Why I Can’t Vote for Clinton (Or Anyone Else Who Enabled The War).
UPDATED BELOW
From Tim Kelly:
I don’t know if you knew or remember this guy, but Jay M., Mark M’s little brother (both of whom worked at Christie’s for a while with Joe K, Bobby Cocktails, etc.), is dead.
He was a smart, loveable fuck-up a couple of years younger than us who lived for years in Newport (they grew up in Fall River) who had some issues with drugs (who fucking didn’t?) and got into some trouble, but later woke up, grew up, and as part of his efforts to turn his life around and get on the straight-and-narrow, joined the US Marines. He ended up being shipped off to Iraq. He was living somewhere down south and had been back from a recent tour of duty (probably more than one, given the way the regime ruining/running the country has been abusing its American service people) and apparently had been suffering severe PTSD. A few weeks ago, he took his own life by throwing himself in front of an eighteen-wheeler on a highway. It had to be PTSD, because that guy, even in the depths of his drug problems, loved life and was too fucking cerebral to remotely fit any profile of a suicide case. Pauly told me a couple of weeks ago that he’d heard a rumor about it, but at the Fu Manchu show, Joe confirmed it. Joe, his wife, and Mike were up in Cambridge for the show, and he filled me in at the merch table. Joe still hangs out with Mark (”I’ve been making a point of spending as much time as I can these days,” he said), so he had, sadly, the best access to the truth.
It’s fucking awful, and as I said to Joe, it’s not Jay’s fault and it’s just the tip of the fucking iceberg. I am not religious but at times like this I really hope there is a just god and a place more horrible than any existing human conception of eternal hell for the criminal warlords like Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc. to burn and suffer for the countless worthwhile lives like Jay’s that they have and will continue to ruin. What a sad, sickening mess. Words fail to capture it.
I’ll be calling Mrs. Clinton’s campaign to read this to her staffers later today, and as always will be sharing this with my Senator Arlen Specter’s office as well.
I’m sure they’ll both tell me they’ll pass my message along, and hang up the phone as quickly as possible.
UPDATE: Arlen Specter’s people put me on hold mid-message, and never came back to the phone. The Clinton campaign in Pennsylvania allowed me to read the email in full, told me they were sorry for my loss, and told me to have a “wonderful day”.
March 30th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
such a small point, and in no way takes away from the awful tragedy of the story (and the unavoidable conclusion that this fellow’s death was so unecessary), but one thing in Tim’s message rankled me:
“and was too fucking cerebral to remotely fit any profile of a suicide case.”
“Cerebral” people commit suicide all the time. Whether he meant “contemplative” or “smart” by “cerebral,” the point still holds. The dumb cows who DON’T spend any time in contemplation are least likely to commit suicide… why would they? There’s always more twinkies in Aisle 3, and hey, a new episode of American Idol is on next Tuesday! YaaaY!
this is almost certainly beside the point Tim and Brendan were trying to make here. (And I did get that point.. and don’t disagree with it). MY point is that there’s no “model” of a person who commits suicide… and being smart/contemplative is certainly no protection against it.
March 31st, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Hey K(NYS):
I don’t think Tim was trying to discriminate between those who do and those who don’t choose suicide. Tim and I go back more than 20 years, and several of our mutual friends have chosen suicide. During high school it was at least one friend a year: Christy R., Jamie F., and James C. come to mind. After HS, we lost Matty B., John St. J., Mike S. (that might have been murder), Matt C. and a few I’ve probably missed.
Tim has no illusions about what type commits suicide. I think what he meant was that for some suicides, you could almost see it coming, while the guy in question, not so much.