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Show George Must Be Wondering If it Was Worth AH That Trouble (Editor's Note: The following article was published in the Laramie (Wyo.) Republican-Boomerang on Washington's Birthday, eFb. 22, 1939. We think it is even more appropriate appropri-ate in 1967 than it was in 1939.) Fold your wings, George old scout, light on one of those lofty pinnacles, spread the clouds a bit and take a gander at what you started. A hundred and sixty-three years ago you and a bunch of hardy souls with great I ideals pricked your red-coated cousins in the pants and chased them back across the water, then set out to found the nation of nations. And a swell job you did of it, too. But boy, look at all the un-doing htat's been done ! , and shed a tear or so for your ideals. I A few more years passed, and other shades of free love, pioneers in about everything that's nonsensical and everything every-thing that's worthwhile. You did a swell job back in 1776, but there's been a lot of un-doing since. Instead of a Moses to lead us away from depressions, what we need now is a Washington to lead us through the maze of laws and resolutions and more laws our Congress (no relation to the Continental Congress ) has foisted upon us. We need a Jefferson to untangle the myriad foreign alliances you foreswore and warned against. We need a Patrick Henry to demand liberty from the oppression op-pression of self-minded officials offi-cials residing in the city named for you. We need a new start. harm to befall us, especially since his most vicious blood-brother blood-brother has been incarcerated these many years in our toughest gaol, and no one has taken up where Mr. Brisbane left off, so most of us have come out from under the bed and are leaving it up to the Army and Navy to do the worrying about furriners jumping jump-ing the drink to dump a bushel of bombs on us. WE'RE STILL PIONEERING We're still here, George, and paying 35c on the dollar to Uncle Sam to feed our hosts of reliefers and politicos. We're still getting up every morning with a "What's Gonna Happen Today" attitude. We're still pioneers, as you were, George pioneers in sales tax, pioneers pio-neers in fads and fashions, pioneers in international bungling, bung-ling, pioneers in national government gov-ernment philandering (and George, take a look at the Constitution you were so proud of and all our officials swore to uphold do you recognize it?), pioneers in quick divorce I ! and we had to do your job all ! over again. Old John ' Bull i wasn't satisfied yet, and we had to give him another kick In the pants. Less than a hundred years after your blood crimsoned the Valley Forge snows a ibunch ' of Yankees and a bunch of Rebels from the ' grits and j gravy belt staged the battle of the century for the privi lege of saying who's gonna boss the works. Our history books j tell us the Yankees won, and the Rebels still chant about really winning, then having the gravy as well as the grits i taken from their hungry mouth j land they had to give in to I get another slab of sow-belly, Other furriners took a crack or two at us. Our worthy j historians tell us iwe lost a i ', war with the Spaniards be- ! cause we weren't prepared for it, the Mexicans had to be spanked to appease some Lone Star cattlemen who couldn't handle a few rustlers on their own, and spanking them proved good practice for the Rainbow Division to work up enough sweat to make the world safe for democracy a few years later, j WHERE WAS MOSES? ? A famous engineer and fi-, nancier got elected to the job J you started and the bourgeoise of the- nation had so much confidence in the way they ;i thought he'd fill your shoes i they put on an act that made !j: the decline and fall of the j Roman Empire look like a i trip down the slide on a chil dren's playground toy comparison. compari-son. Shanty Towns became so popular they wrote a song j about them, and "Brother Can j You Spare a Dime?" became I ,. . the national anthem. Everyone shouted for a Moses and got a two-fisted spender instead. After our share of pestilence and more than our share of gry-bellied politicians and ev-prosperity, ev-prosperity, congressmen, hun-erything hun-erything else that's supposed to befall a nation, the one you founded finds itself in one 1 helluva spot now. WE IMPROVE APACE Most of our gansters are in Alcatraz, the snatch racket is cn the decline, we survied prohibition and prohibition booze, bathtub gin and home brew most of us did anyway and got along fairly well with the Mdivanis and the innumerable in-numerable . Russian royalists and their phoney crown jewels. jew-els. Mr. Einstein came and went and came again, the Ku Klux didn't kill off all of the Catholics and Jews; the niggers nig-gers still sing about their Dixie and proceed to knock slap-happy all the aspiring white hopes we can produce, the Technocrats didn't get us all to working for ergs of hours-in-beans, so the shrieking shriek-ing eagle is still the loudest noise in the land, and we're still having measles and mumps and scarlet fever. Chaplin - mustachioed Adolf took up where the Ku Klux left off, and has a few bunds and Silver Shirts scattered across the face of this more or less fair land, but most of us aien't worried about that. Beetle - browed, prominent -jawed Benito is having a high, wide and handsome time of it in Ethiopia, Spain, and his own spaghetti-loving nation, but we still think we're too far away from him for much |