Preface: While I recognize that there are many atheists in the Animal Rights Movement who adhere to veganism, and that people of many different religions and philosophies advocate and fight for nonhuman animals, my personal spirituality is the backbone of my veganism and my activism. I want to make it clear that I'm not questioning the commitment of vegans or activists who aren't spiritual and I also want to clarify that I am not a theologian. I merely want to use this essay as a vehicle to comment on the nature of my spirituality and to express the immensity of the strength it provides me.

If a person could approach you on the street, gently caress your cheek, and walk away leaving you with the feeling of having been violently slapped and dowsed with a bucket of ice water, they would approximate Tom Engelhardt's writing, including that in his newest book "The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's."

Let me stipulate from the start that at least three-quarters of the book has nothing to do with Obama, but deals purely with Bush's wars. However, those wars -- which always were and still are our wars and our Congress's wars, and the wars of our grandchildren who will pay for them financially and probably in more serious ways -- have not been fundamentally changed by applying the name of a different emperor to them. What Engelhardt has written over the past several years and collected here on the subject of war needed to be said and will continued to need to be said more loudly with each passing day.

When Israel attacked the Gaza aid flotilla, Congresswoman Jane Harman was engaged in a parallel assault. Israel’s government relied on the efficacy of violence; Harman’s campaign was counting on the power of paid media. In both cases, the targets were advocates of human rights for Palestinian people.

Brandishing guns and stun grenades, in international waters, Israeli commandos rappelled from a helicopter and boarded from a fast-moving boat onto the flotilla’s largest ship. The mission was to halt a Gaza-bound expedition carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid.

The mission of Harman’s campaign strategists -- targeting her progressive opponent with a slick TV commercial -- was to achieve a related goal in California’s 36th congressional district. Stopping the Gaza flotilla and stopping the congressional campaign of Marcy Winograd are similar agenda items.

Harman, a powerful member of the center-right Blue Dog Coalition, is one of the Israeli government’s most valued allies on Capitol Hill. She’s a standout -- even in a Congress teeming with fervent apologists for Israel’s relentless suppression of Palestinian rights.

The God of War doesn’t dine on raw shank bone or bellow orders quite like he used to. When he talks to Congress, say, it goes more like this:
“And, oh, while you’re up, I’m going to be needing, uh (cough, cough) . . . $159 billion this go-around, you know, for the troops. Thanks.”
It works.

With the war on terror in its ninth year and disappearing from even the pretense of national debate, let alone outrage and protest, and with the President of Hope prosecuting it so quietly most of us no longer notice, we could be at an eerie national transition point, beyond which war is no longer controversial or a big deal but just the way things are: “normal,” like background noise. And the enormous transfusions of cash it requires — well, nice people don’t talk about it.

Oh Lord.

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.