things are getting better...

...because the enormous vessel you see slipping into the brine in the picture is the good ship "Perpetual War Fever."

Partly this is Obama's doing, although it's not due to any conscious strategy on his part. It seems the debate over his timid and industry-oriented health care reform bill has begun to cause millions of people, possibly a majority, to think in ways I've never witnessed before in this country, about our resources and how they're being used and misused. Taxpayers -- people in other words -- are just beginning to figure out how badly they've been scammed by their supposedly representative government, and by the war machine in whose service that government is ripping us off, and they've had enough.

The best thing about the health care reform bill is that the right-wingers, the party of War on Terrorism and War on Drugs and War on Common Sense, put all their marbles on winning the health care reform debate, and now they've lost their marbles. Their behavior, before, during, and after the debate has landed them securely at the bottom of history's garbage can, where they've always belonged.

During my entire lifetime, these people have poisoned the political atmosphere in this country, and polluted the public discourse with lies, evasions, and the immorality of self-deception. But they won't be back to bother us any more.

In his novel 1984, Orwell wrote that modern warfare "helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs." Preserving "that special mental atmosphere" in the United States for the past 65 years has required keeping voters (or, once again, people) focused on an enemy and fear of that enemy. The objective is to keep them so ignorant and frightened that they are unable to focus on the true state of affairs, and will fail to notice that their taxes are underwriting a military establishment which is robbing them blind.

Billions for so-called "defense," but nothing for necessary social services is what our government has been selling us for a lifetime, whether it's been in the hands of Republicans or Democrats. But now the scam stands exposed, and the game is over.

They pay taxes in Europe, too, but most Europeans don't complain. They actually get something for those taxes, because their governments are not dominated by a parasitical war machine which re-invents reasons for waging a "war on terror" every day of its life.

Some of my earliest memories are of the radio and TV coverage of the Korean War. Then came the Cold War and the insanity of the armaments race with the Soviets. While that was still going on there was Vietnam, and at the tail end of the Cold War, the Reagan-sponsored and -funded mass murders in Nicaragua and El Salvador. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism, the keepers of the eternal flame of perpetual warfare and war hysteria had to work hard to come up with an enemy to replace the "Evil Empire," and were obliged by Osama bin Laden. But there were no profits to be realized in chasing bin Laden, so after a quick bait-and-switch, the neocon Bush administration decided to go after Saddam and the Iraqi oil reserves.

But now it's time to say "Good-bye to all that." So here's to you, warheads: Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.