SemiConscious Dot Org

I’ve been meaning to post a long, finely-crafted screed containing my ineffable wisdom on the general topic of The War On Terror™. Unfortunately, the king-hell hassle of moving all my junk to a new apartment has necessarily taken up all my time this week, pushing everything else onto the back burner. Hopefully, full-time posting will resume after this weekend.

And besides, The Editors have summed up my general thoughts far more eloquently than I ever could have, anyway:

What I’ve learned about the war on terror so far is that it doesn’t particularly matter which exact brown people we are fighting or why we are fighting them, and it especially doesn’t matter how we fight them, if we are making any progress toward any goal, or how many people on either side are killed and maimed in the process. Now, I admit that I don’t quite get why this is true, but I am lead to understand that the answer lies in making photo montages of terrorist attacks and saying that everyone who isn’t nodding in agreement after seeing your carnage collage must have amnesia.

I understand, however, that while the exact whys and whos and hows and wheres and RIPs of the Global War on Terror are irrelevent, it is extremely important that no one be allowed to say anything which might imply that the GWOT is anything but the most noble, successful, and self-evidently justified undertaking in human history, because then the terrorists win. I don’t know what they win, but, whatever it is, they cannot be allowed to win it.

Read the entire thing. It’s brilliant.

Fox News poll: 52% of Americans are “more proud” to be Americans than at this time last year; 94% practice the Golden Rule “at least some of the time.”

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.

“O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;

Help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead;

Help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain;

Help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire;

Help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief;

Help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it –
“For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

“We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”

After a pause: “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!”

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

Excerpted from The War Prayer, a short story by Mark Twain.