MY NEW ADDRESS--COME VISIT!

Guys, I have a new address, and I'd like you all to come visit me--I won't be making any more posts over here at blueinkblots.blogspot.com.

I've gotten my own domain name; a suggestion from computer-savvy friends as well as experts in the field. In a few months, I'll be setting up a website over there, but for now, I'm just continuing on with Blue Inkblots, which is now called, "Deanie's Blue Inkblots."

We've already gotten some new friends at the new location, where I've already made four or five new posts, including an explanation as to what the new House bill does and does not say about the war in Iraq, as well as a deeply personal post called, "After Four Years of War, It Doesn't Get Any Easier."

I've also left a provocative post, in which I gave my opinion as to why the (very small minority of) far-left of the Democratic party is wrong, in my opinion, about a quick pull-out, called, "I Want the War to End, Too, But the Troops Are Warriors, Not Children."

Most of my military family, as well as some new folks, have joined me. I'll be making my posts shorter, and as the presidential race swings into gear, I'll be expanding my commentary to include more on politics and less on the war, depending upon how things go in the next few months.

As my readers well know, we've sent both my son and my nephew over to Iraq for a total of FIVE deployments into the bloody Anbar Province with the Marine Corps, and now I would like to ask for your prayers for yet another nephew, who is due to deploy to Baghdad with the Army in a few short weeks for a very long deployment.

Also, one of our Blue Inkblots family-members, Kathy Sweeney, will be sending her son to Iraq with the Marines this month.

And another, Jamie Woodard, needs some serious prayers, because the powers that be have made the decision to release her severely brain-injured Iraq vet Marine son, Ben Hardgrove, from his rehab, with no medical benefits, very soon. She does not know what they are going to do, and as they have five other children, including three pre-schoolers, their situation is fairly desperate.

It was interesting, what Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said about how the "sacrifice" of the war has been worth it.

It seems some of us are doing all the sacrificing. Seems we should be able to decide whether it's "worth it" or not.

Come join me, over at: http://deaniemills.com

I look forward to seeing you guys.

TRUE PATRIOTS

"Imagine all the people, living life in peace
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one."
--"Imagine," music and lyrics by John Lennon

"My kids went to public school, and one day they came home and said there was going to be a concert. We said…What songs will you be singing? And they said, 'One of them will be, 'Imagine.'

"And we said, 'Fine, then. When it gets to that song, stand there and don't sing.'

"And they didn't."
--G. Gordon Liddy, muscle-man for Richard Nixon, convicted felon, popular conservative talk-radio host, famous for telling survivalists in the 90's to "aim for the head-shot, because they wear body armor" should federal law enforcement officers approach.

"NATALIE MAINES WILL BE SHOT DEAD SUNDAY JULY 6 IN DALLAS, TEXAS"
--Death threat delivered to the Dixie Chicks lead singer before a concert in Dallas in 2003. The F.B.I. revealed to the band's security team that this person--and others--had made other threats against their lives but that the F.B.I. had chosen not to tell their security people.

"I know how scared I am, and I can't imagine how Natalie must feel. Standing up there on stage…you feel so naked."
--Martie Maguire of the Dixie Chicks


I just watched two of the most powerful documentaries I have ever had the privilege to view.

One, The U.S. vs John Lennon, documents the systematic and relentless campaign of the Nixon administration, aided and abetted by J. Edgar Hoover's F.B.I., to silence the globally popular singer/songwriter and his avant-guard artist wife, Yoko Ono--(because of their tireless efforts to work for peace and an end to the Vietnam war, especially after 18-year olds got the vote and presidential primaries were coming up)--and, failing that, to force them out of the country by any means necessary, legal and otherwise.

The second, Shut Up and Sing, chronicles what happened to the most popular female band in the history of recorded music when the lead singer, Natalie Maines, uttered twelve words on-stage in London to protest the pre-emptive war in Iraq: "I'm ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas."

The fact that Maines made the comment because more than one million protesters against the war had flooded London streets that day was irrelevant to what happened after her remarks were quoted on a right-wing website with accompanying vitriol.

What followed was a systematic and overwhelming campaign by conservative activist groups and right-wing radio and television, tacitly encouraged by the White House--and aided and abetted by the CEO of an organization that owned 200 radio stations and ordered them all not to play their records--not just to shut them up, but to destroy them completely.

The over-the-top hatred directed at the band by country fans whipped up into a frenzy by such people as Bill O'Reilly, who called them the "Dixie Twits" and said they, "deserve to be slapped around", which culminated in serious death-threats that forced the young women--all of whom had babies under the age of three--to live in terror as they traveled to do concerts and promotional appearances and eventually forcing them to move from their homes to another state, was so beyond the pale when juxtaposed next to the offense that provoked it in the first place as to defy description.

Forty years ago, when John Lennon and Yoko Ono begged the world to "give peace a chance," Richard Nixon responded by ordering J. Edgar Hoover to start a file on the couple, which means that their phones were tapped, they were openly followed by F.B.I. agents, and a bogus case was opened in the immigration courts to deport Lennon back to England.

Documents released since Lennon's death by the Freedom of Information Act, show a deliberate chain of command going through every major cabinet office in the administration and eventually to the desk of the president.

But John Lennon--like Natalie Maines and the Chicks--WAS NOT READY TO BACK DOWN. He fought the administration in court, appealing every decision, over and over again until he won and was permitted to remain in the United States.

What strikes me is not so much that creative artists are the first--ALWAYS--to speak truth to power, the first to exercise their right to free speech in verse and prose and song and speech. That is a given. Creative artists don't worry so much what people think, are not constrained by polite society, and also feel a sense of responsibility to use their gifts and their celebrity to speak out against injustice and the abuse of power.

No, what strikes me is that, in both cases, we had an administration that ruled by fear and intimidation, creating paranoia among their own followers and accusing dissenters of not just disloyalty, but TREASON, while all along, they were prolonging a war long beyond the point where the majority of the American people even wanted it--

--But THINK ABOUT IT.

The same architects of this war and this administration and this policy of faux patriotism and paranoia and the relentless persecution of dissent in 2006 are the ones who served Richard Nixon in 1968.

Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld both worked in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and Henry Kissinger, who is a close advisor to Bush, was of course, the chief mastermind of the Vietnam war.

Richard Nixon got himself elected by promising that he had a "secret plan" to end the war, and then allowed tens of thousands more boys to die while he dragged out the so-called "plan" until it was politically advantageous to get him re-elected.

With Cheney and Rumsfeld calling the shots, and Kissinger whispering in his ear, Bush deliberately used the run-up to war to whip up his supporters and guarantee a Republican majority in 2002, and then used the weapon of All-Dissent-Is-Disloyalty to get himself re-elected in 2004. His whipping boys fanned out and managed to make a decorated Vietnam war combat vet look like a wimp, while, he, the draft-dodger, came across as a star-spangled hero.

Both presidents used the power of the presidency to paint any opponent as an enemy and to destroy anyone who dared defy them. They both ran secretive, paranoid administrations that sought to pervert Constitutional freedoms in order to garner for themselves more power.

THE BOTTOM LINE IS THIS: We are fighting the Vietnam war all over again because it's the same damn people in power. And they are using the same playbook to silence dissent.

Nixon tried to silence John Lennon. But by the time Bush came around, he and his minions had learned a far more sinister and sophisticated way to manipulate the media (yet come off looking like choir boys) while they tried to destroy the Dixie Chicks and anybody else who dared to defy them.


"They should just strap Natalie Maines to a bomb and drop her on Baghdad."
--caller to right-wing radio program

"They should just shut up and sing."
--host of right-wing radio program

"DIXIE TWITS: WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION."
--sign outside a concert

"If people don't want to buy their records, they shouldn't get their feelings hurt."
--President George W. Bush, in response to a question about the Chicks, giving his tacit permission for the onslaught against them.

"Toby Keith hasn't been banned for that."
--Natalie Maines, referring to the country singer's habit of flashing a gigantic "photo" of her in the arms of Saddam Hussein at his concerts, then singing, "I'll put a boot up your ass."

"The war is going great. The president's ratings are sky-high. Trust me, in two weeks, the looting will be over and the reconstruction of Iraq will be underway."
--Business manager to the Chicks, warning Natalie that her words would haunt her because the war was going so well. She had already apologized for her remarks--the day after--but it was little-reported in the media and drowned out by the howls of protest from such conservative organizations as FreeRepublic.com


Watching these great artists fight for their right to speak out in a free democracy--a right granted to them by the Constitution--watching them struggle to survive the tidal wave of hysteria directed toward them while they continued to create and to care for their families, made me weep.

You can't begin to imagine the stress such courage can cause, the toll it can take, not just on body and soul, but on career and livelihood.

Receiving hate mail and death threats, having radio stations refuse to play their music, watching steamrollers plow over their records and CD's even as the news media knocks each other down for an "exclusive" story--and doing it all while trying to maintain a marriage and care for young children--is a strain that us mere mortals can only, well, IMAGINE.

All of the Dixie Chicks had toddlers and infants underfoot while they were debating whether to require metal detectors to screen fans at concerts in case anyone might be carrying a gun.

John Lennon was a stay-at-home dad to his cherished child, Sean, who was five years old when Lennon was gunned down outside his home in New York City in 1980.

The fear is real. The hatred and the threats are real.

And so is the courage.

And here's the thing that oppressors can never quite GET. People respond to courage.

The WORDS that haters and oppressors try to kill?

People listen. And they hear.

In the midst of the most terrible oppressive tactics of the Nixon Administration to run John Lennon and Yoko Ono out of town on a rail--they released "Power to the People," and "Imagine," songs which not only went on to become the anthems of the peace movement, but which were also multi-million dollar top-forty hits.

After waves of hatred had been directed at the Dixie Chicks, in a concert in front of thousands, Natalie Maines offered the crowd fifteen seconds to boo the band.

And the rafters nearly blew off from the deafening thunder of cheers.

When the Dixie Chicks went back into the recording studio--out in Los Angeles because they'd had to leave Austin due to the threats and atmosphere there--Natalie Maines was asked if they would, in essence, be asking for the forgiveness of their country fans in the words of their songs.

She said, Hell, no.


"I'm not ready to make nice
"I'm not ready to back down
"I'm still mad as hell and I don't have time
"to go round and round and round.

"It's too late to make it right
"I probably wouldn't if I could
"I can't bring myself to do what it is
"You think I should."
--"I'm Not Ready to Make Nice," words and music by Emily Robison, Martie Maguire, Natalie Maines (the Dixie Chicks), and Dan Wilson


"Dixie Chicks: Taking the Long Way," debuted at not only Number One on the Billboard charts, but also Number One on the Country Charts.

And much to the chagrin of the haters, the Dixie Chicks swept the Grammy Awards, winning five, including Best Song, Best Album, and Best Country Entertainers, defeating such industry darlings as Carrie Underwood.

After Richard Nixon was forced to resign following the REAL national shame of Watergate, a reporter asked John Lennon what he thought about that.

He said, "Time wounds all heels."

In 2006, when the Bush administration had finally been revealed to have manipulated intelligence and misled the nation into an endless bloody wasted war, when 75% of the people polled hated the way he and his people had managed this war and a majority of the U.S. military now felt we never should have gone in, when Natallie Maines and the rest of us who disagreed back in 2002 were proven right--the Dixie Chicks returned to the same London arena where Natalie Maines had first uttered the 12 words that nearly destroyed them.

Standing in front of an on-their-feet cheering crowd, she commented that she had often been asked what she was going to say upon her return to, as she called it, "the scene of the crime."

And with a saucy, non-repentant twinkle in her eye, just before launching into their Number One hit to thunderous roars from the crowd, she said, "I'm STILL ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas."

The ultimate irony of those who would silence voices of dissent in a free democracy--particularly in time of war--by calling into question the patriotism of those who question an unjust war, is that the men and women in uniform who bravely march into battle do so to DEFEND that very right.


"John Lennon would be opposed to the Iraq war. He would say, "The war on terror has become the war OF terror."
--Ron Kovic, author of "Born on the Fourth of July," who was paralyzed by a sniper's bullet in the Vietnam War. Tom Cruise was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of the Marine who went on to protest the war.


Again and again, people ask me why I write so obsessively about this war. Is it because my son is a combat Marine who has done two deployments to Iraq? Is it because I come from a proud military family (with yet another young nephew heading into harm's way soon)? Is it because I protested this war from the beginning, and had my OWN patriotism questioned?

I am a writer. A writer is who I am. It is not what I DO. It is WHO I AM.

As a writer, every cell of my being cries out against injustice and against the abuse of power, and protest runs through my veins and out my fingertips onto the computer keys.

It is who I am. I cannot be anything else.

You see, any time a powerful society attempts to crush the creative voice of protest, they fail.

The conservative-run McCarthy era blacklist did not silence Hollywood screenwriters. They just wrote under pseudonyms.

Jewish dissident Elie Wiesel was not silenced by Nazi concentration camps.

Russian dissident Alexander Solzenitzen was not silenced by Soviet Communist gulags.

John Lennon and the Dixie Chicks were not destroyed, and their voices have not been silenced. Even 27 years after Lennon's death, his words and his music live on in protest to war and injustice everywhere.

My one tiny voice is not heard so much as Lennon's or Natalie Maines's. And that's fine.

Those of us out here in the hinterlands will raise our voices together into a mighty chorus, and we will cry out in unison until we can no longer be ignored. We will not be silenced.

It is our duty, our responsibility, and ultimately, our burden.

And we carry it with joy.


"We shouldn't confuse dissent with disloyalty. The dissenters are the true patriots because they are speaking out. Dissent is the only way to correct mistakes."
--John Dean, former chief counsel to Richard Nixon and the first to voluntarily testify against the president during the Watergate hearings.

"Dissent is the essential handmaiden of freedom."
--Gore Vidal, quoted in "The U.S. vs John Lennon"