Oh Hell, it's White Thursday!

Yá'át'ééh it's the old Indian. While most of you are enjoying the holiday of family togetherness, I am feeling mean spirited and loathsome. Sometimes people ask, "Hey Texino, why are you so mean spirited and loathsome?" I tell them the war did it. They accept that because I actually am a veteran, and a lot of us from the Vietnam era are crazy. Being loathsome is a by product of madness you see. It is getting hard to pull that veteran stuff lately because we now have a whole new mess of vets from the Iraq thing and they are not particularly loathsome at all. In fact, I would think long and hard about calling one of those guys or girls and "baby murderer" regardless of how many children he or she might have snuffed. Point being your modern GI is a professional soldier and not some confused high school kid who was snatched up like an alien abductee, given as little as two months training and then beamed down into a country full chittering little people who dress alike, talk alike, act alike-man, you could loose your mind. It really is a different situation now. Here is an example. Yesterday I actually opened an email newsletter from some vet site, and there was a piece of news about a former cook in the 82nd Airborne who, after being convicted of multiple rapes and murders and attempted murders, was going to be executed pretty soon. There was a picture of the Trooper obviously being led from the court martial which had taken place sometime before. The soldier was wearing his class A uniform, which is what you wear when you face any kind of military proceeding. OK? Fine. Well there was a space to leave a comment about the story and many had been left. What surprised , or maybe didn't really surprise, me was every person who had replied referred to the guy as something loathsome i.e. "This piece of dung" "Maggot" "slime" "human garbage" "sleaze ball" "P.O.S." "dirt bag"-well you get the picture. There were over 50 replies and every one used a dehumanizing modifier when referring to the suspect, not to mention what they thought should be done to him. If nothing else this article showed me that the mind set of the modern armed service has been molded into one where a human life can easily be relieved of it's value and I came away with little doubt that these soldiers would gladly kill anyone so long as someone classified that group as "dirt bags." It may or may not be of interest to you that this training modality is very popular at today's law enforcement academies. From personal experience during my time as an instructor at a technical college, I can attest that these schools are not focusing on prudent reasoning, but instead are taking the tack that the police must be an insular group because "everyone hates them" ergo, they should only hang out with other cops. This is not making for any "Sheriff Andy's" now, is it? So there you have it. It's Happy Thanksgiving and I truly hope you have one. I'll be hanging out in the studio traveling through some new loathsome identities like "Terminal Loser" "Bad Dog Breath" "Mid level Roach" and "Flea Circus Sideshow Freak" Such promise! Makes me want to live all over again.