George Carlin on war

[Achilles]

Snippets of conversation over in Kavar's Corner have had this Carlin bit running on repeat in my head for most of the last day.

 

I thought I would share it here and hopefully get a conversation going. Here it is:

 

[Carlin speaking about the 1991 Gulf War]

Now you´ve probably noticed I don´t feel about that "war," the way we were told we were supposed to feel about that war ... the way we were ordered and instructed to feel by the United States Government to feel about that war ... you see, I tell ya ... my mind doesn´t work that way ... I got this real moron thing I do - it´s called, "thinking," - and I´m not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions. I don´t just "roll over" when I´m told to.

 

Sad to say most Americans just "roll over" on command. Not me - I have certain rules I live by.

 

My first rule:

 

I don´t believe anything the government tells me. Nothing. Zero. Nope.

 

And I don´t take very seriously the media or the press in this country, who, in the case of the Persian Gulf War were nothing more than unpaid employees of the Department of Defense, and who, most of the time functioned as sort of an unofficial public relations company for the United States Government.

 

So, I don´t listen to them, I don´t *really* believe in my country, and I gotta tell ya folks, I don´t get all choked up about yellow ribbons and American flags. I consider them to be symbols, and I leave symbols to the symbol-minded.

Sadly, much of this routine is eerily relevant more than a decade later (every time Carlin mentions Dick Cheney or Saddam Hussein, I feel like I'm trapped in some kind of creepy time warp thingy). And every time I see an American flag pin on some politician's lapel or one of those yellow ribbon magnets stuck on the back of an SUV, I think of Carlin.

 

This isn't really a Carlin remembrance thread though. I was hoping his comments might spark a discussion about patriotism vs jingoism, how U.S. military action isn't always the noble thing the media and the gov't wants us to believe it is, etc.

 

Enjoy.

[mimartin]

You’re correct it is eerily relevant still today. Maybe if Congress, the media and especially the American people would have taken Carlin’s advice we would not have attacked a country under the pretense of looking for made up abbreviation WMD. Maybe the American people would have demanded Congress and the media did their jobs and questioned the Administration about the faulty intelligence and outright misrepresentation of that intelligence before we diverted resources from Afghanistan to a country that had nothing to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks.