Here in the great State of Massachusetts, a great many irritated people, tired of immense taxation, voted for a pretty decent, hard working fellow from a local town to represent their interests and to oppose D.C. desires, as State Senator.

And it’s good as far as it goes. It might hold up the massive health care fraud. It does announce that many old Dems will be vacating their positions soon, and Congress and the Senate will see some new blood, most of which will be quickly corrupted.

New can be good, but it only goes so far…

Democrats will remain what they have been, and so will Republicans.

Democrats have played the part of the willingly brainwashed by every bit of pandering fear-mongering pushed out of the unholy craw of the WHO and NIH (Bird, Goat, Snail, Mouse flu, SARS, HIV, HTLV, H1N8, R2D2, etc),

Or the the Fed (“The sky is falling, the sky is falling (give us your money”)), or of just about anything else (with one notable exception… hold tight for a moment and I’ll get there).

On the other shore, Republicans have the general good sense to mistrust D.C., the NIH and WHO on most counts, stating the following, more or less:

“People get the flu, that’s life. HIV seems confined (mysteriously) to very high ‘risk groups.’ Global warming? Puh! Phooey! Government science is bought and paid for. Anyway, we’re not going to gum up good business for Al Gore’s fantasies of religious grandeur!”

I am pleased that Dems and Repubs battle each other on these issues, because they tend to prevent the greatest of all possible calamaties from occurring: That one side could have their way entirely.

But where both cast a blind eye is toward the fairly complex idea that has bedeviled every society on earth:

That what we, (as a nation of individuals), do, want and defend as ‘right,’ might in fact, at times, or often, be self-destructive. Even pathologically self-destructive.

The defense of hamburger, factory-farmed, as a badge of national identity. The embrace of NASCAR amid violent wars for acquistion of oil-rich nations. “The Defense Against Exercise Act,” sure to be enacted as soon as its called for, as a means to reduce the cost of pharmaceutical-only health care.

Are we a pathological nation? (Aren’t all nations, at times, self-destructive?)

Take public policy issue number one: The War, the cause of the War, the causes of the War, the War, and the War. It is now seen as universally important that “we” be always and forever, and for eternity “against the terrorists,” in whatever means are necessary to be “against the terrorists.”

I have no problem with being against terrorists, myself. But, (and I’m quoting a friend of mine just un-indentured from his military service), “What is there left to bomb in Afghanistan?”

Let it ring for a moment, because you won’t hear the question in D.C. press briefings.

How about this one: “We, (that is “We,” the government of the United States, without much regard for the wishes of the people), are occupying a now destroyed, once sovereign nation in the Middle East. “We” have killed some hundred to two hundred thousand individuals in this occupation and quest. We rationalize this by not talking about it at all.”

This site claims to tally civilian deaths, have a gander, s.v.p. www.iraqbodycount.org/

Does this make us less than “noble?” If we are to believe the Republican cause – the nobility of our invasion of the Middle East after the events of 9-11, then we should at least believe the grievance – that 3,000 Americans were killed on that day by an attack, and that all else is justifiable retribution – but not retribution. “Democracy bringing,” though not “nation building.”

If we then begin to tally the loss of those lives, on that September day, we must go to the cause of those deaths – the collapse of two, or three, buildings in New York City. Collapse of steel structures at free-fall speed, with concrete exploding outward into dust plumes that blanketed the five boroughs, and beyond.

Who believes that a steel tower can dissipate into dust and shrapnel, with no assistance, other than heat? No explosive material, just heat, applied in only a small part of the entire structure?

Three times?

On the same day?

In the same place?

Who believes it?

Belief is easy. “Who looks into it,” is the question.

(“Not us,” say the American people….)

But, back to “reality…”

I take as my military inspiration Union commander and Indian fighter William T. Sherman, a man whom I dare you to hate, because hating is easy. Sherman marched his army through the South, and in line with his political philosophy, made it near to uninhabitable, burning a path behind him, tearing up railroads and communication lines, so that the recalcitrant, trouble-making South (in his opinion, certainly), would have no option but to surrender.

I am not a fan of warfare, per se, but if I were going to wage a war, I’d wage it to win it.

The Democrats can’t wage war to win, because it’s not in their philosophy. They are too concerned with human rights not to continue the slow torture and murder of a country (ours or theirs). They’d rather that than a brutal but shorter-fought military victory.

And Republicans, it seems, are little better, confused as they are by the rationale for invasion and occupation.

Now, I am not for the razing of Iraq or Afghanistan. I was not for their invasion and occupation. I consider all of it a crime of such immense proportions. I do not doubt that many future historians will be as occupied with counting those murdered in their own countries by American adventures in ‘democracy-spreading,’ as they are in real or perceived attacks against America.

But, I am left to wonder, with my mouth agape, at the manner in which “we” are conducting these two wars against sovereign people. So much like a badly applied tourniquet, slowing and fitfully strangling the life from them, because we know, deep in our hearts, that we should never have waged a war on those people to begin with.

Victory in warfare requires a pure, distilled hatred, that rationalizes, for a moment, total suspension of the 10 commandments, or any other injunction against inhumanity towards another. Without that gut feeling, war cannot be won.

I’m not confused that these nations do not harbor an historical feeling for pluralistic bi-partisanship in the philosophy (but not the actual manner) of the French Enlightenment. I am aware that violence brews beneath the surface of much of the world, with only a thin veneer of repressive authoritarian government to keep it at bay. And if I am aware of these things, who in the world isn’t?

Or, more to the point, how is it that the military leaders, graduated from West Point and the like, entered this war with the idea of bringing “American Democracy” to nations that do not have the infrastructure, or the historical or philosophical disposition, to carry the weight of such a strange, historical experiment, such as are we?

And so, while I am pleased that Scott Brown won in Massachusetts – and while I am pleased that a whorish old Democratic machine in that State has been pushed backward onto its duff, perhaps to re-consider its disregard of its citizenry – I remain absolutely frightened for the future of this country, having waged two illegal wars, against nations whose crimes were, primarily, guilt by association, or by projection.

Terrorism can be fought in many ways. Creating unstable nations in areas of terrorism is not one of them.

And now the false question will ring: “What will Scott Brown do?”

And the deeper questions will remain in obscurity.