I’ve just about given up blogging for a combination of reasons. It started with — and this is still the primary reason for my silence — my feelings that America has become the Land of the Zombies. For whatever reason, Americans have decided they’re happy to have the status of serfs, not seen since the Middle Ages in Europe, thrust upon them once again. Another reason harkens back to the experience I had with A-Plus.net, which essentially ruined the blog readership when they took me offline for more than two weeks. (I still haven’t decided whether or not to pursue legal action on that, but there’s time.)

While most of us have turned into Zombies — and, who knows? maybe this is why many have turned into Zombies — others have decided to wage all out social civil war with one another.

Bob Marcotte sends me a link to an Army Times article today under the heading of “blogworthy.” (Not to be outdone by the Army Times, CNN has reprinted the exact same story.) The story is about a group of fundamentalist “christians” who have apparently started attending funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. They’re carrying signs that say “Thank God for IEDs.”

For those who don’t know, IEDs are “improvised explosive devices” — home-made bombs used to kill our kids in the Middle East.

Now I’m no fan of the war in Iraq. One of the many symptoms of American malaise, in my mind, is that we have not yet impeached George Bush for lying to the American public in order to convince us all that dying in a foreign war for oil companies is a good thing. When President Clinton lied about having an affair, Republicans and Pharisees — increasingly the same group — were all fired up to impeach him. Frankly, they probably would have sentenced him to death, or at least life without possibility of parole, if they could have gotten away with it. And for what? Because he did what just about any American male who cheated on his wife would do: he lied to keep his infidelity from becoming public. And let’s not kid ourselves about this, either: A lot of American males cheat on their wives. It would not surprise me to learn that it surpasses baseball as the favorite American past-time.

Yet when a President lies to us about more serious things, things that lead to war and death, we do nothing.

Nevertheless, I do not favor the idea of harassing Americans who are busily burying their dead sons and daughters and screaming about how this is God’s will because Americans are tolerant of others (well, some others, anyway). And it shouldn’t be necessary to have to take to your motorcycle in “patriotic” support of something that’s wrong to the bone on the other end of the spectrum, in order to balance things out.

Balance doesn’t come from seeing people hanging out at one extreme and, because of this, taking another extreme.

Our families should be able to bury their dead in peace, without being harassed by misguided “christians” who haven’t a clue about the true meaning of Christianity.

The proper response, though, shouldn’t require us to show our support for a war that America should never have started.