December 22, 2005
Dedication
I’m continually amazed by the lengths to which a lot of right-wingers/Republicans will go to make excuses for Bush.
So far, the man has:
1) Admitted to spying on U.S. citizens and said that he will continue to do so
2) Condoned the torture of innocent foreigners
3) Allowed U.S. citizens to be held in prison without trial
4) Allowed no-bid contracts to be given to companies to which many fellow politicians held financial ties
5) Declared war against a country that posed no threat aside from having an asshole dictator in charge, and then changed the reason for war halfway through.
6) Essentially divided our country in half, between those who just want to see a little sanity and a little decency on our country’s behalf, and those who are more than willing to trample all over sanity and decency just to preserve partisan politics and further their own questionable motives and agendas.
7) Destroyed all of our diplomatic ties with countries who were more than happy to be allied with us before Dubya stepped in.
8) And a few other things that I'm too lazy to list.
And people are perfectly fine with all that. They’re more than happy to say, “Oh, it’s okay, because it’s Georgie Porgie! We love him! He’s such a nice guy! You could have a beer with him!” They thumb their noses at other countries, calling them “surrender monkeys” and claiming that they’re allied with “the enemy” or “evil-doers”…whoever that actually is. Unfortunately, what they don’t realize is that all it takes is one national tragedy on the scale of 9/11 for us to need help, and those “surrender monkeys” might be the only ones around to pull our bravado-spouting asses out of a crack.
The most frightening evidence thus far of Bush supporters’ willingness to fling themselves headfirst off of a cliff for one of the most inept politicians ever has manifested itself in the domestic spying issue. The implications of this discovery are at least comparable to those of the Plamegate scandal, if not much larger. Essentially, it’s an impeachment case. Presidents have been ousted for less. But Bush supporters are fine with it under the circumstances.
Theoretically, we could fast-forward time. Let’s say that by some fluke (god, I hope not) that Hillary Clinton gets elected president, or John Kerry wins the next elections, and after their re-election to a second term, someone discovers that they’ve authorized the wiretapping of domestic phones WITHOUT court clearance. What would their reaction be then? I’m willing to bet my next paycheck that it wouldn’t be as lax as their reaction to Bush doing the exact same thing.
Personally, I think it’s a huge deal. And it’s not about my generally leftist stance getting in the way. It’s about being an American. It’s about living in a country that was founded on the pursuit of life and liberty, and about the frightening possibility of those being taken away from us. I like the idea of being able to do things without the government watching my every move. I don’t build bombs, I don’t have anything to hide. If they want to monitor everything I do, fine. They’ll end up falling asleep after five minutes of observation. But I’m essentially opposed to it. Nobody deserves this sort of scrutiny. It’s easily likened to following black or Hispanic teenagers everywhere they go because they could possibly be gang members.
Possibly.
It’s a waste of time, resources, and most of all it shows just how paranoid and overly presumptuous our country has become thanks to a leadership that keeps us on a tight leash, supposedly saving us from all sorts of dangerous things. Fortunately the dangerous things that we had everything to fear from haven’t reared their heads yet, and I don’t credit that to the efforts of the government. I don’t credit that to them because in spite of all the political grandstanding and coddling that they do in public, they’ve done nothing to make the country as safe as they claimed they would. That’s fairly obvious.
We had the bullshit “Terror Meter” and the foundation of the Department of Homeland Security (which was more than likely founded just so that the politicians could give their buddies high-paying jobs) to placate the idiots, however actual legislation towards doing something…anything to prevent another potential disaster involving terrorism proved fruitless. FEMA showed its true colors after the spat of hurricanes that ravaged the Southeast U.S. Once that curtain was pulled back, many Americans started to question whether or not our glorified babysitters were really capable of taking care of us if tragedy struck anywhere else, and they were right to ask those questions.
Those questions led to the exposure of rampant cronyism, which explained the presence of losers like FEMA’s Michael Brown. Coinciding with a strong anti-war sentiment that allowed for investigation into the machinations of the Iraq war, it thrust the seedy underbelly of the GOP into the limelight, allowing for such scrutiny that exposed corruption within the ranks. Tom DeLay. Bill Frist. Donald Rumsfeld and Tamiflu. All of the crooks who spent their previous hours sanctimoniously proselytizing to the American people about ethics and morals and decency had their facades ripped away to reveal the dirty truth: that these guys were nothing more than disgustingly wealthy criminals.
Like a disease, the apologists were right there every step of the way. Jumping on grenades for the Bush team. Making up bald-faced lies and excuses. Doing everything they possibly could to avoid anyone being held responsible for any of these fiascos. And they’re still present, still happily wearing their American flags, yellow ribbons prominently displayed on their cars, “only losers cut and run”, “these are total non-issues”, et cetera. And with this latest development, it seems that they’re perfectly fine with sacrificing freedom for personal safety that might not even be endangered to begin with. They still throw out the “You must not like national security/hate Bush because he’s from Texas/Christian/whatever.” And it’s obviously not about that. The man has no problem with nailing the American people to the wall to make his own bullshit statements about self-reliance. He’d throw us all to the wolves if it meant that he could save his own ass. They talk about this massive amount of integrity that he possesses…and I see none. Yet those who oppose him are called un-American, they’re accused of supporting the terrorists, et cetera.
Apparently Ben Franklin was an un-American asshole who supported the terrorists, too, because he said a few popular words that sort of made sense. It went something like “Those who give up essential liberty for the sake of temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.”
That bin Laden-hugging cocksucker.
But in all seriousness, I pose one honest question: with patronizing leadership like this that has repeatedly shown no regard for the American people, why do we need enemies?
Posted by Jake at December 22, 2005 07:06 AM
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