“DOTS ON A LINE”
by OPOVV, ©2020
(Aug. 20, 2020) — The following is a conversation among a squad of our finest guarding a pile of worthless rocks in Afghanistan.
“Look, I don’t want to sound like a pain, but I really want to see if I understand this right, so would you mind explaining it to me again?”
“Oh, sorry, but I’ve got a previous engagement. What, are you nuts? We’re stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, guarding a pile of worthless rocks until the lizards crawl out to sun themselves in the morning. We’ve nowhere to go and nothing to do but to make sure that the heathens don’t — I don’t know — what do you think, Nelson?”
“Me? Above my pay grade; they don’t pay me enough to think.”
“How about you, Smith?”
“I think that these rocks are the key; that’s what I think.”
“The key to what?”
“It is my opinion that if the brass wanted us to know, they would have told us but since they haven’t, well, we just follow orders and treat these rocks as if they were worth something.”
“What’s your gut feeling?”
“Get real: if these rocks were worth something we would’ve seen a camel jockey at least once during all the times we’ve wasted out here in the middle of nowhere. I think that we’re in a secret psyop and that there’s a drone circling that’s recording our every move and whisper.”
“And maybe once in a while it swoops down and sprays us with some mind-bending chemical to see how we’ll react.”
“React to what?”
“Maybe they have a squad of mechanical lizards with cameras and microphones; who knows?”
“Well, at least we sure as heck don’t know, now, do we? I mean, there’s not a road worth mentioning, or even a goat path within six KLICKS of here, is there?”
“I’ve got an idea.”
“This ought to be good.”
“Speak up, Oaks.”
“I think some lowlife back at the Pentagon drew a line on a map and said, ‘Let’s put outposts along this line, nice and neat-like.’ And then he put dots along the line and we’re one of the dots.”
“We’re a dot?”
“Who said we’re dots?”
“Oaks thinks we’re nothing but dots on a line.”
“No I didn’t. I didn’t say we’re dots; all I said is that we occupy a dot.”
“Same thing.”
“That’s right: a dot is a dot no matter how you look at it.”
“What, everybody catch what Biden has? All I said was that the only meaning this particular spot on the planet earth has is that some Pentagon lowlife — who gets to go home to the wife every night — put a dot on a line on a map so it forms some sort of classical defensive perimeter that he was taught at a war college or maybe at West Point.”
“The Point.”
“We can do without the sarcastic kibitzing, Nelson.”
“Who, me?”
“Hold it. Oaks makes more sense than any drone and mechanical lizard theory.”
“What about spraying us with LSD?”
“Okay, here it is, then: watch out for any strange behavior and report it to me immediately.”
“I got one.”
“Speak up.”
“One of us thinks that we’re surrounded by mechanical lizards that record our every move and whisper.”
“I got it: let’s not move and whisper.”
“Jordon, is everybody from Alabama as stupid as you?”
“Quiet! You guys are enough to drive any Sergeant of the Guard bananas.”
“How can you be a Sergeant when you’re just a corporal?”
“The same way a Commander in the Navy can be a Captain. Now listen up: as I was explaining, these people don’t like us trespassing and desecrating their land. They say we’re unbelievers.”
“But we are unbelievers.”
“What’s ‘desecrating’ mean?”
“It means they think that we don’t belong here.”
“But that’s the part that I don’t understand: They don’t want us around, right?”
“Right.”
“So if they don’t want us around, how come they want to live where we live?”
“You mean why would any of them want to live in the USA, the ‘Land of the Great Satan?’”
‘You got it.”
“Because they think that wherever they are, they are automatically on sacred land.”
“But that’s nuts.”
“You telling me.”
“So if they think that way, how come the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t deport them, and why would any American want even one Muslim in our country in the first place?”
“You want me to tell you what I think, for real?”
“Go ahead, Corporal, tell us what you think is going on.”
“I think we’re being taken for a ride. I think that the lie of Islam being a religion is a cover for a political philosophy, akin to Communism where the few lord it over the many. I think that 9-11 accelerated the influx of Muslims worldwide and that Barry Soetoro, aka Obama, opened the floodgates for the Muslim invasion into the U.S. and it hasn’t slowed down one bit. I think that the Department of State is nothing but a Muslim Welcome Wagon and that the United Nations is nothing more than a Muslim Admiration Society.”
“Any more?”
“Yes, but it’s too depressing. Suffice it to say we have Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib in Congress, and if that doesn’t wave a red flag in front of your face, nothing will.”
“But Omar just won her primary in Minnesota.”
“There are lots of Muslims in the Gopher State who vote at least once, you know.”
“Gosh.”
“Golly. So how come we’re not guarding a pile of rocks in Minneapolis? We’d be doing more good back home than we’ll ever be doing over here.”
“Hey, maybe Jordon isn’t so stupid after all.”
“That’ll be enough of that. Does that answer your question?”
“So what do they want?”
“Sharia Law.”
“And then what?”
“Then we ‘non-believers’ pay a ‘non-believer’ tax.”
“That’s it?”
“No, that is not it. There’s FGM’s for the girls; then ‘honor killings’ for the girls; and last but not least, there’s a lifetime of beatings, disfigurements, broken bones and broken lives for the girls.”
“Seems like the girls get the short end of the Islam deal, doesn’t it?”
“They don’t get any part of the Islam deal, which is why the Constitution and any part of Islam is like oil and water: they don’t mix and NEVER did, is, or will. And then there’s the blasphemy laws, don’t forget.”
“What’ll that get us?”
“Killed.”
“Killed?”
“Murdered.”
“Murdered?”
“Face it: it’s what they do. Now, look: it’s not their fault, after all, it’s what their culture has been practicing for the last fourteen centuries, so why stop now? It’s worked for over a thousand years, the few lording over the many; the men lording it over the women. Think about it: fourteen hundred years of beatings, disfigurements and ‘honor killings,’ the license given to any male to do anything – including murder – to any female for any or no reason at any time.”
“Not much hope for women in Islam, is there?”
“Suicide by self-immolation is the choice of opting-out.”
“So if they don’t accept the Constitution, why don’t we deport them?”
“Search me. Hey, will you just look at the time? And just on time, here come our replacements.”
FINI
“And When I Die” (4:04)