Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Pleasant mid-week musings

As we head into the winter of our discontent (just wait 'til those heating bills start rolling in), there'll be much time for contemplation as we sit huddled in chilled rooms listening to our hand-cranked radios. Those demands of the family gas guzzler for pricey fuel will make getting around, like going back and forth to work, far more costly. Increased energy costs eating into our paychecks will be synonymous with taking sizeable paycuts.

We'll be able to read letters to the editor in our local papers (those of us who haven't yet cancelled our subscriptions for lack of funds) in dimly lit rooms before burning 'em to keep warm. Undoubtedly, there'll be the recurring rants like those on today's opinion page of our local paper:

"Enough of the Bush bashing. No president in history has ever had to deal with treachery of the magnitude that resulted on 9/11. No president in history has had an entire city flooded by a natural disaster.

"There have been those who have blamed the president for these incidents.

"How can someone possibly be blamed for 19 treacherous evil men who committed the most despicable act ever? Who can plan for a hurricane created and controlled by Mother Nature?"


I don't think the bitch is Bush is responsible for those events (although the pre-Bush "Project for the New American Century" did say it would take a Pearl Harbor type attack to initiate the neocons ambitious global agenda--and "Darn, if they didn't get one on 9/11!" according to conspiracy theorists).

No, I think the bitch from the majority of Americans is Bush's pre-attack and pre-hurricane inactions despite warnings, and his inept responses to 9/11 and Katrina. (Although, I am cynical enough to imagine what we're seeing unfold with the war and Katrina are precisely what the Bush administration wants!) But these are just the manifestations of a far graver event.

I'm talking about the death of some pretension of free elections this nation clung to pre-2000. I'm talking about the disastrous leadership we now "enjoy" that overthrew the last vestiges of democracy in a bloodless coup. Oh, and I'm not the only one who thinks this. There's at least one other--former President Jimmy Carter. American democracy is dead.

So what we see unfolding is a PNAC vision for the world as written by Paul Wolfowitz at the end of last century. The neocon spread of "freedom and democracy" around the world is nothing but a dangerous wealth and power grab under the guise of a "war on terror". So let us ponder that this winter while sitting in our cold cableless TV candlelight.

Are we safer under Bush? No. Are we freer? No. Have you heard Bush's plan to militarily "quarantine" parts of the country from the rest of us in the event of a bird flu breakout? Sounds more Orwellian than "prevention" to me.

Do you cringe every time Bush speaks about giving small business opportunities to prosper and grow while Cheney and his cronies pass out billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to their corporate pimps? "Small business" is a term Bush likes to salt his talks with to give the illusion of "little guy opportunity". I'm sorry, but that's just Bush bullshit.

And how about Bush reassuring us he's gonna help those poor folks on the Gulf reclaim their lives and communities. How? By suspending federal wage laws and importing "Mexican" workers from Texas to rebuild New Orleans?

And what of the 'bring the troops' home cries from more and more Americans? Forget it! Read the Project for the New American Century plans that the neocons you didn't elect are executing. They're building 14 permanent military bases in Iraq that you don't want. Nobody's coming home anytime soon. Iraq is going to be occupied for a very long, long time.

And don't count on clueless Democrats to be part of any solution to salvage the country soon. They're so complicit with the Republicans, if they were aboard a tourist boat on a lake, it would capsize from too much weight on the right. Many would drown.

What's far, far more worrisome than the current state of affairs is our future state of affairs. I'm not certain how we'll transcend the hole being dug for Americans by our "patriot" chickenhawk leaders. The national debt being run up by those "small government" conservatives is increasing by trillions. Our bankrupting mid-east adventurism is being financed outside the annual budgets! Long after Bush has retired to some Caribbean resort island, our grandkid's unborn children can still expect to be impacted by the policies of this president's heinous herd. And by his Supreme Court. As may the environment we inhabit, the air we breathe and the water we bottle.

So where do we go from here? I don't know. Most of our media have been turned into houses of ill repute where their whores deliver us tricks for their corporate pimps. Real news is increasingly rare and hard to come by.

Then there's those higher class "houses". They employ our government representatives who serve their business masters interests while pretending to represent ours. Right now, we're pretty well screwed.

Some are not optimistic for America's future. Sister Carol Gilbert, one of those imprisoned for disarming an Air Force ICBM, is not even sure the American system can be reformed at this point. She believes it's too far gone, that the whole system needs to collapse.

But that's something we can save for this winter; to ponder in a more austere America. That, and that perennial question, "Am I better off now under Bush?"

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