The German word Weltschmerz means world weariness and so if the Germans ever have the need for a word denoting the feeling that occurs when folks grow tired of a war their country is waging, they would call it Kriegschmerz.
Lately, it seems, the American media (especially the New York Times after their lead click here) have (media can be a plural word) been dispensing massive doses of Kriegschmerz.
When George W. Bush was cranking up the enthusiasm for committing the United States to fighting the "Forever War," where was the media with a dissenting point of view? Why, before the first decade of the Forever War registers on the war-odometer, is the media suddenly giving Americans and America's first President of African American origin a tsunami of second thoughts?
Never mind answering that question. It's like the song about Lola; whatever the Republicans want from the media, they get.
Ho Chi Minh banked on Kriegschmerz coming to his rescue and it did.
When Generalissimo Bush ordered the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in rapid sequence, Osama bin Laden shrugged and made a passing allusion to Ho's belief about America's inability to replicate the B. O. B. (http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/bobhome.html>;Battle of Britain) era attitude of perseverance.
[How will America's media handle the challenge of reporting on the fact that the Battle of Britain will reach retirement age (i.e. 65) at the same time that the Afghanistan war is growing tedious? It's simple. They'll just ignore the opportunity to replay any of the old Edward R. Murrow "London Calling" material and hop right to the relentless "what are we gonna do" lament about seeking surcease from the agonies of a Forever War.]
Uh-oh! This column has already made its point and there's a lot of space left to fill.
In a book titled "The Aspirin Age," edited by Isabel Leighton, we learned (Simon and Schuster paperback edition) on page 141, that Father Coughlin, during the other Depression, advocated "Simplification of government and lightening taxation on the laboring class."
These days the Party of Tea-baggers is less selfish and more compassionate and wants the taxation of the poor beleaguered rich folks to continue on the reduced level established by George W. Bush and his famous "tax breaks." (Sounds like a new rock band, don't it? "George W. Bush and the Tax Breaks!"? Whatever.)
Another improvement for the new Depression, which we extrapolated from Howard Fast's report on the Republic Steel Strike contained in the aforementioned book, is that this time there are no blood thirsty mobs of (Communist instigated?) striking steel workers attacking policemen with only clubs and guns with which to defend themselves.
If that wasn't enough for a columnist to digest, that very same book (obtained for $1 at the weekly summertime used book sale at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library) also raised doubts about the "suicide" explanation for the death of Star Faithful.
Recently, this columnist has been packing a Nikon Coolpix and going on recon missions in the Telegraph Ave. area looking for Optic Opportunities. This week, we have noticed young people walking around with non-digital cameras! Is there some kind of trend-spotting story about "film heads" going unnoticed by the print media? What's with all these "Ansel Adams wannabes"? We'll check with our "Film Head" technical advisors at Looking Glass Photo and maybe do a column about that sometime before the (rigged?) fall elections.
Next thing ya know, Popular Photography magazine will be reprinting their old articles about solarization." (Word's spell check challenges that word.) Is that what happened when polar bears (Ursus Maritimus) spend too long in the sun and get a sunburn?
Isn't there some kind of scientific concern that the polar bears are spending too much time on the beach and that they are all going to get skin cancer and die? Global sunburning, I think it's called.
Doesn't Word's spell check know about the pioneering work of Man Ray in the realm of solarizaion?
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