YOUR AD HERE »

Vail Daily column: Our summer of (dis)content

Richard Carnes
My View
Richard Carnes

While we’re in the midst of yet another glorious summer in Happy Valley, humanitarian conflicts continue unabated around the globe.

Kind of makes you want to puke, doesn’t it?

But let’s look on the bright side, at least none of it affects our biking, hiking, rafting, camping, golfing, drinking or concert-going, right?



Riiiight.

And now, thanks to last week’s missile strike on a commercial airliner over the Ukraine, we have the pleasure of listening to John McCain as he once again bangs the drums of war all day like a Todd Rundgren concert stuck on repeat.

Support Local Journalism



Makes me want to bang my head against a brick wall.

And there’s a bizarre parallel between what’s happening on our southern border and Israel’s Gaza Strip.

We have these Mexican missiles (Guatemalan grenades, El Salvador stingers, Honduran hardware, whatever…) being lofted over our border daily to the great distress of particular politicians and anyone else wanting to make a political statement about caring deeply for children but only the ones born in a specific geographic location.

Imagine the outcry if they were all blonde-haired and blue-eyed.

Anyway, while defending ourselves against the onslaught, we are being both praised and condemned for it, and many times from the same sources.

Following this train of thought, Israel has every ethical, moral, political and philosophical right to defend itself against direct attacks from neighboring countries as well.

Sure, I’d rather deal with innocent women and children any day as opposed to the terrorists’ cowards known as Hamas (Hiding Amongst Mosques And Schools), but we’re both trying to prevent tangible “things” from crossing our borders.

But that is, of course, where the similarities end, as the United States has yet to fire a single retaliatory shot south. Fired up a few buses and planes perhaps for returning illegal immigrants to their home country or dispersing them around the U.S. as current law demands, but that’s it.

Over in Israel it’s simply the “Everlasting Gobstopper” of religious-based conflicts, where every single killing is in response to a previous killing, the end result being literally millions dying over the centuries in a never-ending battle to prove whose deity is more loving and caring.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Yes, the Palestinian people are victims too, but mainly of their own elections when they put Hamas members in charge. It would help their cause on an international level if they stopped distributing photos of ‘activists’ carrying a dead child while wearing a “Death to Israel” T-shirt.

And the way the media keeps score, with the inane body count of the lowest number apparently winning (Israel leads, 5–340!), only serves to highlight the absurdity of it all.

Palestinians are like the scene from Monty Python’s “Holy Grail” where the attacking assailant slowly but surely has each appendage hacked off, only to continue his verbal assault up until the point he’s just a slab of meat with vocal chords announcing, “Okay, we’ll call it a draw.”

Either way, we can sleep away these glorious summer nights knowing we’re not directly affected, that is until November when we have the pleasure of voting for the politicians we disagree with the least.

Yes, that will make things all better, right?

Richard Carnes, of Edwards, writes weekly. He can be reached at poor@vail.net.

Write a column!

What’s on your mind? Share your insights with the rest of the community. What’s going well, not so well? Send your submission to ValleyVoices@vaildaily.com. By submitting a column, you are granting permission for the Daily to publish it on the paper’s website. Email Don Rogers at editor@vaildaily.com for more information.


Support Local Journalism