Are we really going to do this?
Is this what it?s finally come down to, is it really?
Look at yourselves, you silly selfish bastards.
Look. At. Yourselves.
Go on, do it, find a mirror and look into your own dead zombie eyes and see the empty void looking back.
This revolting, disgusting display of hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy, is this what we?ve finally become?
Are we now so filled with foul bilious hatred, are we now so consumed with soul-destroying fear, do we now despise our own selves so much that we would actually protest the return of one of our own? Is that it?
Is that what we?ve become?
If so, then the sooner America collapses of its own maggot-ridden gangrenous rot, the better.
Is this who we are?
Because the utter unmitigated, unhinged, unbounded yellow-eyed hypocrisy that defines this sick twisted morally bankrupt philosophy has finally, today, reached its zenith. There is nowhere left to go.
I didn?t think these people could dishonor the spirit of this country any more than they already had, but I was wrong.
Oh, I get it. I understand that frightened people become more and more irrational, especially when they are allowed, encouraged, to feed incestuously on each other?s fear. And I get that they are afraid. I can see it in their faces, I can hear it in their voices. I get that they?re afraid of change. I get that they?re afraid of the future. I get that they?re afraid of the past. And I get that they?re afraid of the present. I get that they?re afraid of losing power and privilege and prestige. I get that they?re afraid of their capricious and childishly vengeful god. I get that they?re afraid of different races and different cultures and different accents and different religions and different sexual orientations and different viewpoints and different politics. I get it, they?ve screamed their small fears over and over and only a dead man could possibly miss it.
I get that they are so consumed with rage and so filled with naked hate and so programmed with their diseased ideology that it poisons their minds like a computer chip submerged in acid.
I get that they are so utterly terrified of the world that they piss themselves in abject fear at the mere thought of going to the grocery store without a goddamned gun stuck in their pants like an extra oversized prick.
More than anything, I get that they are afraid of Barack Obama, everything about him, every single thing about the president terrifies them. Obama stalks their feverish nightmares and he is the very symbol of their shameful impotence ? so much so that they?ve written him into their precious bible, in a starring role as the devil, the destroyer of worlds.
I get it.
And I get that it?s an uncontrollable mindless tic, a raging xenophobia, a political PTSD, and they know that it?s wrong but they can?t seem to do anything about it.
It?s just how their crippled minds work.
I know that I?m supposed to cut these people some slack. I know that an objective person would try to empathize. I know I should try and see the world through their eyes, to meet them halfway, to treat them as if their gibbering insanity is, if not okay, at least reasonable. Understandable. Sane. And I try, with varying and limited degrees of success, but I try because I understand they are afraid and they just can?t help themselves.
But this? This, right here, this is the limit of my patience.
With this, they can no longer claim that it?s a difference in political philosophy, or a clash of competing economic theories, or the debate between big government and small, or civil rights, or taxes or the national debt or jobs or gay marriage or abortion or any of the bullshit excuses they?ve used to justify their unhinged rage for the last five years.
No, it?s hate pure and simple.
It?s hate for hate?s sake, hate driven by unreasoned selfish fear and nothing more.
When these capering lunatics stand in front of the nation, the world, and without a single shred of decency, without the tiniest modicum of self-conscious shame, without any apparent awareness of their own boundless hypocrisy, and loudly protest the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from the clutches of our sworn enemies, I have to say no more.
I?ve reached the limit of what little tolerance I have for this insane hatred.
They say it?s because Bergdahl is a deserter, that he could be a traitor.
And maybe he is. Maybe he?s both.
And maybe he isn?t.
We don?t know. No one knows, except for Bergdahl himself.
And Bergdahl has neither admitted his guilt nor proclaimed his innocence as yet. There?s been no Article 32 hearing, no trial, no court martial. The military and the intelligence agencies haven?t even begun his debriefing. All we know for certain is that an American soldier was taken captive by the enemy, held for years, and returned as part of a prisoner exchange. That?s it. That?s what we know. We don?t know what events led to his capture, not all of them, not yet. We don?t know the details of his captivity. We don?t know the particulars of his release beyond the broad details that have been published in the press.
Nevertheless, Bergdahl has been condemned by the popular media, by social networks, by pundits and politicians, not because they know more about the situation than you or I do, but solely because they hate the president. If Obama was behind Bergdahl?s release, then Bergdahl is a traitor, Q.E.D. because the president must never, ever, be allowed even the slightest acknowledgement of patriotism.
This condemnation isn?t about Bergdahl, it?s about Obama.
Certainly, some of Bergdahl?s fellow soldiers say he deserted. That he was disillusioned with the war, with America, that he left his guard post and walked away into the desert in some foolish and quixotic attempt to reach China. They say that men, good men, real heroes, died searching for Bergdahl after he disappeared.
And those soldiers, they?d probably know, wouldn?t they?
And, yeah, if I was one of them I?d be damned resentful too and I have no doubt whatsoever that I?d use this blog to protest those who would attempt to paint Bergdahl as a hero ? if I knew for certain that he deserted, if I?d lost friends searching for him.
I don?t begrudge those soldiers one iota of their resentment, they earned it with their own blood.
And let?s say it?s true.
Let?s say for the sake of argument that Bergdahl is indeed a deserter, that his capture by the Taliban was a result of his own cowardly actions.
So?
So what?
Last time I checked, the punishment specified for violation of UCMJ Article 85 (or Article 86 depending on Bergdahl?s intentions) isn?t to throw him to our enemies!
Ultimately, Bergdahl will have to face his accusers, and if the allegations of desertion are proven true then he will answer for the crime of desertion as specified under the Uniform Code of Military Justice ? which technically could include the death penalty since the desertion is alleged to have occurred during time of war and in the face of the enemy. Far more likely, of course, if Bergdahl is convicted of desertion he?ll probably get little more than a bad conduct discharge and forfeiture of any benefits. It?s unlikely that he?d see prison time ? and, really, how would that even be a punishment compared to what he?s already been through? Likely he won?t ever face a hearing and he?ll be administratively separated from the service at the Army?s earliest possible convenience.
But, and here?s the thing so pay attention, even if Bergdahl is tried and found guilty of desertion, even if he?s found guilty of treason as some would have it, he?ll go to prison ? we won?t give him back to the Taliban.
There is no crime so great that leaving him in the hands of our enemies is the indicated punishment.
He was, he is, one of ours. Period.
For better or for worse, he?s one of ours, and we don?t leave our people behind ? not even the deserters.
We Americans sent him into the meat grinder and it is our sacred obligation to get him home, no matter what.
Even if he was dead.
We?ve been digging through the jungles of Southeast Asia for the better part of four decades, trying to make good on that promise for the men we left there. We?ve spared no expense to return home little more than tiny moldering pieces of bone. Some of those dead men were heroes, some were hardened professionals, and some were just soldiers doing their duty, who came when called and who did their best to survive a horrible conflict they couldn?t understand and wanted no part of. Some were steadfast and some were cowards and some were fools. But they were, each and every one, ours. And we have done our best to bring them home.
And what? We should do any less for Sgt. Bergdahl?
The staggering hypocrisy of this becomes immediately apparent when you realize that the very same folks who would grant an unconditional pardon to the traitorous Edward Snowden, a man who provably and self-admittedly gave aid and comfort to our adversaries during time of war and who continues to do so to this very day, these same people would proclaim Snowden a hero and leave Bergdahl to die unlamented in a Taliban cave ? solely because they despise Barack Obama and for no other reason.