When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden
Bill Maher
I really ought not to be surprised at how backwards our government is. Really. But I guess I'm too new or insufficiently jaded. When I visit Army surplus stores, I often see posters from the past, reminding us that we are a country that is at war and as such, that we have a duty -- whatever our political leanings -- to help in that effort. Even if we're not particularly fond of the objective, it still makes sense for Americans to do what they can at home to make sure that American soldiers come back sooner, or (with luck) aren't needed elsewhere. These posters encouraged people to not waste resources, to recycle such things as tin, to act as a country, watching over itself and being a good example within as well as without. I have always appreciated these posters and the sentiments behind them, because it was a sense of connecting cause and effect across the social strata.
But now, forget about that. We as a country seem to be so appallingly ignorant that we just can't or won't connect those dots. The most comical, ironic thing I have seen since we started openly lobbing bombs into the Middle East has been a highway clogged with vehicles and their single occupants, each vehicle bedecked with a fluttering flag to indicate some form of support for a war that is funded directly by the consumption of the massive amounts of fuel used to keep those vehicles rumbling in idle on that clogged up highway. In a perverse and sickening way, it does make sense.
Maher's book makes this perfectly clear -- as well as a variety of other things that we are supposed to be doing, but are, in fact, completely the opposite of "helping". To paraphrase him, instead of winning a war to feel good, we insist on feeling good to win a war.
I liked this book very much. I'm going to buy a few copies for friends. I'm going to do other things, too. At least now I have some good suggestions, rather than the "just act like nothing happened bullshit" hurled desperately at us by a government afraid to act like a government and instead acts like that nasty-smelling kid at school that just wanted to be everybody's friend.
