"Tell him to look at th' bright side of things,
Willie. His trees is pruned, his ground is
plowed an' his house is air conditioned."
- Bill Mauldin, combat cartoonist, 1944.
The prevailing attitude of the ladies and gentlemen featured in [Ken] Burns' film [The War], and by proxy all Americans of that era, was that if we had to fight a war, we had better do it right. Clearly and with little dissent, we had to fight that war, and without fail, Americans rallied together to do it really damn well.
People from every corner of the nation selflessly pooled their resources for the great cause of World War II, and I'm not sure about this one, but I don't think President Roosevelt ever once asked the country to sacrifice by going to the mall. And I'm pretty sure he didn't outsource the construction of tanks, Flying Fortresses, Hellcats and Thunderbolts to Mexico and China. That's a hell of a thing by today's standards, isn't it?
We've fallen so far from what we used to be ...
And now, 50 years later, in our lives and times, we get President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney.
Read the full essay here ...
My comment: We've squandered all of the post 9/11 international good will, we've squandered our united solidarity, we've squandered a surplus left by the previous administration, we've squandered billions of dollars on a war that we were told would finance itself, we've squandered the lives and hopes and dreams of 4,000 of our young and brave dead and 21,000 horribly wounded and maimed ... for what?
We've spent our faith in our leaders and we have none left, we've given away our rights as citizens, and we've sacrificed our optimism ... the price is to great.
We are more afraid and less secure. Hatred and division have increased by orders of magnitude ... the return on our investment is not worth it.
But look on the bright side ... we still have bread and we still have the circuses, we still have 24 hour O.J. and Oprah and Princess Di and Anna Nichole.
And when the bread is gone, we'll still have the circuses.
Oh! The bread and circuses!
This phrase originates in Satire X of the Roman poet Juvenal of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries. In context, the Latin phrase "panem et circenses" (bread and circuses) is given as the only remaining cares of a Roman populace which has given up its birthright of political freedom:
"... iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli
uendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim
imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se
continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat,
panem et circenses. ..."
(Juvenal, Satire 10.77-81)
("... Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man,
the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time
handed out military command, high civil office, legions - everything, now
restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things:
bread and circuses.")
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