Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
-Shakespeare Othello
Through
it all, I guess we all crave some sort of regiment. Some
sort of safety and order… something to fall back
on when we have no idea what to do. We busy ourselves
with niceties and codes of conduct and rules and regulations
and a thousand other self inflicted keepers. The world
needs some kind of order, right? Without them there would
be chaos, right?
My
hand shakes even now, as I shrug off the last droplets
of alcohol’s sweet embrace. The long summer days
and careless, lazy evenings of July and August can bring
you back to places you never knew you left. Like warm,
wet whiskey on a Sunday afternoon, sometimes there can
be comfort in the familiar.
I
can’t help but laugh to myself as I write these
words. Sometimes all it takes is to feel the warmth of
the sun or a cool breeze pulsing through the air, to put
a man in a reflective mood. New perspectives can be found
around every corner and a new outlook on it all can open
your eyes to many things.
We
need our facades. We need our values and morality projected
unto us. The herd mentality is to stay within the herd.
These things are so clichéd now and so overdone
and so over-examined, and yet they still ring true in
many ways. As our leaders keep feeding us spoonful after
spoonful of bullshit, we can do nothing but ask for more.
The
American Spirit is a volatile mixture of pioneer spirit,
distaste for pretension and a mean whiskey drunk. The
waters of popular opinion are starting to reach the high
water mark and the dams built from the lies and whore-mongering
of our current group of money-grubbing “leaders”
are about to come crashing down. The wagons are circled
and the lynch mob has arrived. As hard as it is to believe
now, NO ONE stays on top forever.
Downing
Street, Valerie Plame, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rove, Enron,
Halliburton… these are the names and phrases that
will be associated with the downfall of the Bush administration,
one of the most arrogant, selfish and corrupt administrations
in the history of the United States.
When
everything comes crumbling down I’ll be sitting
at my bar laughing into the night, a tall glass of warm
bourbon in one hand and a bible in the other… praying
that the next batch of bastards isn’t worse.
Jonny O
July 11th, 2005
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