by R.P. McCabe

Tulagi – Guadalcanal – November 1942 – PFC Willie (Bill) McCabe: I don’t know every detail; too painful. Uncle Bill spoke of his ordeal in halting bits and pieces…eyes filled with tears. I’d pour him a little more Wild Turkey, Kentucky straight bourbon whisky, 101 proof. We’d sip quietly a while.

Buna Beach – New Guinea – February 1943 – PFC Willie (Bill) McCabe: On occasion he’d break out a box of tattered and bent black and white Kodak photographs of the pigmy people of New Guinea, women bare to the waist, the aboriginal men in loin clothes, oblivious to the concept of war except to the extent they got mowed down when the Japanese and Americans started shooting. A couple of GIs, kids actually, big toothy grins, steel helmets pushed back on their heads, cigarettes dangling out of their lips, arms across each others shoulders. Uncle Bill’s eyes would tear up once more. “They never made it out of that Godforsaken hellhole,” he’d say and take another long pull of Wild Turkey.

Bataan – Philippine Islands – January 1944 – Corporal Willie (Bill) McCabe: The campaign to recapture Bataan went well into the winter and spring of 1945. Uncle Bill would hang his head, elbows on his knees. “What do you say we have another taste o’ Turkey?” I’d pour. My Aunt Ruth, sitting quietly, listening from her favorite easy chair, would look over the tops of her glasses at the two of us. “Bill,” she’d say sing-song, her voice rising in pitch as she went from the ‘B’ to the ‘l’ in his name. And Uncle Bill would tell me again in herky-jerky installments, the horrors he witnessed at the liberation of the POWs on Bataan.

And yet my Uncle Bill never turned into a xenophobe. Never expressed hatred toward the Japanese people or the colored boys, as he referred to them, who fought on those islands with him. Uncle Bill was a good Baptist, which is to say, took his spirituality to be a personal matter between him and God as he saw him, but thought most churchgoers were a little too caught up in the fantasy of the good book.

My Uncle Bill died February 2009. He was 84 years old. 1924 – 2009; end of a generation. Fell off the top rung of his stepladder taking down the Christmas lights. Landed on his head and broke his damn neck! I was able to fly out to Albuquerque to see him before he checked out. Never made it out of the hospital. His wife, Aunt Ruth died the year before. Went down the hall to use the phone. When she seemed gone overlong, Uncle Bill went to have a look. There she sat…according to Uncle Bill…just slid right down beside the wall when her ticker gave up on her. Poured himself a glass of Wild Turkey, went and sat with her a spell before he had to let ’em come for her.

My Uncle Bill and Aunt Ruth weren’t much for complaining about what lay before them or the cards they were dealt. There were hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of Uncle Bills & Aunt Ruths born during the 1920s; educated, well-balanced people who figured their rights ended where yours begin; never understood the concept of the HOA, knew it to be a damn Republican plot to destroy the peace of enjoying your own property. They accepted the challenges in front of them to give us the America we had before George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, their neocon cronies and the elitist billionaires of Wall Street decided to take America back to a time before World War II. That really did piss Uncle Bill off. All his and Ruth’s hard work and sacrifice mostly down the drain; not to mention those boys back on New Guinea. I’ll bet you have an Uncle Bill & Aunt Ruth, too. I think you know what I mean.

Our Uncle Bills & Aunt Ruths brought America through the Great Depression after the barons of Wall Street destroyed the financial fabric of the nation. Sound familiar? Our Uncle Bills & Aunt Ruths rebuilt a nation, industrialized America, educated its children, gave us social security and Medicare because they respected and cared about the dignity of their parents and grandparents, knew the abuses of their Wall Street overlords and the vagaries of poverty and the struggles of hard-working Americans, saved millions of human lives through advances in science and medicine, Built highways and bridges that were safe to drive on and connected a nation, innovated art and music and movies, advanced women’s rights, ended segregation and gave us civil rights and human rights, gave us fair labor practices and wages and nurtured the transition into the technical age. Hell they put men on the moon! Their list of accomplishments is so long I would not be able to list the entirety of them in five single spaced pages. Essentially, they gave us all the things the Tea Party assholes refuse to support or even take care of…worse yet, want to take away from us, calling them entitlements.

Our Uncle Bills & Aunt Ruths were faced with the same kinds of despicable criminal, xenophobic, homophobic, blacklisting extremist assholes that we are faced with in our government today. Their Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Paul Broun was a two bit cheese-ball criminal by the name of Joe McCarthy and his extremist criminal cronies.By the way, (R) Senator Wisconsin…any similarity there? Their Rush Douchebag was Walter Winchell.

Like the cast of sleaze-bags we are currently fighting against in our government, McCarthy and his cronies were out to turn America into their own definition of extremist Puritan religious theocracy. Anybody who wouldn’t accept their dogma was a commie, socialist, fascist, queer…branded, called before their pogrom committees, lives destroyed, ability to work taken from them. Sound like anything you’ve seen lately?

McCarthyites called themselves Patriots, the same as this current bunch of religious, gun-toting, racist extremists and their supporters. But they didn’t fool Uncle Bill & Aunt Ruth. In February 1950 America got rid of Joseph McCarthy and his gang of political cronies when he was Censured and removed from the Senate of the United States. Uncle Bill & Aunt Ruth stayed the course…did what they had to do to preserve the America they fought for and rebuilt; the America of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, not the phony bastardized version of McCarthy and his gang just like this current dipshit Michele Bachmann and her cronies. (Breaking News: Rumored, at CPAC, Bachmann and Palin do lesbian sex and Limbaugh and Beck are doing pony rides with each other in the rectory–come on–I didn’t say rectum! Not like I’m reporting this without checking my facts. I called Fox News and Hannity gave a full confirmation on all of it. Journalistic standards of Fox News have been applied. So I know this story is truth! Good to go!)

We have a bunch of lowlifes in our government again these days. They call themselves Patriots, but they aren’t. (Louie Gohmert…Patriot…are you shitting me?) They’re criminals, the same as their predecessors were. It is our responsibility now to stand our watch, take down these pretenders to freedom and equality and take our government back. Our fight won’t be easy but neither was the fight our Uncle Bills & Aunt Ruths fought. They didn’t quit until they’d chased the criminals from the halls of their government and neither should we rest until the dirtbags of the Tea Party are brought to a state of ridicule so harsh they’ll want to self-deport themselves.

Where would they go? Why, that paradise in the desert Howdy Doody & Shotgun Cheney invaded; spent two trillion American dollars and the lives of more than 4000 young Americans to secure. The land of “Mission Accomplished”, where they can have all the assault rifles and grenade launchers they want; a place where they will be greeted as liberators and gasoline will be $.25 per gallon. The place they used to destroy the American economy and take away our personal freedoms with fear mongering and lies. A place where Paul Wolfowitz and Wayne LaPierre can stand guard at the gates of the schools their kids attend keeping those classrooms safe with their shoulder fired missile launchers.

Now…`Ole Howdy and Shotgun may have a little trouble traveling over in that part of the world. You see, Interpol has multiple arrest warrants against Dick Cheney as a war criminal. Switzerland has issued a war crimes warrant against ‘Ole Howdy himself. Their cronies in our government don’t want you to see them the way Uncle Bill & Aunt Ruth saw the evil of WWII tried and punished. The dirtbags of the Tea Party would have you hail these criminals and their current supporters in Congress as Patriots…as heroes, because…the guy in the White House is black…Muslim…not one of us…or at best…impure, as it were.

Look, my Uncle Bill would say, “We gotta liberate this island! Only way we can do that…eliminate the enemy. Let’s get to it!” And friends, they are the enemy. These are not representatives of a constituency interested in democracy. These are extremists bent on forcing their brand of America down your throat. They figure their rights continue right on into your homes, your kid’s education, your workplace, your marriage, your daughter’s and wives’ vaginas. http://www.hulu.com/watch/404167

The way we beat these vermin…the way we rid ourselves of them is to put faces with names. Call them what they are; ignorant and stupid. Refuse to afford them the dignity of calling them Patriots instead of the criminals they are, and that includes their supporters in the streets. Identify them. Call them out. Refuse on every level to allow them to pretend that they are good Americans interested in the common good. We must confront them and work tirelessly to keep the light shining on what it is they are really up to.

We beat the billionaires in 2012. We can beat gerrymandering in 2014 if we dig in.

*All photos used in this article are in the public domain or used under license from its owner.

* Use of these photos in no way implies agreement with its owner for any content of this article.

To contact the author: www.novelistrpmccabe.com













Order your copy of Mr. McCabe’s current novel, Betrayed: http://tinyurl.com/an3d679





















Mr. McCabe’s latest novel, Thick Fog in Pacheco Pass, will be released in April. Read the synopsis and first chapter free: http://www.novelistrpmccabe.com/MyNovels.aspx

























Read the Prologue and first chapter of Mr. McCabe’s novel in progress, Slaughtered: http://www.novelistrpmccabe.com/MyNovels.aspx