Remembering My Dad

Facebook pals and kids, you rarely like to be reminded of death. "Oh good grief", you say, "...please show us your latest lunch or dinner plate pix or whatever..."

 

 

Thirteen years ago, my Dad died. I will always remember those hours after I arrived at the hospital. All those memories, for good and bad. On both sides. I often wander into the corridors of my mind about what interesting conversations we would have had about the Bush/Obama regimes. "Oh, Rod!", the reader might think, "why must you always draw politics into such a...bla...bla...bla....". Well, it was politics which we often conversed about. For, how could we not?

 

This was a man who sat me down at the tender age of 13 and said I needed to watch these Watergate hearings on TV (ya know, back when government was actually a bit transparent). Not because it was so much historic, but because it was the exercising of Constitutional government, and he thought that was damn important and I should be a witness to it. And he was right! Although we talked years later about how Watergate was just a cover-up of the bigger cover-up (shhhh, JFK), I never really knew if he felt the same way. The point is, I wouldn't be such a rabble-rouser if it wasn't because of my Dad, even though if some you met him you'd think he be a bit conservative.

 

I was the third boy in the family he had to deal with and so my memories of him, today, deal mostly in that cloudy young adulthood and onto the later parts of my adulthood. As a writer, he was critical of a particular work, I recall. "Why must there be so many cuss words?", he asked. I said, "That's how people talk". And you know...I do not quite remember the rest of that conversation. And because I don't think it matters. He asked a question and that made me think, I remember that. Miss you Dad.

 

We Hold These Truths...

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

THAT Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin who killed John F. Kennedy and wounded Governor John Connally and James Teague; in spite of the fact "he" stayed at the assassin window for several seconds, ran in a direction away from the exit to secret "his" rifle, ran to the exit, down five flights of stairs, go into the lunch room, buy a coke from the machine and then be confronted by a Dallas Police officer only 90 seconds after the last shot.

THAT the Gulf Of Tonkin Incident, which got us in a shootin' war with them Viet Cong, actually happened; in spite of the fact, revealed years later, that it did not happen.

THAT Sirhan Sirhan was the lone assassin who killed Robert Kennedy and wounded six other people; in spite of the fact that he was standing in front of Kennedy, whose wounds were all from the back.

THAT James Earl Ray was the lone assassin who killed Martin Luther King; in spite of the fact that King's son doesn't believe it is true.

THAT Watergate was just a third rate burglary.

THAT the United States had nothing to do with the hostage crisis in 1979-80.

THAT the John Lennon shooting was the work of a lone gunman.

THAT the Ronald Reagan shooting was the work of a lone gunman.

THAT all the wars of the Reagan/Bush era were merely unending coincidences that had no relation to each other at all, step away nothing to see here.

THAT the Waco fire was a mere tragic accident.

THAT lying about who sucked your cock is a high crime and misdemeanor.

THAT the presidential election of 2000 was fair and balanced.

THAT September 11th was achieved by box cutter wielding terrorists hired by Saddam Hussien, no wait, Osama bin Ladin, well you get the idea.

THAT the presidential election of 2004 was fair and balanced (see above).

THAT it is okay for a private corporation called the Federal Reserve to print worthless money and sell it to the United States government and charge interest.

THAT we must pepper spray peaceful protesters.

THAT we must pepper spray peaceful protesters who think Wall Street is corrupt.