I should revive this thing

I should revive this blog, though it's been a good 10 months or so since I've updated it. I think I was always self-conscious that something I wrote here would be traced back to me, held against me, considering the work I do. Maybe that's over-rating my importaance in the world, but whatever. I've seen "objective" reporters and media types challenged for political stances attributed to them based on little things in their work or personal lives ... a bumper sticker left on an editor's desk becomes supposed proof in a rival community newspaper's column that the editor is a supporter of that candidate in a close election, etc. etc. People will use anything to get you off a certain beat or a certain avenue of investigation when they feel you're upsetting their apple cart and undermining their agenda.

It's late, I am watching a film before bed, but a few tidbits before I nod off. There was a column in Time Magazine about race and happiness... they've been polling people of different races for decades to see who is happiest. Whites are still happier than blacks, but the distance between the two has never been so small. Black women showed the greatest gains in happiness, I guess because of economic and social independence, no longer needing a man to move ahead in the world, something like that. White women showed the biggest drop, I do believe. I'm not surprised. They can be a pretty miserable, petty bunch, all those white female perfectionists out there hovering like helicopters over their children and bursting into tears if dinner isn't perfect. Control freak Type A = Type Bitch in my book. But I'm supposedly an asshole by some standards, so whatever.

Young black men stayed flat. The column said one in three young black men faced incarceration, or something like that, so no wonder happiness doesn't improve for said group. That's sad. Pathetic, too. But mostly sad.

Okay, I'm done criticizing white women and black men. Here's my other rant so I can offend everyone equally.

Ok, I was of the "support the troops -- bring 'em home!" camp for a long time. These wars haven't accomplished much and everyone knows, as soon as we exit IrAQ and Afghanistan, both countries are going to go five ways to hell in a damn handbasket. But lookee here... why would someone sign up for the military now, knowing full well based on media coverage that if you deploy today you're probably going to shoot up some jeep full of a family of civilians, women, kids, maybe infants, as it's desperately trying to pass your Humvee?

I keep reading the same story over and over. "We ordered the jeep to stop. They wouldn't stop. We fired a warning shot. They kept coming. We opened fire. The jeep flipped. When we went to investigate, we found a dead man and wife, their two dead kids, and a dead baby."

It's like clockwork. I've read the same account from so many different soldiers - the one that appeared today was in City Pages, some guy returning from war traumatized. His marriage fell apart, he flipped out at a convenience store, yadda yadda...

I'm sympathetic... to a point. But I'm growing less so. I mean, look here: Knowing that you will quite likely end up shooting innocent people, why would you still sign up for that job? It makes no sense. Absolutely no sense.

I know I haven't fought overseas (I'm too ADHD to go over there, even as a reporter, I fear). But I did lose a friend in Afghanistan. His take on the wars was: this sucks. And it does.