A Military Presence

I grew up in Fayettenam.  Older residents of Fayettenam fondly use this pseudonym instead of the actual name of the city, Fayetteville, named after the aristocratic French military officer the Marquis de Lafayette.  The nickname Fayettenam is not heard much anymore, because the Viet Nam War ended in l975 at the behest of Richard M. Nixon.  "Tricky Dicky" resigned from office after the Watergate scandal.  While many pundits painted Mr. Nixon a criminal, he was an effective president accomplishing many goals including forging relations with China.   I grew up during the Viet Nam war, and it was a welcome relief when it ended in l975.  Consequently I enjoyed the l980's, because of relative peace in the United States.  For the most part also I enjoyed the l990's.  I was a supporter of Bill Clinton.  As I have mentioned before Mr. Clinton made some blunders during his presidency.  I do not mean a blow job by Monica Lewinsky.  Running under a campaign promise that every American should be able to own their own home, Wall Street created and manipulated hedge funds eventually almost bankrupting the economy of the United States.  Before George Bush left office he dipped his hand into the coffers of the American people and gave our money to Wall Street cronies.  We have yet to recover.  When Mr. Clinton was president we as a country enjoyed relative calm.  He and his wife Hillary were a thoughtful and thrifty couple.  Multiple affairs did not threaten their marriage, although they became a field day for media and the Clinton's political opponents. For months the front page of most newspapers were plastered with copy about Monica Lewinsky.  Other presidents have had affairs of a much higher profile.  John F. Kennedy supposedly nailed Marilyn Monroe, but pizza, a blue dress, and a load of the president's jism became more newsworthy.  It was a low point in American journalism.  Savvily Mr. Clinton sidestepped his brutal condemnation with a decree of the definition of the word "is."  It was not until long after the Clinton's left the white house, that I began to understand these great blunders.  NAFTA and the collapse of the peso, hedge funds, and wireless frequencies all were failures of policy.  Still the time Mr. Clinton was in office, America was a better place.  We were a better place that was more humane, more cultured, and more intelligent.  Surely we may recover from the disaster of "No Child Left Behind," but it will take decades.  It will take decades, because the world is changing, America has changed, and all of the educators on the planet cannot seem to agree on how to progress.  It is common knowledge our educational systems, both public and private, are anachronistic.  We are charging  ridiculous prices to educate adolescents for jobs that do not exist.  In essence America has screwed her adolescents to the contentment of the rich.  Literally we have eaten our children.  There is no one left to take the places of the iconic figures in recent American history.  Artists, musicians, and yuppies are dying at a rapid pace, and we as a nation have not prepared our younger generation for the shift in control.  Baby Boomers instead have tended their own crops, have eaten them, and are continuing to eat at the expense of their own children.  Surely it must be one of the most selfish generations in all American history.  It now is amusing to me, that I have lived long enough to witness history.  Life has cycled in America, and we are back at a time where Congress is in the hands of powerful trusts which run the country.  No one gives a shit about the common man or Americans in general.  Contrarily we are being murdered on a daily basis by the contempt of immoral corporations.  I feel lucky to have lived in a time when I trusted America and her interests.  I believed in the American Dream.  I believed mostly we were an honest and good country.  Now I know better, and I am beginning to realize we always have been corrupt.  I just have been able to bury my head in my own  ass.  That no longer is possible, and being a musical artist is an anachronism.  No one cares about music, and more worrisome to me I no longer value music as a life changing commodity.  I supposed we grow up and realize that wearing our emotions on our sleeves along with our dreams and aspirations is futile.  It is a waste of time.  I will not give up hope for my future, but I have become a realist.  We no longer are the country we once were, and the opportunities once afforded us as her citizens are gone.  Corporate America looks us straight in the eye, as she poisons us both with bad food and bad medicine.  It no longer is lucrative to heal disease, it is lucrative to attempt to treat our symptoms.  Having found myself surrounded by such evil, I am a bit verklempt.  It is unnerving, frightening, and neurotic.  I have to drink a considerable amount of alcohol to forget this truth.  When I do ask myself what exactly is making me nervous, it is obvious.  A huge military presence, the largest employer in Cumberland country, spins around me daily.  The days of yore when veterans were respected and patriotism was a key national sentiment are gone.  During Viet Nam veterans became baby killers.  During Dessert Storm it seems veterans became psychotic murderous savages.  Post traumatic stress disorder is rendering them incapable of restarting their lives as civilians, but little do they know that average citizens are having the same troubles.  America not only has become a sprawling military industrial complex, she has become a scattered wasteland of corporate debris.  We are polluted at every conceivable level with few corners left in which to hide.  Our souls are exposed, desecrated, and left for dead with contempt by corporate America.  While I am not a fan of the Walking Dead television program, perhaps it is a realistic depiction of what we have become at the hands of big business.  The question is are we as a nation going to continue to allow this assault on our personal sensibilities?  The only possible way for humanity to return is to return our environment to its original condition.  It will not be long before all of our ground water will be contaminated by fracking, drought will envelope the country like it has California, and we will be left scurrying about killing zombies.  Truly the Walking Dead is not that far off base.  When the high rises were built in Manhattan a phenomenon occurred that alienated local merchants.  They would look up from their vegetable stands, bagel shops, and newspaper joints and peer into those soulless windows towering above them.  "Who are these people, and what are they doing up there in those offices?"  The building of these skyscrapers should be iconic in American history, because it suggested the extinction of our traditional socio-economic system.  No longer was production and trade of an actual product to be our system of commerce.  Now the rich would acquire, accumulate, and gamble with our money.  Moving money from place to place did become and still is our new system of commerce.  It is failing, because inevitably the money runs out.  Without products nothing has value.  Money is meaningless except for the value of the paper it is printed upon.  Is this how we intend as a nation to progress?  Is there still gold in Ft. Knox that gives our currency value, or are we just shuffling paper around?  I think it is the latter, and a huge military presence here in Fayettenam to me is the same as those intimidating skyscrapers in Manhattan.  I watch intimidating aircraft fly over me daily.  Unlike buildings they are mobile.  They are capable of diverse long distance movement, and they seem to be intent upon some unknown goal.  We as citizens of Fayetteville, NC know little of this mission at Ft. Bragg.  What we do know is that they are spending millions of dollars expanding and fortifying this base.  The activities at Ft. Bragg spin around us, and yet we are not connected.  We sell our vegetable, bagels, and newspapers in complete anonymity to the soldiers at Ft. Bragg, or so it seems.  Possibly my view is not accurate understanding the amount of money both Ft. Bragg and Pope Field pump into the local economy.  I think it is in the vicinity of seven billion dollars a year.  Yippie.  Chain restaurants and medical services gladly absorb much of it.  Certainly jazz music does not.  Certainly skateboarding does not.  Certainly bicycling does not.  These harmless and healthy pastimes that once were part of the uplifting American culture that allowed us to sustain in the face of hardship have been removed.  Most of the cultural heritage of America has been removed, because they want us to spend money on unhealthy products.  It is why we are fat.  It is why we are diseased.  It is why we are unhappy.  Change this and maybe veterans stand a chance after war.