WARNING - SATIRE AHEAD

A Letter to "The Greatest Generation"

Dear Moms & Dads,

Sorry we haven't written in a long time, but you know we Boomers have
an enormous amount of focus on ourselves, and we have been so busy leading fulfilling lives, or on meaninful journeys seeking fulfilling lives. We wanted to pass on some exciting news about us that we know you'll be thrilled about. But first, with "D-Day" celebrations going on (seems like ancient history!), it seems only polite that we say "thanks" for defending us from the Nazis. So be sure to see all of the TV specials and movies that we've made depicting your lives. We're sorry we haven't had a chance to talk to you about your own personal story of those times, but we've just been so busy.

We know that most of you probably enlisted only because you didn't want to be ostricized from mid-twentieth century society, and the Army was the only way you could make your life better (clearly American capitalism had failed in providing jobs and it took a war to revive the economy). It just seems ironic that the Bush Administration is now plotting to turn America into such a fascist state, what with John Ashcroft, the Patriot Act, and a right-wing Supreme Court. We also forgive you for some of the terrible atrocities that you committed during WWII, like incarcaration of Japanese-Americans and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, but we hadn't enlightened you about civil rights yet. You'll be happy to know that we have reconciled with our deluded contemporaries who actually went to Vietnam and did all similar sorts things like My Lai. By the way, about Vietnam, remember that was different than WWII: it was OUR lives and futures that were going to be risked, not yours. Too bad you could have signed up again for that one, eh? But then if you had been killed who would have paid for our tuition? (ha ha!). We haven't seen any TV specials on the Korean War yet but we promise we will when we have time. But we did watch MASH every week!

It's still puzzling to us as to why after saving civilization from facism, you then came home and created the 1950s! What a socially, sexually, culturally, and intellectually repressive time! All your cookie cutter jobs and cookie cutter suburban homes, and empty lives. The only thing of any worth that came out of the '50s was
Allen Ginsberg, Jack Keroack, Hugh Hefner, the Kinsey Report, and folk music. It seemed that you were compensating for your lack of food, clothing and shelter during the Depression by indulging yourself with things like ranch houses and TV dinners. But thanks for the toys, the Davy Crockett coonskin cap, the bicycles, the hula-hoops, the '45s, the car, and the tuition. If Bush and his cronies would spend more on education maybe we could send our kids to Harvard, too.

But remember, we were soldiers, too, in a way: fighting an unjust war, (we did organize a bake sale last week for the "Peace and Justice in Iraq Committee" last week, and if there is one more Abu Graib only our enlightened committment to nonviolent resistance will keep us from spitting on the next soldier we see!) and rebelling against a repressive society ('68 was hell, but thanks for wiring that money after those jerks that ran the ashram took all our stuff, as part of our "spriritual awakening"). Here were some of victories: guilt-free sexual expression and more open relationships (by the way, we'll tell the grandkids that we actually wrote you a letter during our next visitation weekend), conciousness expansion (thanks for being at Tom's funeral for us back in '72. We just got so busy. We knew he would buy some bad junk one day; he should have used our dealer), a more economically just society (those food stamps really came in handy...we had to really BS that social worker to get them. That damn Newt Gingrich and the Republicans tricked Clinton into taking away assistance from people whose only crime was they didn't win life's lottery. We are so committed to social justice that we became life members of Oxfam after we took profits on the junk bonds in '84), repressive social and religious institutions (oh, yeah the grandkids really like the private academy, but man is the tuition steep, and we tell the kids to ignore the God crap that the nuns spew during class), and did we mention guilt-free sexual expression?

Well, enough about our past, let us tell you about our future! Here's the great news, and we know you are so happy for us: we are about to retire! Sadly, you'll not be able spend more time with us; we won't be able to get the nursing home much since we're going to move closer to our spiritual mentor in Sedona. But we know you're thrilled for us, what with all of the miracles of modern medicine - Viagra, botox, plastic surgery, hip replacements, fetal stem cell research, and maybe even organ harvesting - we'll live forever and be able to achieve complete fulfillment! Those grandkids better starting working harder so that we can take out several times more than we ever put into Social Security and Medicare!

Later, Mom and Dad - our reading group starts the Noam Chomsky '9/11' book in a few minutes.

- your kids, The Worst Generation

Bill O'Reilly had an interesting factoid a few nights ago: the New York Times has run front page articles on the Iraq prison abuse scandal for 28 consecutive days! O'Reilly claims that this front-page coverage approaches the high water marks set in the thick of Watergate. The Washington Post has similarly run frontpage articles in 26 of the last 28 days.

This is astounding, compared to the coverage that is being neglected, such as the investigation of mass murder in Hussein's Iraq, the repressive atmosphere of the militant Islamic mini-state of Fallujah, or anything positive that is being accomplished in Iraq.

There is some heavy-duty manipulation of news going on here. Gosh, it couldn't be because there is an election coming up, could it?

It appears that the local anti-smoking forces have rounded up a mob, passed out torches, loosed the hounds, and are now leading a crusade up to Castle Frankenstein to dispatch that most monstrous of modern-day evils, Smoking in Public. If this the monster is put to the torch by the local “Pleasure Posse” they would also be killing freedom of choice.

Let me make one thing clear: prolonged cigarette smoking is injurious and leads to disease. But most levels of exposure to public second-hand smoke are negligible, posing no more health risks than other air pollutants that we accept in public environments (auto/bus exhausts, construction activities, exhausts from restaurant grills, rotting garbage, etc). Part of the problem is the anti-smoking crowd’s tendency to fuzz-over the details of first-hand and second-hand smoke.

The principal fact that anti-smokers refuse to acknowledge is that smoking is a legal activity that many of their fellow citizens, misguided as they are, partake in for their pleasure, and that they have the freedom to do so. A large part of a smoker’s enjoyment at a bar or restaurant is...smoking. Proprietors of bars and restaurants have the freedom to choose to what degree they will accommodate this activity by their patrons, and in turn we are all free to choose whether to patronize an establishment based on what is offered by the proprietor. Non-smokers do not have the right to deny smoking patrons their freedom to enjoy smoking at an establishment if it was the intent of the owner of the establishment to provide for it. For example, there are some bars and restaurants in which “cigar bars” are an integral part of their motif, and it is nonsensical to insist that smokers be confined to a small “tobacco ghetto” of such an establishment’s seating. Similarly, requiring the remaining seating to be completely free of second-hand smoke is snake-pit of subjectivity. Shall we also insist on a section that is completely devoid of noxious, headache-inducing perfumes?

It seems that some of the locals are “embarrassed” to take friends from California (or from other enlightened regions of America) to our local restaurants where actual smoking is taking place. I certainly hope they didn’t take their friends to any local bingo parlors, either. I would also suggest they steer their friends clear of some other local aesthetic embarrassments. These would include the off-campus housing neighborhoods of the University of Michigan, where many students landscape their yards with whiskey bottles and the trees are adorned with underwear and condoms. And certainly avoid any mention of the local "Hash Bash", where for nearly three decades Ann Arborites have annually celebrated the destructive drug culture and their right to engage in illegal and health-threatening activities in public spaces.
If our civic institutions would like to strike a blow for public health, this event seems a more reasonable target.

If not the iron fist of prosecution by the state, what recourse do non-smokers have to express their discontent at smoking in restaurants, bars, and other public establishments? Well, for starters, how about freedom of choice: if one is a committed non-smoker, patronize or work for establishments that support your smoke-free needs, do not patronize or work for those that do otherwise, and we’ll let the market sort it out. If the market decides not to support public smoking, the anti-smoking crowd will have prevailed, fair and square.

For the past several weeks I've been reading the letters written to the editors of our local paper, the Ann Arbor News. Not so much to gauge local opinion on national issues - such opinion around here is overwhelmingly of the left. Rather, I've been observing how this opinion is expressed, the type of arguements that are put forth, and how the writer views those who hold opposing opinions.

Typical examples: one writer finds little solace that our governor's house is now occupied by a Democrat, for he is convinced that the Republican White House and Congress will now "do their best" to start the war with Iraq, and "totally disregard" the problems of a sluggish economy. Another writer suggests that the Bush administration's reservations about, among other things, the ABM treaty, signals Bush's intent to use smallpox. "...[It] seems no weapon is too horrific," she writes, "for them to contemplate employing against anyone they deem an enemy". Yet another writer finds the roots of hatred and terror toward us caused by our government's use of military force to maintain our world of haves and have-nots.

President Bush will use smallpox. We bomb to deny others economic opportunity. The Republicans will deliberately ignore the suffering of Americans. Wow. Do we eat our young, too?

How do people get to the state of mind where they imbue their leaders and fellow Americans with such evil intentions? Does the Left function essentially in internal exile, sharing no common ground of values and beliefs of the society in which they live?

A "dead drift" is a flyfishing technique where a subsurface fly is cast across and upstream in a river. The fly then follows the river's current which may lead it into a deep pool, sweep it past a rock, or carry it near a sunken log where there may lurk a large fish that will strike at it as it passes by. Thus, dead-drifting is a process of discovery, where the fisherman allows his fly to follow the natural course of a river to probe its secrets.

Thus the title "Dead Drifts" for this journal: by casting out ideas and letting them flow through a river of thought and discussion, perhaps we can entice the truth to strike.