And throws the book at the zealots both left and right who tolerate the insanity that has given us this heinous war of lies, a complicit two-party system that can’t be trusted to do the right and moral thing, ever, and an impacted process and set of values that leads straight to the into the kind corporate fascism we seem to deserve. As she says:

“The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.

“I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won’t work with that group; he won’t attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions.”

Indeed.

I feel this way often when I blog because the default perception is that if you’re against the war and everything that Bush stand for, you, by definition must be a lefty/liberal. Not in my case. For me, this is much bigger than left and right. In fact left and right, liberal conservative are just smoke, they’re dismissal tactics.

I look at the situation we’re in as just desserts. Bush is the reward for lives too easily disconnected from reality. From too much luxury on the one hand and far too much stress and degradation on the other. From a two-party system whose sole purpose is to shoulder each other away from the prime seats in the trough. We dive into American Idol because doing the really hard work of understanding how we can comport ourselves with decency and intelligence is just too much to ask. It’s easier to change channels. And when the real currency of the moment is not only money or power but celebrity, society fractures into a maelstrom of sick self-interest and narcissism. Please welcome our faux cowboy hero who’s going to save the day, Mr. Bush.

I can’t blame Ms. Sheehan for not wanting to keep flying into the flame. And while I thought she could be hyperbolic at times, she was always on the right side of the angels. Her outrage should have been everyone’s outrage, and I don’t blame her for being disgusted. In another era, not so long ago, it would have been. She became a mini-series, much like the run up to the war, Valerie Plame, the Gonzales hearings, the Surge. But these mini-series aren’t the exclusive domain of the Right. Watch what happens to global warming and health care. It doesn’t matter. We’re slaves of what we consume and the media that serves it up. Cindy’s mini-series got spun off into the Dem fiasco and groovy “let’s end the war” spoofs and finally got canceled. Much to the detriment of us all.