The Tree Is Rotten

You've probably already read that Cindy Sheehan has quit her protest of our Iraq policies but not before issuing the truest critique of not just the Busheviks or the Dems but of this entire country that anyone has put out in a while. The problem isn't Georgi or feckless, gutless Dems. It's us. Her words apply to all of us:

"I have tried ever 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."

If the US were a tree, with all its dead parts (Repubs) and disease (Dems, media, us), every tree surgeon would advise cutting it down. We tool along thinking that, even with Iraq, global warming and its water and energy brothers, the declining economy, sharpening divides by race and class, and anything else you want to add, we only need to trim the status quo here and prop it up there. Meanwhile, the rot proceeds. Through a grief that made her look at this nation through the lens of reality, Cindy Sheehan discovered a painful truth, much as, say, Mark Twain did in another time. Yes, something called the United States may exist after the flood of the next few decades recedes.

But it won't be the "United States."