I was born on July 4, 1947 just like Ron Kovic, but when I was drafted, they sent me to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma for 2 years, instead of Viet Nam. Lucky for me, some say, but I didn’t care. I was young and stupid, and came from a culture that accepted war as a way of life, and doing your duty by fighting and possibly dying for your country was an accepted part of the picture. My father’s father was a Cossack drafted into the Czars Army before immigrating to America in 1912, and my father was drafted into the Army and fought the Japanese in the South Pacific in World War II, so why shouldn’t I go fight the Viet Cong Commies in South East Asia?
However, as I said, that didn’t happen, and then while I was in the Army the entire country went through a revolution and the society that I returned to, two years later was a different one than the one I left. No longer were people passively accepting that their sons, brothers and husbands go die for their country, but mass protests were happening, everywhere, not just in a few hotbeds. The crux of the protests rested on the draft, which no longer exists, now we have an all volunteer army.
In this present stage of humanities evolution, you need armies for the violent and overly exuberant among us to exhaust their energy, until they either get killed or tired of it, make a career of it or come back to their home society and join the police force or CIA. This July 4th weekend was busy, so I didn’t get a chance to much editing done on my book about the history of Contemporary Christian Music, that I just purchased a laptop notebook computer for.
I picked up the one legged woman in the wheelchair, who has a ramp made of 2 – 2x8 planks, that she once had me get her up. That was a dangerous maneuver and I told her that I couldn’t do it again for both her and my safety. This time she wanted to go to Walmart and just got out of the theater, where she saw the new movie in the “Twilight” series, “Eclipse.”
She talked about how the vampires were good, and was disappointed with the climactic battle scene. Then she switched over the return of Jesus, and began telling me that a lot of people believe that Jesus is coming back again soon.
“When do you think that the second coming will be?” My passenger asked.
I thought of the time that David Bergman, of the “Firesign Theater” told me that he didn’t believe in the first coming, and then I said, “well the Bible says that no man will know the day or hour,” I answered her.
“Yeah but when Jesus comes back, he’s going to make everything right and solve all the world’s problems and reign for a thousand years,” She said.
“But first there has to be the battle of Armageddon,” I told her. “The entire world will meet on a plain in Israel where they will have a massive battle, where the blood will flow like a river, and Jesus will come back with all the saints and kill the anti-Christ and his armies.”
After I dropped her off I picked up a guy at the Point after that wanted to smoke a cigarette in my non smoking cab, and when I told him no, he told me that I was a jerk for not letting him smoke. He complained so much that I began to get angry and was debating about pulling over and telling him to get out when I decided to just go with the flow. He had been difficult from the beginning by not wanting to give me his address, and finally just making one up, that I realized later. We had to drive in 3 different driveways before we finally found the right one. I was wondering whether he was as drunk and confused as he acted or if he was just trying to push my buttons, but I kept my cool. When I finally pulled up to his apartment he paid me and gave me a $5.00 tip for all the trouble he caused.
I picked up a regular from “All Stars” and drove him to his house, while we talked about Islamic Jihadist’s and insults that warranted the death sentence. Then he began to compare radical Islam with Communism, because it was more of an ideology rather that a faith inspired spiritual path. “We have to fight them the same way that we did the Commies,” he told me. Hollywood needs to start making movies about the Islamic Jihadist’s taking over the USA and forcing everyone to become a Muslim. The movie would have mass executions of people of other religious persuasions who refused to convert. This would freak people out and we would have mass paranoia about Islam.”
“Yeah, but is that something that would be good?” I asked. “It would divide the country and we have to assimilate and integrate all religions in order to create homogeneity.”
“That sounds like heresy to me,” my passenger countered. The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim. We could blanket the Muslim areas with posters of Mohammed having sex with a goat, and drive them crazy.”
“What about that hippie guy, who was detained in Pakistan for wanting to kill Osama Bin Laden?” I asked him.
“That man is a real patriot,” my passenger said. “We need more like him. Imagine if people like that started to pop up all over. What to you think that Al Jezirah would say. Osama would be shitting in his pants, if he’s not already dead. They’ll never tell us if he does die. Heck he could have gotten killed when they first invaded Afghanistan. They won’t tell us, because then we can’t have the satisfaction of saying that we killed the mother fucker that was responsible for 9/11.
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