I’m struck by how much freedom and liberty people are willing to sacrifice at the altar of freedom and liberty.
But while we joke (carefully – don’t do it over the phone) abstractly about fear itself no longer being the only thing we fear, actual bad things are happening in Iraq to actual people. And this time, there are faces and voices that are shocking Americans out of one dark corner of their complacency.
Bob Woodruff, ABC WNT co-anchor, and his cameraman were severely injured by a roadside bomb while riding in a lightly armored Iraqi army vehicle in a country that has been occupied by the United States since May 2003. Julie Carroll, a freelance journalist with the Christian Science Monitor has been seen pleading for her life on grainy videotapes, and our super-manly nation, which – God forbid – would never, ever negotiate with terrorists, actually did the precise thing that Carroll’s captors demanded, yet she is not yet released.
Osama bin Laden – our generation’s Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo wrapped up in one bearded millionaire madman – remains at large, and his latest release on al Jazeera records dropped a couple weeks back. His number 2, al-Zawahiri, dropped his own single a couple of days ago. The title of that single was “Your Drone Missed, Motherfuckers.”
We also know that the agency charged with our protection in the event of a natural or man-made disaster can’t do it’s job. (See Katrina) And isn’t it fascinating how there haven’t been any threat-level color-code movements since Bush won re-election, yet there were many throughout 2004? Strange, that. Conspiracy-minded folk might think that the Department of Homeland Security’s color-coded threat thing was being used for political ends. (And, just for the record, I will forever be troubled by the Orwellian name given to that agency. Why on Earth couldn’t we have opted for a name that democracies give that agency – Department (or Ministry) of Internal Affairs? Why the totalitarian jingoism of “homeland/fatherland/motherland”?)
Iran has (or will imminently have) the bomb and it’s also got a madman who thinks Israel needs to be wiped off the map controlling the button.
North Korea has the bomb, and we all know how even-keeled Kim Jong-il can be.
Iraqis still get blown up in their thousands.
It’s a Hamas administration in Palestinian territories. Suicide bombing gone mainstream.
While we were told that the spike in gas prices was due to supply and demand, Exxon somehow miraculously had a record 4Q 2005, and broke all records for corporate profits in the history of the US with an astonishing $36 billion profit last year – larger than the GDP of just about every country in the world. If what the oil companies were telling us was true, their profits wouldn’t have spiked much at all.
There’s my state of the union, bitches. I’m in a pissy mood about the state of politics in this country, about the graft, cheating, unfair deception, erosion of liberty, and diminution of America’s reputation around the world. These things do matter. Arrogance and lawlessness must be replaced with competence and the rule of law. And to my Bush-worshipping friends, please have the courtesy to admit that you’d be furious about all of this shit, too, if the current President had a “D” at the end of his name.
The New Hampshire primary is 24 months away.
Tags: News
