Thursday, May 22, 2014

They will be punished


“…[THEY] WILL BE PUNISHED”

Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, “peacemaking” at pepinsky.blogspot.com

May 22, 2014

 

                Yesterday, President Obama declared that individuals “accountable” for keeping double books in Veterans Administration hospitals across the country “will be punished.”  Sadly, I find in this president to be retributive, from killing civilians with drones and assassinating US nationals for their speech and associations, to caging deportees, to prosecuting whistleblowers, to ramping up US forces in Poland, at Russia’s European door, and now to discipline individual VA workers for how they have coped with tight budgets and massive demand from wounded veterans.

                For all the good things the president has stood for and gotten done, his attitude leads itself to fighting perpetual war against enemies both foreign and domestic.  Much as I respect his integrity, I believe he has let himself be captured by the military-corporate complex.  And the US media scarcely notice the pattern, for all the partisan, abstract debates they carry from politicians and pundits.  In Ukraine, they focus on Putin.

                As a nation, we lack awareness of how others see us, especially those whose families have been killed by a heartless presence overhead that fires a missile in your direction.  We are so determined to set others straight, that we cannot see how we are seen, we cannot empathize with those we are determined to correct, through retribution pure and not so simple.  Love and peace, hal

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