by Don Nash, Unknown News
Aug. 27, 2004
Aunt Norma is missing. Now, before I get into the particulars, I am going to have to fill in some historical details about why she's missing.
Let’s have Mr. Peabody’s boy Sherman set the way-back machine for the year 1941. It is World War II and America is getting involved in the struggle against fascism. The struggle is very real.
Western civilization is under assault by dark and sinister forces that will capture the free world and plunge humanity back into another dark age that will make the first dark age seem like a cloudy Sunday in the park. So America is beginning to mobilize and put the machinery of production to work on cranking out the finest military hardware that the world has ever known. Europe and the United Kingdom are doomed, if the U.S.A. doesn’t pick up the ball of global salvation and run with it. That's 1941, 1942, 1943 ...
One can say whatever they want to about the United States but, when the chips are down and things seem about as dark and ominous as they can get, the big, dopey, sleepy giant wakes up and starts kicking ass without the bother of taking names. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present to you, World War II.
The men of America are called up and upon to fight. The women of America are called up, and called upon to man the factories and mother America’s children and keep the home fires burning and wait. Wait for the damn war to be over and rejoice when their men come home from war. Problem is, this is just the beginning of the war and the women will wait several nerve-rattling years before they see their men coming home.
All over America there are military installations that are humming and alive with the process of war. America’s factories are manufacturing the equipment necessary to arm the men and boys that fight to free the world of dictators and fascist nationalism, a concept that Americans have always spit out like a bad seed.
Military bases are the same from one end of the country to the other, green in color and spartan in accouterment. Wendover Air Base is just one of America's air bases, where we the people are doing our part to keep the war effort and the war machine fed with equipment and personnel. Aunt Norma is here in Wendover. Her husband is in the Army Air Corp, learning how to kill Nazis and not get killed by Nazis.
Wendover, Utah: the air base. What a story, not. I have lived in Wendover, and it really hasn’t changed much since WWII. There is only desert for as far as the eye can see, and believe me, out in Wendover you can see for some distance. It is furnace hot in summer and frozen hell in winter.
Aunt Norma and her husband are living here. He's training and she's doing her part to help the other air base wives keep their morale up and their men on focus. Aunt Norma’s husband goes to war and Aunt Norma goes home and to work and waits and frets and worries and keeps smiling. She waits and hopes and goes to work, as all American women did during the really big war, the biggest war ever, WWII.
She started working then, and just kept working for the rest of her life. Aunt Norma’s husband did his military service and was part of the liberation of Auschwitz, where his military service and his war ended. The horror was so bad, he never spoke one word about it. Never. Not one word.
I can’t imagine what the man witnessed at Auschwitz. I have heard stories and read the histories but, to actually witness such a thing? I can’t imagine what ghosts and horrors he carried with him and how these horrors stained his soul.
How could your soul not get stained by Auschwitz and what happened? That is the real cost of war. The greatest generation saved our world and put a temporary end to fascist nationalism, but they paid an incalculable price. It is only just recently that many of them have spoken openly and honestly about that price paid.
Aunt Norma’s husband could never speak about it, and a while after the war, she and he got divorced. Divorce happened a lot with the men and women that served America in World War II -- more of the real cost of that war.
The splash fancy new monument to the men and women of WWII that was recently dedicated in Washington D.C. is not enough. They can never really be paid back for their sacrifice. How do you thank someone for saving the world?
After their divorce, Aunt Norma kept on working and eventually retired. Then she found out that she has cancer, terminal cancer. Doctor says, “there is nothing to be done.”
Aunt Norma had done what most Americans of her generation did: She worked, she retired, she figured that Social Security and Medicare was her retirement and safety net. Well, the last laugh is on today’s Republicans. Aunt Norma is in the hospital and gets the sweet kiss off from the doctors as “there is nothing to be done,” so the family figured that hospice would take care of Aunt Norma, but -- guess what?
Medicare will only cover five days of hospice. Aunt Norma, there is your ‘job well done’ from the USA. Your sacrifice during the war is worth five days in hospice. Your work that took you from WWII to retirement won’t be sufficient, Medicare won’t be sufficient, and like the doctors at the hospital said, “There is nothing to be done.”
Do we all remember the terrific re-working of Medicare and Social Security by the Republican Congress? Well, they certainly re-worked it, all right. Social Security and Medicare will get the retirees barely through what remains of their lives, but you have to read the extremely fine print here: Don’t get sick and don’t need any hospital care. And in the really extremely fine print: If you need hospice you will only get five days.
It is D-day at the hospital. D-day at the hospital is discharge day. Someone calls to find out about Aunt Norma, and the hospital doesn’t know. They can’t find the responsible family members and -- “where’s Aunt Norma? Aunt Norma is missing.” She has just received the single largest screwing over of her life and she is too damn sick to appreciate it. Aunt Norma is dying and, son-of-a-bitch, she can’t even find a place to die in peace and some comfort. How is that for a lifetime of service to America?
A brief aside: Dov Zakheim, Rabbi and PhD in economics and politics, has just left the Department of Defense. Who is Zakheim, you inquire? He was the Comptroller of the Department of Defense. It was his esteemed distinction to have oversight on three trillion dollars that has somehow mysteriously disappeared. Zakheim doesn’t know where the money is and he can’t explain what may have happened. THREE TRILLION DOLLARS, gone, just like Zakheim is gone from the Department of Defense.
Is there going to be a criminal investigation you ask? Oh no, the good Rabbi and doctor, now exiting the building, has moved on from the Department of Defense with a letter of thanks and kudos from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. And oh yes, Zakheim was appointed to Comptroller by, you guessed it, President George W. Bush, the single most stupid man to have ever held the Office of President of the United States of America. Additionally he is a lowly criminal but, that is the least of his worries.
The Department of Defense has pissed away three trillion dollars, and Aunt Norma can’t get more than five days in hospice. I don’t know about you but, something is not right with this arrangement. There is something fundamentally abhorrent about it, about the entire American system of government -- the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and the Judicial Branch. With worlds of high-priced talent, the Department of Defense can’t account for three trillion dollars and Health and Human Services d/b/a Social Security and Medicare can’t give Aunt Norma more than five days in hospice.
And now for the big finish: The holder of the reins for this runaway horse is the Republican Party. We have a Republican president, a Republican Congress, a Republican Secretary of Defense, a Republican Secretary of Health and Human Services, and a Republican Attorney General (John Ashcroft). The AG is the nation's highest law enforcement official, but we all know Ashcroft is not going to even so much as twitch at any of the criminality that has transpired here. Nope.
Oh yeah, what the hospital didn't know was that Aunt Norma had been sent to a nursing home. It was a breakdown in communications. She just wants to go home, and die where she has lived her life, but that won't be allowed.
A few weeks after I wrote this, Aunt Norma passed away. She didn't suffer for too very long, and she died in her sleep with her daughter there.
My Aunt Norma’s life has far and away more meaning than any of the political piss-ants that I have listed above. She did more for America than any ass like Ashcroft or Bush or any of them. She fought the war on the home front, one of millions of heroes who made victory happen. She was an important part in the tradition of freedom and liberty that America used to represent.
© 2004, by the author.
What do you think?
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Western civilization is under assault by dark and sinister forces that will capture the free world and plunge humanity back into another dark age that will make the first dark age seem like a cloudy Sunday in the park.
So America is beginning to mobilize and put the machinery of production to work on cranking out the finest military hardware that the world has ever known.
Europe and the United Kingdom are doomed, if the U.S.A. doesn’t pick up the ball of global salvation and run with it.
That's 1941, 1942, 1943 ...
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Aunt Norma’s husband could never speak about it, and a while after the war, she and he got divorced.
Divorce happened a lot with the men and women that served America in World War II -- more of the real cost of that war.
The splash fancy new monument to the men and women of WWII that was recently dedicated in Washington D.C. is not enough.
They can never really be paid back for their sacrifice.
How do you thank someone for saving the world?
After their divorce, Aunt Norma kept on working and eventually retired.
Then she found out that she has cancer, terminal cancer.
Doctor says, “there is nothing to be done.”
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The Department of Defense has pissed away three trillion dollars, and Aunt Norma can’t get more than five days in hospice.
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