleefully by what can ostensibly be called a member of the media and just focus on the act itself. In no sane mind is that kind of thing ever acceptable in a world threatened with the spectre of terrorism and images of beheadings in the news almost every week.

The media has glorified and promoted the violence surrounding Trump’s win not only to increase viewership but because they truly believe it is justified. Their role in Griffin’s actions cannot be downplayed or ignored. They managed to convince half the country that there was no way Hillary could lose. Why then would those same people not believe them when they spend every single day preaching a litany of hatred towards a man who has made them all look like the fools and charlatans they really are.

Their hatred of him is not based in actual reality of what kind of president he might be though. They are part of the DC elite and their corruption is being exposed as well and they hate him for it. The media has in recent times because just as important as the politicians they cover. They see their own seat at the table of power being pulled out from under them and they are deeply frightened of being left out in the cold and marginalized.

Griffin thought herself to be an important voice in the media and she too was threatened. She simply posed for a picture that everyone in the media secretly hopes could actually happen. While they may not come right out and say it, they all wish him ill will if not a painful death.

Her reaction is one of self preservation from some terrible predator. Her mistake was in believing that Trump was going to destroy her and her tenuous hold on relevance in America today. That belief was borne out of the hate she saw every day from everyone she knew. It is not surprising really to see her lash out as she did when you factor in the wave upon wave of intolerance she was subjected to.

This does not absolve her of the final responsibility for her actions to those her found her picture horrifying but according to the left, she had no choice but to do what she did. She is a victim of her circumstances after all and not really guilty.

Trump is guilty of being Trump. He forced her to act as she did. The media is guilty because they showed her the path she eventually found herself walking. If one applies liberal logic to her actions then she is not guilty at all. Society is guilty but only insomuch as the society she sees every day is decidedly liberal. Her friends are guilty. Her employer is guilty. Everyone is guilty but Kathy herself. The cult she joined is guilty. The cult that taught her that there are no lines to worry about crossing when it comes to political dissent. The same cult that now seeks to distance itself from her and acts horrified at her actions.

Griffin is the poster child for the rage and hatred that the media tried to instill in Americans. She shouldn’t be held up as some sort of “worst case scenario” but should instead become the symbol of what can happen when the liberal media and the left seek to cause unrest because they cannot handle losing.

She is ultimately what can happen when unchecked fear and hatred are constantly reinforced.

She is the endgame that the media has been hoping for. She is the culmination of a campaign to undermine and discredit a man they all hate and fear.

How can they now act as if it was unexpected? They wanted this, didn't they? They have been inciting violence and protest since the election results were made known.

Hypocrisy, thy name is journalism.

Offended Nation

“The first Amendment is designed to protect speech from people not to protect people from speech.”

That is a quote of my own that I often use to help those who do not fully understand the basic nature of free speech. The modern idea of “hate speech” obviously flies in the face of this basic principle. The fundamental problem with the concept of hate speech is this, “Who gets to decide what actually is hate speech?”

In modern America, the “offended” get to make that decision and therein lies true crux of the problem. It is nearly impossible these days to find someone who is not offended by something. What I hope to do in this missive is to make clear what offended truly means and how to combat the ever increasing numbers of people who can no longer handle the idea of truly free speech.

Those of you reading this probably already know that the first Amendment was really designed to allow unpopular or uncomfortable speech a place in society free of recrimination.

This is no longer the case in modern America due primarily to a growing sensitivity to unpopular or uncomfortable speech. This sensitivity is most apparent on college campuses where “free speech zones” had to be created because it narrowed an area where truth might be present thus offending those who were unused to it or found it frightening. One can easily avoid a small area where truth may exist. Instead of college being a place where those attending could have their beliefs and ideology challenged by opposing viewpoints, the college campus became a place where nearly monolithic group-think became the norm. With each passing year, the concept of independent thought becomes less and less desirable in favor of falling in line with the “ideology du jour”. It's arguable that peer pressure is worse in college than it is in primary and secondary schools. The old adage, “Go along to get along” is a way of life in college. This is, of course, not something that happened recently to be sure. It's been growing worse for nearly 2 decades and what we are left with as a result is a generation of young adults who can no longer distinguish between something they may not like and something that truly is offensive. By this point, everything they don't like is offensive simply because they have not been sufficiently challenged enough intellectually to know the difference. These young people have spent their college years immersed in an environment that teaches them that to be “offended” is the most egregious thing that can happen to them.

What these young people have never been taught is that being offended is a personal choice, not an action that has been done to them. What they often say is, “What you are doing/saying is offending me.” while never realizing they have made a personal choice to be offended.

Personally, I don't get offended any more in my life. I get angry or frustrated about certain things but learning either to deal with those things by either removing myself from a situation that angers or frustrates me or by simply ignoring it altogether. Getting pissed off is something that happens to me occasionally from either external sources or decisions I have made. Being pissed off does not surrender my own personal power in any way. Being offended surrenders all my power to an external force that may or may not acknowledge or even apologize for the offense. Without acknowledgment or an apology, one cannot get the closure to an offense that is required by the person who is offended. The very real problem with acknowledgment or apology is the subjective nature of what is considered offensive. One man's joke is another man's offense such is the flimsy nature of offense.

If I tell a joke that some find funny and others do not, who is to say the joke is offensive? Usually, the person who finds the joke not funny renders a judgment that not only is it not funny, it is offensive. The person who laughs at the joke does not consider it offensive at all. The line between offensive and not funny is so fine as to be nearly invisible to some.

What we are currently experiencing is the rise of the “some things just aren't funny” army. Valiant warriors are they, determined to decide for the rest of us who may not be aware or enlightened enough to know what's funny and what isn't. They have determined for the rest of us that anything that is not funny is also offensive in some way. A joke that wasn't funny in the old days was met with complete silence. These days it's met with howls of derision and the wailing and gnashing of teeth of the offended. A-list comedians are beginning to be a scarce commodity on college campuses because the idea that some things aren't funny is blossoming into the belief that nothing is funny. Humor, by its very nature, most often comes at the expense of someone else to truly be funny whether that be a personality type or a group of people. I make jokes about my own OCD tendencies constantly because while they can be a slight burden at times, they are still quite funny when viewed in the big picture. People who are also OCD to any degree do not find those jokes offensive, at least not that I've been made aware of. I make jokes about being Italian, bald and other physical and personality quirks but those are excused because I am talking about myself.

This is the root of the subjectivity problem. If a joke about my own OCD is funny because I'm talking about myself, one must draw the conclusion that it is funny regardless who I'm speaking of. Such is not the case today though. It is perfectly acceptable for me to make light of my own quirks but the instant I step outside the line and speak of someone else's quirks I am branded offensive. A joke is either funny or it is not. Offense comes from inside the listener but not from the joke.

Thus also is truth branded offensive when used at the expense of a person or group of people. Simply saying, “Radical Islam is a serious problem both in the U.S. and the wider world.” will bring shouts of racism, an entirely inaccurate statement on it's surface, xenophobia and worse on the average college campus. Simple truth has no place in college any longer. One must instead be so nuanced as to be completely incomprehensible in the end. This is evident by the less than warm reception that speakers like Milo Yiannopolous and Steven Crowder receive when they speak at a college campus. They both speak often of the dangers of radical Islam and it's effects on our culture, our way of life and their brutal treatment of women. As a result, they are often met with protests, harsh treatment and in one recent instance, a violent mob burned and looted parts of the Berkely campus in reaction to a scheduled appearance by Milo. Disagreement with a point of view is also thought of as offensive by those with no faculty to either accept it or understand it. Once again, they chose to be offended when cold indifference would have been a much harsher criticism of Milo and his beliefs.

Offense comes from within not from without. Being offended requires you to surrender your power of self control and that too is an underlying problem with this generation. They possess no self control to allow a point of view or an uncomfortable truth they may not agree with be allowed to cross their paths. It must be emotionally exhausting to spend every day finding and pointing out all the things that are offensive in life.

The easier path for them is to become offended simply because they are no longer required to think rationally or logically when offended. Thinking rationally and logically requires a modicum of self control and intellectual discipline that they just don't have. Their immersion into the waters of “everything I don't like is offensive” is the baptism by which they have been saved. Much like religion, their belief is unshakable and immutable but also requires no hard evidence to be considered fact.

You just have to believe you are offended and that is all that is needed to change the world.

If one wished to remove everything offensive from the world there would be almost nothing left. No art, no truth, no beauty and no humor.

Ultimately, who would want to live in a world like that?

Doing Something

Doing Something

  A sad thing happened the other day: a sad thing, in a sad place, in our sad world. Another sad thing, in a long, neverending list of sad things. This sad thing, in a sad place, far, far away is "The Saddest of All Things" and demands are being put on us to stop all the sadness. We must Do Something.





More

Marco Rubio gives impassioned plea to remove Assad during Syria presser:"This goes to the core of who we are."

 NBC News

Marco Rubio speaks at press conference on Syrian War Crimes

Watch more at NBCNews.com

  It's always, WE MUST DO SOMETHING!. Doing Something! is Who We Are. Not Doing Something! is not Who We Are. Look at this Sad Picture!, Do Something!. If you don't Do Something!, there will be more Sad Pictures!, and it will be your fault. 

And, absolutely, the pictures are sad. They are meant to be.This is how propaganda works.

Sad picture, sad parent. We simply have to do something. No, indeed,WE don't. 

  There are many reasons why Doing Something! is worse than doing nothing. Our country, for nearly a century, has been "doing something". The people, now calling for us to "do something", are the very people who hate our country for its years of "doing something".  When we, as a nation, "do something", we are blamed for everything. 

 These people, these countries, do have agency. It is simply not our place to take over for them. Their struggle, while ugly, is not ours to fight for them. We are neither a Superman - a hero to save them from themselves, nor are we Jesus - a wise all-knowing provider of Salvation from on high. Indeed, regarding ourselves as either of those is the height of hubris: we would do well to consider the craftsmanship of our pedestal.

  Finally, and probably, mostly, "Whatever it Takes" is probably, a very, very ugly thing. What is the solution to this problem? Our sons and daughters dying, for a confusing cause that no one understands? Dropping bombs, from on high, like gods again? Isn't that why ISIS is angry at us in the first place? Calling action there a national security necessity, flies in the face of the evidence that our bombs are why they are bombing us.

 Truman, did something: Oh yes, indeed-rightly so- but the people saying WE MUST DO SOMETHING, hate Truman for doing The Something that he did.

 We are being expected to play a parental role ( again hubris) and there is no one side with discernible clean hands. Our choices are ugly; we let them do ugly things to each other or we do ugly things to them, in order to stop them from doing ugly things to each other. Either way, everyone gets mad and decides to do ugly things to us. 

  If sad pictures are not motivation enough, the powers that be-while very disappointed with us-will then remind us, we must fight this battle over there to Keep Us Safe At Home. We will spend billions in a war over there-under the guise of National Security-while being afraid to do the bare minimum to stop terrorism here, for fear of offending terrorists. Stopping innocent people from flying here is abusive; bombing them all to hell is just hunky dory.  

  But if  "motive unknown" is the cause of terrorism, how is going to Syria gonna fix it? We can't even say the name of the cause, for fear of offending, but we can bomb the crap out of it?

 We don't know what the hell is going on with our government, but we are sure what is going on in Syria...please... (this our source for what is happening in Syria) .

 So you want a smaller government, conservatives? Quit nation building and sending our military everywhere. Liberals, you want a smaller military? I will tell you the same. That, right there, is something you all can reach across the aisle and agree on-if you really wanted to. Of course we know there is more to it: the beast is hungry and it needs to be fed. Our countrymen should be more than it's fodder; blood to grease the machinery.  American citizens are not Marco Rubio's troops for his personal moral crusade.