F35 and the Liberals

i was delighted to hear from a friend, a staunch liberal, what he thought about the F35.  "I wish Canadians would realize that the Americans were the threat."  It reminded me of the Quebecois and their desire to 'separate'.  I remember wanting to be separate from the US.  Personallyt I've wanted to be on another planet.  I remember well how we loved Guess Who's "American Women" . "Don't come knocking around my door no more.....don't want your war machines."
The fact for me is that America is the Roman Empire. Soon China may be the next Empire.  It's no longer the good guys and the bad guys.  It's mercenaries and Star wars.  In the end Princess Liah divorced.  Microcosms and macrocosms.  Paul Simon, 50 ways to leave a lover.
I looked at my friend. We're old now. We broke down singing protest songs from our youth.   I was trying to tell him how the only competitive planes to the F35 cost around 100 millions themselves.  There's no cheap alternative.  I said, "I don't want Canadians to be in yesterday's technology. I want them to be in the F35 since that stealth fighter is the best there is today."
My friend simply didn't want war.  I could see Country Joe and the Fish in his eyes.   He and I both wanted another time and place where we could believe in peace. We wanted to be back before disco.  Before cocaine. Before dot com bubbles.   I never was in favour of unilateral disarmament but I sure like Rosa Parks. I miss Gonzo journalism too.
In Egypt they got rid of Mubarek with not that much blood shed. Ghadaffi is another matter.  I marched and was billy clubbed in peace demonstrations. It was before CNN censorship.    I became a doctor to be a healer.  But somewhere I lost the faith my friend still had.  I'd become conservative in old age.  Maybe the abortions and euthanasia got to me. I wanted life and the world was dying before my eyes.  Maybe I was just slipping away. it's confusing.  The lines were alot clearer in Sunday school.
"What's the alternative to America as the Emperor, China, Saudi Arabia?" l asked."it's one thing to criticize, you've got to have a solution.'
"We should be like Switzerland.  We should declare neutrality. We should just get out of NATO and no longer be apart of the American mercenary empire."
I liked that but I was thinking of Troudeau who said that when the elephant america rolled over, the mouse Canada had to pay attention.  America might just take the water and the land and annex us for their Homeland Security.  It's not the 1812 war any more.  I'd like to wait till we have F35 before we tell America what we're going to do.  But by then China or Iran might well want to invade Canada.  Invading Canada isn't so far fetched anymore.  l remember when the older men talked about the Korean War. They threw men at the Western forces like they were bullets.
Another  friend who married and lived in China for years said, "You don't understand how little life is valued there, in their factories, in there streets.  In their mind, they've got a billion too many people.. They've got no women for their men and an whole lot of single men in uniform.  They don't have Gorlia Steinem feminism because they aborted her and her sisters before they had a chance to call all men rapists and pedophiles.  We squeal when we lose a woman captain in Kandahar.  They don't have a free press.  No one knows what's going on."
I remember all the men with guns I've seen. They're all afraid.  I'm afraid.  I'm an old man and the old tyrants don't want to face their past. They don't want to give up their power, their luxury and their security. I don't want to give up my youth or my idealism.
Gandhi's peace demonstration gave rise to the division between India and Pakistan.  India is worried that the 100 million dollar Chinese jet that's like the F35 surpasses everything the Indians have.  India has China and it's massive army poised on it's border.  There's been war there before.  Iran and Irag fought too.  More and more Canadians I meet fought in a war in the country of origin. Even the Buddhists are killing each other over a Buddhist temple. All the criminals have guns and gang wars are raging on the streets of Canadian cities.  I grew up when cowboys fought with fists and rarely drew their guns. Now guys get curbed and the girls stab each other and slash faces.  It's not because they're watching the Discovery channel.
I wish I had my friend's faith.  I feel like Arjuna in the chariot with Krishna. Arjuna says the people who are fighting are all my family. They're my cousins fighting my cousins.  Krishna replies, there will always be war, it's just a matter of whether you will or will not be in it.  Jesus said as much about poverty.  There's a terrible realism in those lines.
I wore flowers in my hair and marched with the tens of thousands in the streets of San Francisco.  Despite all that prayer and energy, Vietnam continued.  Lennon and Yoko did a bed in and sang "Give Peace a Chance."  Lennon was shot like Kennedy, like Martin Luther King.  The good die young.  Then there was Tricky Dicky, Watergate, White Water, Hillary Clinton, the theft of the mid west pensions, the Bill's sending missiles across neutral borders as the dog wagged the tail. There was Bush and Bush and the CIA and Irag and Irag and Kundahar.  Guantanamero.
There was all that other stuff too. Like the fall of the Berlin wall. The exposure of the 50 million killed by Stalin, the Polish elite dead in mass graves, the Pol Pot and the Khymer Rouge.  I read that Bernard Shaw was an aetheist but said the events of the 20th century robbed him of his faith.  The great men of the west died in WWI, the war to end all wars.
When I was in Israel I had a vision.  I was walking in Jerusalem and before me I saw the earth sitting in the universe with a big barbed wire circling it. A sign hung from the barbed wire like the OK Corrall. The sign said, "Don't go here, they kill God."  I imagine Aliens bypassing the earth in cute space scooters. The grown ups have come to terms with their paranoia.  They're still waiting for us in quantum multiverse.
In that world my liberal friend is smiling.  I believe we'll find peace in heaven.  This election I'm so jaded I'll probably vote conservative.  I want the Canadian military to defend us from our enemies in F35's, what the liberals call the 'champagne of jets'.
I worry that too many people are smoking dope these days. It's could affect the election. The recent data says that 7% of BC drivers were stoned.
I really wish I didn't worry about the military or the economy.  I'd like to be liberal again. I'd like to believe promises that the money will go to hospitals and education. My problem is that I work in medicine and education and I've seen that the politicians promise us money but then then give $500 million to their advertising friends to make pictures of themselves.  I'd rather our military get 5 F35's than this waste of an election make work project for the liberal and NDP media friends.
Mostly I wish I was younger. I wish I was  still wearing flowers in my hair.  But then I didn't know about the Nestle corporation killing the black babies.  I hadn't even heard of Pinochet.  I didn't know Sweden women would smear Australia's Julian Assange to be the call girl of Obama's Military Industrial complex secretive America. I didn't know about Columbine. I certainly didn't imagine Goldman Sachs would take out insurance on their own junk futures, and keep the billions while 1 in 8 Americans went on food stamps.
All I'm left to believe in is the F35 and the space program.  Beam Me Up Scotty. There's no intelligent life form here.  The Dalai Lama would have died were it not for some left over WWI guns that covered his escape when the Chinese came for him with machine guns.     The Arabs can build Dubai.  In Canada all we get is another election.

I cry thinking of wearing flower in my hair.  I cry remember painting peace on the blue Volkswagon Bug.  I loved being a child.