Bye-bye to another war criminal.

The last war criminal in my little series.

William Calley Jr.

He croaked in April 28, 2024.

And it wasn't found out by the public until July, cuz he's the kind of guy where people (rightly, IMHO) want to unload a septic-sucker truck onto his grave.

He perpetrated the My Lai massacre.

Any fictional film that's set in 'Nam and they go apeshit on the civilians, that's My Lai.

That's the RL textbook civilian massacre it's all drawn from.

And Calley was the guy.

I had to take a Vietnam War class in high school.

What I learned from that class, ultimately, later on, is America didn't learn fuck-all from Vietnam.

The psychopaths were right back at it for "The War On Terror".

But even before that, Bush Senior did Iraq 1 to get America to love war again.

But even before that, we were being warmed up with fucking GI Joe.

And while GI Joe sanitized war for us dumb little kiddies, Reagan was helping the Contras do shit that made My Lai look like a Disneyland parade.

That shit all slid off Reagan like fucking Teflon.

And the so-called "liberal media" helped.

I've said it again and again here, I'm at a loss to explain what spell Reagan had on people.

I don't get it.

I get Trump's hypnotic spell even less.

Maybe it really is as simple as the racist dog whistles for both of them.

Ghastly makeup, and ghastly hair seem to be diabolically important to the recipe too somehow.

Monsters like their masters to be painted ghouls.

Maybe even that's a dog whistle.

Y'know, like a subdued minstrel mask.

Speaking of hypnotic spells!

Vietnam class taught you to question authority, but....how many of those kids ended up as Trump voters anyway?

Kid I had Civics class with was reading Rush Limbaugh books.

Rush motherfucking Limbaugh.

How fucked up does your home life have to be that you're reading Limbaugh as a teenager?

Jesus titty-fucking Christ!

I was reading Stephen King, and Isaac Asimov, and Douglas Adams.

Like you're fucking supposed to!

I only dearly wish I'd thrown some Ursula Le Guin into the mix.

I needed to understand my own passionate opposition to the war that we were, endlessly it seemed, waging in Vietnam, and endlessly protesting at home. If I had known then that my country would continue making aggressive wars for the rest of my life, I might have had less energy for protesting that one.

-Ursula K. Le Guin on "The Dispossessed".

See, being an X-er, I saw it ass-backwards to her in that quote.

My dumb teenage self thought Vietnam type wars of imperialism were in the rearview mirror; that America had learned, and "the boomers" were fixated on it far too much.

I saw the very existence of Vietnam class as evidence of this.

Boy, was I a total fuckin' shmuck.

Upon reflection, the peanut butter in my gears on getting this post done and kicked out the door has been my seething raw shame over being suckered over the decades by all this shit.

But Le Guin's quote soothes me somewhat.

Well, at least I don't blame my failures on ABC News and Haitians.

The hypocritical war-and-political-violence mob worships cowards like that.

Because he lets THEM be cowards, and cowardice is easy.

I won't be a coward.

I own it.

I fucked up.

I listened to the bullshit.

Specifically the "The War On Terror" bullshit.

I wasn't enamored of Bush; I'd never vote Republican, but I thought Al Queda needed to be destroyed, and Bin Laden brought to justice whether that be a trial, or a bullet to the face.

AND!! Here's where I was the naïve sucker; I thought if it turned out a president lied us into war, he'd be immediately impeached, and jailed; so given that risk, he wouldn't lie.

HAHAHAHAA!!!

Dumbass!!!

Dumbass!!!

Dumb!!! Fuckin!!! Ass!!!

So, yeah, the very thing I started this "good riddance" section with; the death of Bin Laden, that's an embarrassment.

I thought it was good, because I thought the war would be over, and Afghanistan and Iraq would improve, and la de da de dah.

HAHAHAHAA!!!

Dumbass!!!

God-fucking-dammit.

God-fucking-dammit.

All it did was momentarily slake the bloodlust of stupid rubes.

And boy, was it momentary.

Redneck bloodlust is fucking bottomless.

Anyway, apply that to Gaddafi and Daddy-Kim.

Maybe apply that to this whole damned "good riddance" thing.

All these bastards did every scrap of damage they could while they drew breath.

And the next ones are lined right up.

Back to William Calley though!

He got a slap on the wrist, ultimately.

Nixon-suckers were as crazy as Trump-suckers, and thought he was lovely for what he did, and wrote more letters than for bringing back Star Trek.

His 20 year sentence was whittled down to 3 years of house arrest.

Americans make their killers into heroes, and want them free.

If they're white.

Murca.

I had to find that bit about the light sentence out on my own.

It wasn't in Vietnam class.

How do you think you're a good person after rooting for baby rapers?

Oh, right, they were yellow commie babies, so weren't real.

War-loving Americans are perpetually toboggining down good ol' dissonance pyramid.

Like Trumpers.

Like TERFs. Like Carol Tavris.

Dubya Bush never got impeached; ditto Reagan and daddy-Bush; the Abu Ghraib idiots all got wrist-slaps, and William Calley got wrist-slapped.

See a pattern?

Donald Trump has been shot at by two white Republicans, and is desperately trying to blame the second one on either black immigrants, or "liberal rhetoric" or both somehow.

Which is very similar to blaming 9/11 on Iraq instead of Saudi Arabia.

There is one pattern that got broken though that gives me a sand grain of optimism.

Calley lived in shame.

Hence us finding out about his death months later, and him lying on a form saying he never served in the military.

Dubya Bush got rehabilitated, Cheny is getting rehabilitated, Ellen got shit for platforming Dubya, but she's in a makeup ad, so she's being rehabilitated for rehabilitating Bush.

....but Calley was never rehabilitated.

Hell, Reagan's assassin is being rehabilitated.

But not William Calley.

Did America grow a fucking conscience on that one?

What happened?

I dunno.

Let's see if they can use that ember spark of a soul, and get off their couches to elect Kamala.

So, that's my thing on Vietnam, and war in general.

It's kinda ramble-y.

And its made me reconsider this whole "dead assholes" topic.

Depends who the next dead asshole is.

We'll see.