Looking Forward over My Shoulder

Now get this and get it straight. Treachery is a sucker's road, and everyone who walks it ends up in the gutter, the prison or the grave. It's always the same. But they never learn.

Sure, they'll stab you in the back while they smile into your face. How can they be so slippery? Practice, brother, practice. Ain't no gilt-toenailed frizzy-haired dime-a-dance floozy who ever did you harm like these weasels will. No dame can cut your heart out the way they can. And they want to. They enjoy it. Der Fuehrer calls the tune and they dance the jig. And it's a high-stepping one, believe you me.

And the boys who got into the long gray boats to go give the little corporal a special message compliments of Uncle Sam, they don't ask no fancy thanks from us. They're happy to sit in a hole in the mud and blow a thousand metal kisses Jerry's way. It's their job, and Americans know how to get the job done, over here, over there, and anywhere. Not a place on this grim globe that our boys won't walk to or swim to or crawl on their bellies to, so that we here at home will be safe and secure in our dry warm homes with our wives and families. So we're not about to complain about too few red points in the ration book, about too little coffee, about a 35 mile speed limit or three gallons of gas per week or not being able to get tires. We'll drink water, see, and like it. We'll walk, so that our boys can ride. It's little enough to do for them. We sent our boys there, and our boys signed up and went, and this whole blessed nation is pulling for them, every one. Not a block in any town in every county of every state, but has a boy in uniform, doing the job that needs getting done. And they won't come home until it's done.

But not everyone in this nation is a real American, see. They planned ahead, these nasty bastards. So they sent their spies to live with us and learn our ways, and we, big lugs, took them in. Or they paid those cowards who were born here but don't belong -- like cuckoo's eggs -- we thought they were our own, but they're rotten. And some don't even need to be paid. They sucked up the Nazi lies like stolen honey and sweetness drips from their smiles as they poison the water tanks. They write for the newspapers. They talk on the radio. They produce the newsreels. They infiltrate the movies. They run for office to make our laws. And they hate the American Way and what it means and everything it stands for.

Well we can take it on the chin. Tojo got us at Pearl, and we were down but not out, and we got up off our knees from that sucker punch and came back swinging. But those boys of ours over there, what do you suppose they think, hearing the bullets hissing in their ears? They do it, because it matters. Somebody has to do it, and that's us. But when they open up a paper and read that they're losing? When they read that they're dying for nothing? And their cause is wrong? And their lives are wasted? When they hear the fatcats saying they terrorize women and children in the dead of night? When they're called torturers and monsters and murderers? There they were, thinking the enemy was only over there. We've let our boys be flanked.

It will not stand. We'll get to the ballot box come Tuesday, and send a message not to some SStuffed SShirt in Washington, but to the lads who read every letter from home like it was a telegram from God. We'll tell our boys that we're behind them all the way, until the job is done, and beyond. And we'll do it with the vote, but how. Herr Goebbels of das Propagandaministerium is already making too big a noise. We won't hand the purse strings over to das Finanzenministerium.

*****

Pull it 65 years forward. Change some of the nouns.



J