"All styles are good except the boring." – Voltaire

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
- Voltaire

Voltaire

My atheism has been the easiest intellectual decision of my life, a view I’ve held since I began forming conscious memories as a child; indeed, I honestly have no recollection of ever seriously believing in god. After all these years of non-belief, and not once wavering, I’d say I’m just not wired for belief in god, gods, religion, or “spirituality,” whatever that means or entails. I’ll be even more honest in saying that it has required little or no contentious thought, or intellectual effort, to be atheistic. I just am.

However, atheism is also difficult intellectually because, in denying the power of god, gods, and religion, and all the intellectual certainty that comes from such belief systems, doubt plays a much heavier role in how atheists view everything. But, to be honest, I welcome the doubts as one of the greatest gifts of pure freedom we humans possess, but are mostly afraid to confront.

Atheism is not a “religion” or school of thought. It simply means not believing in god, or gods, or a spiritual existence of any kind. Moreover, I don’t belong to any kind of organization, movement, or group associated with atheism, nor do I follow any leaders or gurus. On this matter I am completely and wholly on my own, a free-thinking, free-living individual, alone in my (non)belief system, willing to stand on my own two feet and face the world on my own intellectual (and non-spiritual) terms.

Ever since the Age of Enlightenment, and especially since the formation of the United States of America, with its brilliant First Amendment Establishment and Free Exercise clauses (which have made the USA a secular nation by law), organized religion has slowly lost its ability to coerce belief from a position of power and authority, and eventually more and more people have slipped through the cracks of the religious majority. With each new generation the number of non-believers grows, and with each new generation the oppression, abuse, and denial of rights by the religious majority upon the non-believers has been reduced through countless challenges to, and victories over, unconstitutional laws that supported the religious majority.

To me, atheism is simply the last—and most important—step to complete freedom and liberty. The formation of the USA was the first step in creating a democratic republic free from the rule and power of the Ancien Régime that lorded over Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire and enslaved a vast majority of the people. However, in the last 200 years the USA, while ridding itself of kings, princes, dukes, and other hereditary rulers, could not quite become the secular state it intended itself to be by its founders. Religion, though not formally sanctioned by the government, still found ways to exert its power over the people simply because a vast majority of American citizens supported religious authority over the supposedly secular institutions and power structures of American government.

Luckily, a brave few have challenged religious authority in American governance by appealing to our excellent check against majority power, which is the judicial branch of our government, and it has been in the courts where religious authority and power over the secular government has been defeated and denied. America is not a theocracy ruled by the Christian majority, and although this was the original intent of its founders, it didn’t truly come to pass until late in the 20th Century after many contentious court battles and judgments, many of which were extremely unpopular with the Christian majority.

Atheism, however, goes one step beyond that in establishing freedom for individuals. Ultimately, religious belief is an individual intellectual choice. In choosing to believe in religions and god or gods, individuals subjugate and submit themselves willingly to a higher power and authority, whether spiritual or temporal, or both. Whether religious people will admit it or not, this subjugation to a higher power and authority begins to strip them of their intellectual freedom and individuality, creating for them a “safe” belief system free from doubt and filled with absolute certainty egged on by false hope, group think and coercion, and phony religious fables, hotly writ, and folklore masked as dogma and, to a lesser extend, philosophy.

Atheism frees an individual from subjugation and submission to any and all authority, spiritual and temporal. For me, this choice was made easier simply because my not believing in god, gods, religion, or spirituality was never challenged by much internal intellectual debate or contentious thought. For me it was more or less inherently embedded in my intellect that I do not believe. All the evidence presented in my life trying to change my mind and coerce me to believe was rejected as easily as my mind rejects fairy tales, folklore, superstition, and phony or fallacious philosophies.

Pardon me for sounding a little arrogant here, but maybe the next step in the evolution of the human mind begins with the rational mind gaining better control over the irrational. Maybe that’s why religion, god, gods, and spirituality—or, for that matter, any kind of superstition or supernatural thinking—have never gained even a weak foothold in my intellectual being. Maybe my mind is less encumbered, by design, with irrationality and illogical thinking. I think more and more humans will be wired this way in the future. I’m one of the lucky ones who got it early in the curve.

Here’s what I have difficulty expressing to the believers out there. It’s not just that I don’t believe, it’s also that I don’t, even for one millisecond, understand your belief at any intellectual level. It makes absolutely no sense to me. It never did. Moreover, while I certainly respect your right to believe whatever you want, the truth is I do not, and never will, respect your beliefs.

This isn’t an essay about morality, right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, or even the primacy of belief vs. non-belief in the shaping of a culture or society. I am merely declaring, as simply as I can state it, my non-belief. I don’t have great certainty about much in this universe in which I live, especially about the existence of god, or gods, or spiritual beings, I am just certain I don’t believe in them, nor has anything in my 48 years of living done much to change that view.

I am sure this essay will upset a few people. Just remember this before you reply: I am not attacking anyone personally here. If you take it personally, that’s your choice. But please refrain from personal attacks against me. I find ad hominem attacks to be the lowest form of intellectual discourse, wielded by ham-fisted lunkheads who do not have the intellectual ability to express themselves logically and rationally, or with much eloquence.

1/19/2011 – Seattle

Reading material:

1. Teacher Salaries Issue Sharpens Across Region by Kathy Boccella, December 20, 2010, The Philadelphia Enquirer
2. Republicans Incite Class Warfare—Within Middle Class y Matthew Rothschild, July 5, 2010, The Progressive
3. Washington State Education Leaders Lament Major Budget Cuts by Katherine Long, December 15, 2010, The Seattle Times
4. Christie Calls for New Jersey Pension, Education Cuts by Terrence Dopp and Esme Deprez, January 11, 2011, Bloomberg Business Week
5. Public Education in Texas Faces Massive Cuts , no byline, January 19, 2011, Associated Press

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But if allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is after all not a natural state.

- John Ralston Saul

And now comes the American plutocracy’s class warfare’s final phase as the political minions of our plutocracy begin dismantling the government infrastructures and services that benefit the middle and lower classes.

The problem here is simple. As the marginal tax rates continue to plummet for the wealthiest 1%, coupled with the massive loss of tax revenue at all levels caused by the Great Recession, most state, and local governments across the country face huge deficits.  Since there’s zero political will to raise taxes, especially on our wealthiest who are gorging on record corporate profits and rising stock portfolios while the lower classes continue to face widespread unemployment and negative income growth, state and local governments have no recourse but to cut spending on everything, even once sacred cows such as education.

Let’s be clear here. The wealthiest 1% in this country has seen its income rise in record amounts, even since the Great Recession began in 2007. The wealthiest 1% own about 35% of all wealth in America, and this is the only group that has seen a considerable rise in its income since 1980. The upper 20% of of earners in America control 85% of all wealth, leaving a paltry 15% for the remaining 80% of Americans. That 80% includes most wage and salary workers in America. People earning the lower 80% have seen their incomes decrease since 1980 while their personal debt went up horribly to bridge the gap.

Here’s the thing. As the wealthiest 1% saw huge increases in income, their taxes went down! The premise for these massive tax cuts for the wealthy was to create jobs through the “trickle-down effect,” but of course since 2007 nearly 8 million jobs have been lost, so massive tax cuts for the rich, in terms of job creation, can be clearly seen as a bust policy. And now to finance these generous tax cuts even further, we have to cut social services and infrastructure across the board instead of bringing the tax rates back to their original values, which would balance the massive deficits across the board in a couple of years.

The wealthy elites, of course, don’t give a damn about public education and health, especially for the children of the working poor, so of course they want to see their taxes cut and have their well-paid political minions dismantle the education and social services infrastructure, especially squashing powerful teacher and other state employee unions, which have been a major thorn on the side of the plutocrats for several generations. When one no longer gives a damn about the public weal as we see from our wealthiest citizens, whether or not the children of the lower classes have access to decent education and health care is certainly not of any importance. In fact, the plutocrats want our children dumber and unhealthier. It makes them cheaper labor in the future. Even more profits! Whee!

Isn’t it ironic that the rich caused the Great Recession and also benefitted generously from its bailout that not only absolved the rich of any criminal charges for their massive fraud and mendacity in causing it in the real estate, banking and finance industries, but also saved their wealth from going down the toilet, and meanwhile everyone else in America suffers, and to add insult to injury to this suffering, the social services that benefit the suffering classes are being de-funded, dismantled, and eradicated just when they are needed the most?

The Tea Party loves to call itself a “populist” movement, but if you dig deep enough into who is financing it, you’ll find a lineup of the usual right-wing billionaire suspects who also finance most of the right-wing think tanks (American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, et al.), and news organizations (FOX News, The Weekly Standard, National Review, et al.) that have been heavily promoting the Tea Party. Their only goal is massive tax cuts for the wealthy, no matter what the cost is to the general weal of the United States of America. The rich no longer want to participate in any kind of shared sacrifice in America, and therefore need useful idiots from the working and middle class to champion their cause, and hence the Tea Party, masked as a “populist” revolt, distances these über-rich benefactors from any public scrutiny.

How can cutting public education be seen as anything but destructive for the American general weal?

While we watch America get turned into a third world country in the next few years, by the time the middle class useful idiots who championed the cause of the plutocrats realize they’ve been royally fucked, it will be too late.

Cutting government cuts the one avenue to power that common people have. Once government is removed or debased, common people no longer have a power structure that they own and also champions their cause, and they become subjects to the people and power structures (wealthy individuals, corporations, gangsters, etc.) who fill the power void left by the shrinking and effete government. Many people feel they are powerless now. Well, if government gets cut further and “drowned in the bathtub” as most Libertarians like to jest, how powerless will we all be then?

I know this seems far-fetched to most people. But open your eyes. It’s happening right now as we speak. The facts do not lie even though the highly -paid sophists on TV news like claim otherwise. It is their job to lie and obfuscate the truth long enough for this massive dismantling of our democracy to reach its final phase, at which point the rich will rule like feudal lords of old and the rest of us are merely subjects to their every whim.

Just pay attention. It’s really happening.

This was written in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the massive destruction caused by the flooding of New Orleans.

9/14/2005 – Philadelphia

On Government, Part II

Two years ago I wrote a scathing screed about George W. Bush’s incompetent leadership in waging the Iraq War. It was an angry and sarcastic look at how ridiculous Bush worship had become after 9/11, and how dangerous this was to our republic.

In light of the Hurricane Katrina debacle, it is obvious that all the taunting and screaming by the Republicans about Bush’s vaunted leadership was pure fantasy. Just go review clips from their national convention in 2004, where Bush’s leadership ability and character were pretty much all they promoted. They smeared John Kerry’s Vietnam service and taunted him as indecisive (a “flip-flopper”), and even had the gall to call him a traitor. Bush, they countered, was a great leader, a pious and moral man who loved America and would never ever let America down in a crisis.

Well, as we have learned in the last few weeks—and some of us knew all along—Bush is not quite the heroic leader he was made out to be.

Let me hark back to my essay in 2003, which I wrote just before we invaded Iraq.

I began the essay with a prescient quote from John Ralston Saul about the theatrical power of national leadership, even when the leader is incompetent:

Politicians know that if they can only get up onto the public stage and stay on their feet, they will be able to give the impression that they are filling the stage by the very presence of their personality. Of course they will not be filling it and so the Heroic mythology of emptiness will stay in place, thus making their presence seem even more essential. This conundrum is to the twentieth century what the indivisibility of the Holy Trinity was to the Middle Ages or the nature of predestination to the Reformation. As always, the successful installation of an unsolvable paradox at the heart of public affairs means that those who hold power can find justification for almost any sort of action.

No other modern President has benefited from this notion as much as George W. Bush. In the 2000 election he lost the popular vote by 500,000 votes and needed the Supreme Court’s help to bypass a fair recount in Florida. As has been duly noted by several credible sources, a fair recount probably would have given the state to Al Gore, and hence Gore should have been President. Bush won through partisan chicanery and a sleazy loophole in our electoral process. This slimy manipulation certainly did not win Bush the confidence of the plurality of Americans who voted for Gore.

Therefore, Bush began his first term with the weakest mandate to govern in the modern history of the presidency. And indeed, in his first nine months in office Bush proved to be a weak and mediocre leader at best. Moreover, as the American economy began sinking into a rather nasty recession, Bush’s popularity sunk further. By late August in 2001, his chances of being more than a weak and ineffectual president were growing dim.

Then, like a twisted Greek myth, 9/11 came along and elevated this mediocre moron to a heroic stature. For the first time in his life, George W. Bush, a lousy student, inarticulate public speaker, National Guard deserter, recovering alcoholic, and failed businessman, got to look like America’s Pericles—even if he’d not actually performed any heroic deeds. He merely had to stand on that stage Saul discussed in the above quote. With a frightened, angry, and confused nation looking on, Bush stood atop the ruins at Ground Zero and turned a photo op into a national rally. George W. Bush would be our sword of justice against the “evil doers” who flew the planes into the twin towers and Pentagon. He would be our hero, our white knight, our champion, our war king. Like a swooning damsel in distress, America fell in love with its new faux hero.

It was, to say the least, the easiest and yet most brilliant work of public relations imaginable. From this singular act Bush would be given a mandate to govern that no other President had had since Pearl Harbor was attacked over sixty years ago.

And of course Bush would spend the next four years fucking up this mandate, much like he’d fucked up every other aspect of his professional life since the days when he shirked his duties as an officer in the National Guard. The only problem was, every time he fucked up the press backed away like frightened children, failing to attack him or his policies out of fear of being labeled a traitor by the right-wing punditry and blogosphere.

In my 2003 essay I pointed out how Bush and his right-wing attack dogs in the press and blogosphere used 9/11 to ambush his administration’s critics:

Every time the American people begin to question the motives of Bush and his minions in their increasingly confusing and specious linking of 9/11 and the war on terrorism to their invasion of Iraq, Bush simply pulls out photos of Ground Zero, gets teary-eyed about his faith in Jesus and the American resolve to do what is “right,”—and just in case the people still don’t fall for this unctuous grandstanding—he has his chief military, intelligence, and domestic security advisors cry wolf about another impending terrorist attack that will make 9/11 look like a fender bender in comparison. “Head for the hills, the barbarians are coming! Buy duct tape and plastics sheets to cover your windows! Hold your breath! And, for God’s sake, let me invade Iraq before Saddam fires poison gas at your kid’s school! Praise Jesus and God bless America!”

Moreover, the right-wing media attacked Bush’s critics relentlessly, calling them traitors and anti-American, as if criticizing the standing President is a treasonous act. Many members of the press simply did not question the Bush administration at all, even as it became obvious he and his advisors were rushing America into an unnecessary and highly questionable war in Iraq. The press not only became cheerleaders for the war, they also seemed to have a schoolgirl crush on Bush and rarely attacked him or his polices. Even when nearly every reason Bush used to invade Iraq was debunked, the press remained largely silent.

I attacked the press viciously in my 2003 essay:

Based upon the deluge of hagiography about our President that is promoted by the twenty massive conglomerates that control 50% of all media in America, we learn that George W. Bush is a good, moral, honest, and deeply religious man. Pay no mind that many of the journalists and media celebrities promoting this tripe—many having sold their intellectual souls in exchange for fat paychecks and celebrity status to work for these conglomerates—don’t believe a single positive word they promote about Bush. After all, one does not bite the hands that feed it and make it famous. Media conglomerate journalists and celebrities flushed their convictions down the toilet the moment they realized they were as famous as Hollywood stars and could hobnob with the jet set when not working to promote the lies and fabricated liturgy of the plutocracy.

I mean, really, who amongst us wouldn’t sell his or her soul to be invited to all the best post-Oscar parties, to hang out in the Hamptons with supermodels, pop stars, and wealthy scions of the Brahmin and corporate classes?  How many of us would sacrifice this deliciously cool wealth, access, and celebrity status to stand behind our true convictions? These days, selling out is what it is all about. Everyone wants to be rich and famous. So why not write and promote a few little fibs about our President to the drooling masses? It’s all good, dude. Today I’ll pooh-pooh over the President on my CNN talk show, and tonight I’ll be having dinner at Tommy Mottola’s house with Sting, J-Lo, Barbara Walters, Tom Hanks, Lynn Cheney, and that cute girl who was on that new reality television show.

During the dark days just after Hurricane Katrina struck, the press finally realized the depth and magnitude of Bush’s incompetent leadership, best exemplified by how weak and ineffectual his Department of Homeland Security looked in responsed to the to the crisis. While thousands were in deep peril all over the Gulf States, all of a sudden media lightweights and Bush worshipers like Anderson Cooper, Joe Scarborough, and even Tucker Carlson began screaming at the federal government to act more quickly. The criticism was loud and angry. It was a great awakening for the press.

While the crisis unfolded before our eyes, Bush seemed to handle the crisis with a detached indifference, so surrounded by cronies and sycophants incapable of telling him bad news that he had no idea how bad it had become in New Orleans. Bush’s FEMA director, Michael Brown, continually gave Bush upbeat reports that did not match what most Americans could plainly see on television news.

Meanwhile, on the ground the first responders, already overwhelmed and running short on supplies and resolve, looked to the federal government for leadership and aid during this massive crisis. The military, the only federal agency with the equipment, personnel, and leadership to handle the madness on the ground, was held in check while Bush and his advisors haggled over using them. Donald Rumsfeld was the biggest advocate against using federal troops. What a great leader, eh?

We can all stand around and point fingers and play Karl Rove’s “blame game,” and of course leadership at all levels of this crisis are at fault to a certain degree, but after we have all been pummeled by the right-wing for so long about Bush’s superior leadership skills, at the moment America demanded Bush to lead, he failed horribly and many Americans died or suffered unnecessarily.

We learned after Hurricane Katrina that our emperor, our heroic Pericles, had no clothes; the bearer of our sword of justice dropped the sword long ago. Many of us on the left knew this all along. To watch the America mainstream press awaken from its post-9/11 fugue state and become journalists again and attack Bush and his cronies for the first time since 9/11 was heartening, to say the least. Even Bush lovers like Joe Scarborough, Robert Novak, and Tucker Carlson were openly criticizing Bush and his incompetent cronies in FEMA and DHS.

This time Karl Rove and Karen Hughes cannot not spin Bush out of trouble; the facts on the ground are simply too damning for Bush and his vile and mendacious spin doctors. For once Bush has had to fire someone in his administration and accept blame or suffer even worse political fallout, which has already been bad enough for him. He has become the least popular President since polls have tracked this kind of data. He is more unpopular than Richard Nixon during Watergate or Herbert Hoover during the Depression. He is Napoleon and Hurricane Katrina is his Waterloo. Bush is finished as a national leader; he is a lame duck President with three years left to serve.

I have watched Bush and Rove smear the honor of American heroes like John McCain, Max Cleland, and John Kerry. I have watched Bush and Rumsfeld misuse the military for a war we did not need to fight. I have watched as Bush cut taxes that mainly benefited the wealthy and further widened the gap between rich and poor in America. I watched Bush and hiscronies award huge government contracts to corporations that financed Bush’s campaigns. I have watched Rove commit treason by revealing the identity of a CIA agent to smear her husband. I have watched Bush and his Republican buddies in Congress gut federal agencies that are supposed to help the American people. I have listened to Bush and his gang badmouth government as if it were the scourge of mankind.

In the last three years since I have been blogging, I have been called a traitor, America hater, and have had my patriotism questioned—no, make that sneered at and spit on—by right-wingers, simply because I opposed Bush.

You assholes on the right hate American citizens. You hate everyone who isn’t rich, white, Christian, and living in gated communities. You have done everything in your power to debase, defame, and deconstruct our government. You hate government because government belongs to the people and is their only legitimate claim to power. If you wish to destroy the power of government, it can only mean you wish to destroy the power of the people and turn them into subjects instead of citizens. Without a government to express our legitimate role in this society, we become merely subjects to the unchecked power of wealthy individuals and corporations. Without government there is no way to block their power and they can act with impunity; they can exploit us, pollute our air and water, cheat us, steal whatever they want, and all the while we have no way to check their power.

I do not want to privatize my government. I don’t want Enron, General Dynamics, Halliburton, or Worldcom to replace my government. Do you?

What other avenue did the poor people in New Orleans have to redress their grievances for what happened to them during and after Hurricane Katrina if there had been no government—or a lesser one—in place? Without a strong central government, who would have come to their rescue?

What happened last week in the Gulf states was a clear and obvious reason why we need a big and powerful central government. Only a big, strong, and vital central government had the means to rescue these people. Their city and state governments were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the damage and destruction caused by the hurricane and flooding. Not only that, but to rebuild all the damage and help restart the shattered economy of the affected areas, only the federal government has the money to finance such a massive project.

So is less government the answer to all of America’s problems? Not only no, but hell no.

All these right-wing and libertarian assholes who want to destroy government or “drown it in the bathtub” are the real anti-American traitors. In a nation of we the people, with a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, if you hate government then you hate the people. You hate Americans, and, by extension, you hate America.

Like me, you can hate the assholes running a government (such as right now), but to hate the institution of government is to hate yourself. To destroy government is the ultimate act of democratic suicide.

So let’s turn back to the jerk and his minions who have been handing out the anti-government hemlock since 2000.

In light of Bush’s (and the right-wing assholes running my government) failures in the Iraq War and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I would like to take this opportunity to tell neoconservatives, right-wing libertarians, conservative Republicans, and all other Bush worshipers and government haters to go take a flying leap into the shit-laden murky waters polluting New Orleans.

And while you are drowning in shit, go fuck yourselves.

A strange encounter that pretty much sums up the sorry state of American “patriotism” since the advent of the Global War on Terror. It begs the following question: Would you like some freedom fries with your wings, Fatso?

10/8/2003 – Philadelphia

When there’s a baseball or hockey game on television and I want to watch it, I usually get off at the subway stop near my apartment in Philly’s Old City neighborhood while on my way home from work. From there I usually go to Nick’s Roast Beef on 2nd Street just off Market, where I watch the game as I quaff a few brews and scarf a plate or two of wings. Nick’s wings are awesome. It has been my ritual since I moved to Old City in 1999.

The bartenders, waitresses, and kitchen staff at Nick’s all know me as a quiet, polite, and well-dressed gentleman and generous tipper, probably as innocuous a customer as they have on a regular basis. I come in, drink some beer and eat, watch the game, and then leave. Sometimes I’ll strike up a conversation with the people sitting at the bar with me, or I’ll chat briefly with the staff, but mostly I read Harper’s or the New Yorker while I watch the game. Nick’s doesn’t have the best food or the coolest and hippest clientele in my neighborhood, but it does have a couple of nice television sets at the bar, a very cool staff, and patrons who are friendly but mostly mind their own business.

So last night I’m at Nick’s watching Game One of the NLCS between the Cubbies and Marlins, sipping a diet soda (I’m on the wagon for a while) and munching on a plate of wings, having my typically blissful sports fan experience after a crappy day at work, when my nirvana gets rudely interrupted by a corpulent jerk who plops down on the bar stool next to mine. He’s a middle-aged man, grossly overweight and foul smelling, dressed in generic businessman’s attire, looking like a cross between the pro golfer Craig Stadler and Rush Limbaugh, and right away he begins alienating the bartender by being loud and rude as he orders a beer.

Right after ordering Fatso begins striking up a conversation with those of us around him, and it’s obvious after about five seconds that, not only does he love the sound of his voice, but it’s also a rather loud voice. And as he speaks he spits all over the place. I am not exaggerating—the man actually spews spittle like a fire hose as he speaks.

UGH, fuck, I mumble under my breath, I always get the wackos sitting next to me. I look down at my plate of wings and pretend I’m a deaf mute, hoping Chubbo ignores me. But nooooo—he elbows me and asks who I like in the game.

“The Cubs. But I spent all summer in Miami and enjoyed going to Marlin games and watching them get better every game. But it hurt to watch them abuse my Philles down the stretch, so I hate them.”

After I say this, Lardass goes into a five-minute bullshit-laden soliloquy about both teams that has no factual basis and interests me for about one millisecond before I go back to eating my wings and ignoring him. It’s a rude ploy, yes, but I hope he sees I have no interest in talking to him and he’ll leave me alone. Then Chunky Boy starts spewing out political theories and other loud and obnoxious opinions best kept to himself, and all the while I’m wishing he’d just shut the fuck up and leave me alone. His politics are somewhere to the right of Rush Limbaugh and expressed with even more obnoxious bravado than that pile-o’flab creepo Limbaugh can muster.

All the while I keep looking at the bartender and rolling my eyes, as if to plead with him to ask this fat fuck to shut his mouth. The bartender, a large, strapping Irishman whose day job is as a union electrician, is a fellow I’ve known for a couple of years and we have an excellent rapport; he just shrugs, as if to say, “Hey, it’s a free country,” and of course he’s right so far. The fat fuck isn’t even drunk, just loud, ignorant, and obnoxious.

Meanwhile Fatty’s food arrives, and as he devours his wings he continues his political discussion, and while he talks food begins to collect on his moustache and triple chin. Most of what he’s saying I am ignoring. I think he might be talking to me, but I’m making no apparent eye contact with him or even looking at him, silently hoping he’ll choke on a chicken wing and die so I can watch the game in peace.

Right about the time Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez smacks his three-run homer, Piggie begins screaming about the French. Don’t ask me why. Apparently he has issues with France and the French people. “I hate those French cocksuckers! Cowards! Commies! Back-stabbing scum. And that cocksucker Chirac is a fucking scumbag. Ohhh…don’t get me started!”

But of course he has already started. Loudly.

I turn to him. “Sir, do you mind? I am trying to watch the game and you’re bothering me. Plus my mother and her family are French, so do you mind? I happen to think Chirac was right about Iraq, so just leave your vile opinions to yourself.”

At this Blubber Titts jumps up and starts screaming. “I’m not sitting next to some goddamn cocksucking French-loving traitor fucker! You goddamn fucking cocksucker traitor! I am not sitting next to you!”

I shrug. “Good, then move, Fatty.”

Porky assumes a defensive stance as if to challenge me to a fight. “What are you gonna do, you French-loving coward! You traitor! Come on, French lover!”

The bartender walks over to us. “Dude, can you tell this fat fuck to leave?” I plead to him. “If you don’t, I think I might have to knock the shit out of him.”

The bartender politely asks Tubby to either stop acting like a jerk or he has to leave. Jelly Belly ignores him and keeps screaming pejoratives at me. I’m not mad, really, nor am I offended. The man is harmless, just a fat, psychotic windbag who I could drop by looking at him. He poses absolutely no threat to me. Mainly I just want to watch the game and eat my food and be left alone. However, I am sure even Gandhi would lose his patience and bitch-slap this fat turd if provoked like this.

The bartender escorts him out the front door. All the while Whale Butt is screaming that he can’t believe this bar would throw him out while allowing a French loving traitor stay. “Our boys are dying in Iraq because of traitorous cocksuckers like him!” he screams, pointing at me.

Now the bartender is getting mad. “If you don’t shut up I am going to really throw you out of here.”

As the bartender says this, Chubbs sneaks past him and comes back to the bar next to me and grabs the tip he left on the bar. “I’m not tipping you, you fucking asshole. You’re a goddamn French-loving cocksucker too!” At this the bartender grabs him, drags him to the front door, and literally tosses him onto the sidewalk on 2nd Street. Bloated Boy gets up and screams at us, but we can’t hear him because the bartender closes the front door.  Meanwhile three of the cooks and another bartender show up, just in case our nemesis wants to come back inside. After a few minutes he walks away, shouting the whole time.

After this, I calmly go back to my wings and the ballgame. It was a great game too, a classic, one of the strangest yet most wonderful games I’ve ever seen. Other than my close encounter with Mr. Foul Fat Francophobe it was a good night, even though the Cubs blew the game and those stinking Floridian Fish won.

I served in the US Army for nearly eight years as a Medical Corpsman in the 1980s. Mostly my Army career was mundane almost to the point of banal. After all, the US didn’t go to war much during that era, except for a couple of minor skirmishes in Granada and Panama, so I have no war stories to relate from personal experience, nor did much happen during my two four-year tours that was worth even recalling some 25 years later.

Looking back, the best I can say about my Army career was that I was just a soldier—no better, no worse—than any other.  I did my job and got out after many years of faithful service in uniform.  I never talk much about what I did, not because I am embarrassed for not doing much, or for not being a superhero like Rambo, but because, to overcome some of my worst nightmares, mostly I’d like to forget what I witnessed.

Specialist Matthew Scheck, Frankfurt Morgue, May 1987

While it is true we were not at war during my tenure, because of my unique job in the Army I did bear witness to some appalling tragedies that are probably worth recalling, although I do it with great trepidation because the memories still cause great anxiety within me. For many years after my service I let these memories fade to the darkest recesses of my mind so I could get on with my life. Now, some 20 years later, I feel the need to write about them, if only to honor the brave men who died tragically in service of our country.

In 1987 I was stationed in Landstuhl, Germany and worked as an assistant to the Chief of Forensic Pathology for the 10th Medical Laboratory.  In late May of that year, my department was ordered to immediately go to Frankfurt to work on identifying and piecing together the casualties from the USS Stark, a Navy frigate that had been attacked by an Iraqi fighter jet on May 17, 1987 in the Persian Gulf.

Two Exocet missiles had been fired at the ship, one of which struck it directly at the part where many of the ship’s sailors were sleeping in their racks. We were told the damage was catastrophic and that anywhere from 30-50 sailors had been killed in the attack. We were forewarned that the dead bodies we would be receiving were either charred from the heat of the missiles hitting or were in pieces because of the blast; worse was that all the dead had become bloated and gaseous from being immersed in water that flooded the decks where they were recovered. The ship was located in the Persian Gulf, where the heat during the day rose to well over 100 degrees, so this only made the situation much worse for the recovery effort.

It is very difficult to articulate the horror of those five days working in a cramped morgue with all those dead sailors.  Imagine the stress and strain of working with so many charred, smelly, bloated, and damaged human remains; not only that, but these were American servicemen, good sailors—our compatriots and brother warriors.  Guys who could have been my friends.  In Forensic Pathology we worked around dead people a lot, but this was different— this hit home too close for all of us at that morgue in Frankfurt, Germany.  These were war casualties in another disaterous1980s foreign policy fiasco by the Reagan government. Worse, however, was that they didn’t die in some glorious battle or defending a great democratic ideal—they died pointlessly in a shitty and regrettable attack that was unprovoked and made absolutely no sense. Yet these men were great heroes for our country.

I will discuss what still haunts me and how it shaped my thinking today. No other event in my life affected me as deeply and profoundly as those five days in that Frankfurt morgue. To this day I am not sure if, deep within me, I can ever move beyond this horrible tragedy or forget the terrible images and memories that still remain so vivid in my mind.

I write this memoir only to honor the brave sailors who gave their lives in that horrible tragedy. My part in all this is insignificant other than I was a faithful witness for those 37 men who passed through that Frankfurt morgue in May 1987.

And here’s what still haunts me:

Frankfurt Morgue, May 1987; Dr. (Major) Joseph Dyer, Chief Forensic Pathologist and my boss and mentor, is on the right.

Some genius colonel or general decided, while we worked in that morgue, to let us watch the Navy’s memorial service for the Stark that was showing on AFN.  Here we were, putting these poor bastards back together, trying to figure out what arm belonged to what trunk, and so forth, and there, right before our eyes, were their grieving families.  I am standing in two feet of blood and guts, fried body fat, and all the fingers, feet, eyeballs, and decapitated corpses I wish never to see again, and all of a sudden I see on the screen the family of the boy whose decapitated head I am, right at that moment, holding in my hands.  I think now, upon recollection, their names flashed on the screen or were mentioned by the commentator.  Whatever the case, this was their son.  I recall that.

My nightmare:  We have just identified him by his dental records, and when I see his mother and father on the television, I look at his dead eyes, he’s looking at me, and I tell him, “Your Mom and Dad are crying and they’re very proud.” I’d seen hundreds of dead bodies in my work at the 10th Med Lab, but this poor sailor was the first I connected to something real and tangible. He was more than just another stiff I had to cut open. And I will never forget him.

I will not lie—everyone in that morgue was bawling.  I assure you we will never forget that moment, our moment in military history, and how ugly and cruel an experience it was.  Our job that day would have been much easier had we not gotten to know that much about these boys, that we learned they had families and loved ones back home, that they were real people and not just corpses we were working on.  It would have been easier not knowing.

This surreal and bizarre moment affected even the strongest and most callous among us. Even my boss, Major Joe Dyer, a forensic pathologist who had made his life’s work working with dead people, was moved to emotions he normally kept in check.

Because these Stark casualties became real human beings to us and not just anonymous “stiffs” on morgue slabs, we were forever changed by this moment.

I will never forget that kid, and I think at that moment I felt I had finally, after six years of service, proven my worthiness as a soldier, humble though my part was in the big picture of defending America and its interests.  Like the oil this boy was protecting while serving in the Gulf.  This dead kid was probably asleep in his rack, dreaming of getting laid or going home on leave, when the missiles struck.  Now his head is in my hands, and there’s his Mom and Dad, who will never get to see him alive, or like this, with no body, just a head, and an expression that still haunts me.  I used to say after this incident that these sailors’ families, along with getting their sons’ medals and insurance payments, should have gotten stock options in ARAMCO.  Maybe we weren’t technically at war, but this kid was a war hero and a war casualty.  I was a casualty, but certainly not a hero, just a college dropout, a screw-up who joined the Army for a job, and who was just doing his Army job.  It was time to earn the college benefits, free food and lodging, and all the free dental work the Army provided me.

Maybe for some of my fellow citizens the defense of freedom is a concept not fully understood by their own personal sacrifice or deeds. I certainly don’t feel as if I ever sacrificed much for this lofty ideal.  But this kid, whose detached head I was holding in my hands, gave everything he had for all of us. He didn’t storm some hill and take out a machine gun. Or dive on a grenade to protect his buddies. Or parachute into enemy territory and perform some heroic deed worthy of medals or national monuments. He was simply doing his job as a US serviceman and was a victim of a horrible attack that made no sense. And he yet was a hero to me. He will always be a hero to me.

Frankfurt Morgue, May 1987

You have no idea how difficult it is to talk about this, even after 20 years.  I guess after spending three years doing a job like this—a job I didn’t ask to do, but I was chosen to do because my unit couldn’t find many people who could handle it—that I’d much rather keep the memories buried deep than talk about the experience.  I feel that even speaking about this now violates a vow of silence I made to myself a long time ago about discussing a time in my life that was painful at best, creepy, horrifying, and freaky at worst.  Remembering brings back the anxiety attacks and the depression, and I have found my life is much better without all that, so forgetting works best.

People will say that the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are about defending freedom.  I don’t know if that is true or not, but what I do know is that lots of young men and women have been giving their lives in these wars regardless of whether they are necessary or just.

After handling so many casualties back in the late 80s, I had become one myself, so I respectfully asked my superiors to transfer me out of Forensic Pathology. In order to heal I had to let go of the pain and anguish and nightmares.  Some people are wired to handle this kind of work; I was not one of them, but I was a good soldier and did what I was ordered to do, and every dead sailor looking up at me during those five days at that Frankfurt morgue made me feel, for the first time in my Army career, like a real soldier.  So how could I not do this important job?  I had to do this job for them, for their families on that television screen, and for America. However, a year later I was so burned out and anxiety ridden that I could no longer perform this duty. So I walked away from it.

I recovered from that hellish week in Frankfurt by hiding in my apartment, bathing every hour or so to remove the horrible smell that was literally in every pore of my body, and drinking myself into oblivion during every waking moment.  Yet the smell remains in my mind, 20 years later, the one aspect of war and death that television and movies can never express to the audience.  A charred and rotting human corpse produces some of the worst smells in this universe, perhaps as a reminder to all of us that death should not be something we ever forget.  I am sure the rescue workers, police, medical workers, and firefighters from Oklahoma City and 9/11 share that same memory with me, and it reminds them as it reminds me.

Just remember, America, that this head with no body, this poor kid from the USS Stark in 1987, died for you—would you have done the same for him? I don’t mean just beat your chest and boast about your patriotism, I mean put your ass on the front line for America like he did.  I wonder.

I’ll be honest: after seeing him, and many other casualties, my survival instinct told me to run and hide as quickly as possible if I am ever faced with that decision.  I am probably a coward, but if the chips were down I would do it for this dead sailor whose head was in my hands, I would do it for my family, I would do it for my friends, and I would do it for every American. I would do it for America.

To be honest, I wish some of my experiences had not been real.  Lots of men and women who serve our country have been thrown out into the “shit” and performed beautifully.  My job was to identify and clean up the ones who didn’t make it back so their parents could bury them with dignity.  It’s just history now, and it is hard to believe when I think about it, but we were never at war during those years, yet guys and girls were still dying in droves in training accidents or “incidents” like the Stark or the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983.  I guess I had an important job, and my job gave me a unique perspective about what it means to sacrifice for this country. I saw far too many of the people who made the ultimate sacrifice.

I am no expert on war, but I still lie awake some nights, frightened of the images that became so normal and banal to me during those years.  They are hard to forget.  In a way, I am the faithful witness for all those dead kids who are not around any longer to tell their war stories while serving in the “Peacetime Army.”  Peace or no peace, it seemed to me that America was always at war during the Cold War—plenty of casualties passed through my shop in Germany, so I know too well.

I honestly believe my one purpose in my life is to honor that poor sailor from the USS Stark whose head I held in my hands in May 1987. I don’t even remember his name. But I remember his sacrifice. His sacrifice will never be forgotten by me. He is my hero.