The birthing mist of a new world order or the tears of the patriots?
It just becomes so tedious to keep pretending. 48
How far will we extend the destructive echo of this President and his tormented friends? How grave will we determine his petulance for the desecration of everything in his sight? Of course, we lick the economic wounds of a country looted to exhaustion and exasperation by his cronies, always covered by the authority of his office. Of course, we try to overlook the outrages his friends have perpetrated on our fellow American citizens, elections stolen in brazen crimes, bizarre, ambitious power concentrated with his penchant to be able to “arrest” any of us without charge, hearing, lawyer or law, policy disasters at home and over seas.
Are they somehow feeling more secure with the Governor of Louisiana secreted away in a federal prison? Are they reassured when the desperate voices of Katrina’s victims are silenced by their media friends? Do they feel vindicated when the outrageous crimes of Tom DeLay and Jack Abramhoff drift into the morass of yesterday’s news? Are they laughing and saying “I told you so! They’ll do nothing!” when they seem to have eluded the consequences of their illegal wire tapping? It is a grim picture of our descent from the rule of law, a grisly movie the world's worst watch for inspiration.
Are these usurpers frightened yet?
We, as citizens, might still claim that our failings here amount to no more than a little bad hygiene in the maintenance of our election powers and our democracy. We could, in fact, claim that had we somehow limited the spread of this greedy toxin to only the regions within our own shores. If that had been the case, our tragic embarrassment would have been solely our own private national affair, a domestic thing. We could have credibly told the world to wait, that we would correct our transgressions here at home, then, when that house keeping was accomplished, we would have once again begun to behave in a rehabilitated way consistent with our claims about ourselves. Consistent with our brave traditions. Consistent with our ideals and our national heritage.
Consistent with the incredible possibilities of our Constitution.
Sorry. It has spread beyond the borders and beyond our hope that it might be contained. It is raging around the world as a violent science fiction monster, encouraging every despicable cast off loser everywhere to abandon any fear of either our decency or our retribution. All these wretched little villains have found gangrenous bravado as they copied this President and his criminal friends. Whatever reluctance previously visited on the machinations of these little demons has been castrated. Now the brutes are finally emancipated from any concern that their monstrous ambitions might be countered, or even, criticized by the optimistic insistence of ideals from this country. Not only have we unleashed our own government’s threatening hubris on our own citizens, we have made the bloody spectacle of every tinhorn savage around the world abundantly acceptable. Once that minor detail was actualized, the blood bath began. And began quite horribly with a wrenching impunity that simply wasn’t there before we made a shallow, unmarked grave for our old high born thoughts here at home.
What in the hell are you talking about?
So the Russians invade Georgia, an ally of ours (or, at least, an ally of our President. Georgia turns out to be one of the three places on the planet where the locals still like him.). Naturally, as we sit here stupefied, bankrupt and effectively demilitarized, we are no more than a toothless bore as our President pleads with the new (not pretended) powers of the world to try to be a little more decent. Should our irritating complaints about Georgian sovereignty become too shrill, perhaps those mean old Russians will trot out the most deflating argument of all, the argument about our own failed colonial ambitions as we attack and occupy based on unexamined lies.
It seems that we have fumbled even the cheapest of our neo-con traditions, that is, of course, the choreagraphy of our famous, Republican "October Surprise." Its rescheduling to August is understandable, given the disheartening McCain campaign. The usual, really "stinky" side of things is certainly trotted out in fine form. McCain's primary international affairs adviser is a well paid lobbyist for the government of Georgia, no doubt providing a "wink and a nod" concerning that country's self-destructive challenge to the Russian Federation's 58th Army.
Massive deception being the currency of the neo-con realm, perhaps the Georgians were led to believe that, with our backing, their aggressive moves against their giant neighbor might be tolerated. Now, the Georgians, along with most of the rest of the countries in the world, understand that our backing is not much more than talk. Our "October Surprise," usually initiated by some sort of "unprovoked" attack by one of our "saved for a rainy day" enemies somewhere, is designed this time to use the military resources (and the blood) of others.
Will someone as inept as our President actually be able to replace the old "saber rattling" of our past "October Surprises" with an entirely "privatized" version where all the players are foreign? Wasn't there another Island of Granada somewhere with "trapped" college students closer to home? Sorry. Not if it requires anything from the American military. The cupboard is bare taking care of our violent international oil extraction schemes.
At least they can film a few dead Russians there in South Osetia to “justify” their violence.
Did we think that a punkish, out of date dictator such as Mr. Mugabe would show his blood soaked indifference to his people without the benefit of a failed, vacuous government here? Once his dread of some sort of American response to his outrages was nicely laid to rest, his real nature began to surface. Hollowed out as we are, the world can hardly expect the skeletal remains of the United States to actually do anything except send our useless diplomats to whine in chorus. Without an army or an economy those diplomats have also been rendered toothless.
In Sudan we have mastered the ability to countenance genocide. All of our promises after Rwanda have been made into cold soup for our meager breakfast. We dare not ostracize our cash master, the Chinese, or in any way perturb their profitable, and now, understandable complicity in the killing. Perhaps our task now is to learn how to continue our pretenses about ourselves while we watch helplessly.
Mr. Bin Laden’s great victory was once well diluted by our media and opinions. Now we see that he has emaciated our resources with his clever management of the poor, frightened old women in Washington. Bin Laden’s targeting was superb and astonishingly effective. With only a pocketful of insurgent tactics he has disabled our Constitution just as certainly as if he had hit Habeas Corpus with a shoulder fired grenade launcher. If we think the blasted hole in the Cole was a terrifying development, perhaps we should compare it to the ashy remnants of our Bill of Rights.
Bin Laden’s suspicious immunity has even become acceptable to us. Perhaps better said, his constant escapes have been made acceptable to us. We have even been slowly convinced that this failure, among all the others, doesn’t imply that we remain anything but a super power, an absurdity made possible by the ugly implication that skepticism had become treason.
This ugly list of nobodies who have embraced this opportunity to behave any way they wish could go on for many pages. Silly us. We thought Iran would be the next addition to this rolling disaster.
Do those vacuous eyes, wallowing in a pathos of psychotic bewilderment, betray a deep inner terror when considering the murderous complexity of Hamas and Hezbollah, now met with little more than hopeful abstractions of foreign policy? Do those weary jowls blush while watching Mr. Putin, into whose soul he claims to have glimpsed a trustworthy hint of reason, massacre our friends? Can his machine of deception somehow reconcile his associates’ rage about appeasement by the reasonable to his own desperate appeasement made necessary in the ruins of no other possibilities?
The awful example of our leadership has caused harm to the people of the world far beyond our borders. His comment that “Oceans no longer protect us...” is little more than a nagging migraine to those of us left stranded here in the corpse of America. We have long ago lost the luxury of bemoaning our own dilapidated state. We are now fully in “survival mode,” frighteningly distant and uninterested in much more than the painful, grave challenges we now face on almost every front. Our intuition as citizens now faces the unavoidable. We have lost a class war.
The whole idea of the protection of the oceans, frankly, became much more a warning to those outside our country. Our national self-serving misdirection and greed seem to have established themselves as propositions both devoid of shame and quite waterproof.
It just becomes so tedious to keep pretending. 48
How far will we extend the destructive echo of this President and his tormented friends? How grave will we determine his petulance for the desecration of everything in his sight? Of course, we lick the economic wounds of a country looted to exhaustion and exasperation by his cronies, always covered by the authority of his office. Of course, we try to overlook the outrages his friends have perpetrated on our fellow American citizens, elections stolen in brazen crimes, bizarre, ambitious power concentrated with his penchant to be able to “arrest” any of us without charge, hearing, lawyer or law, policy disasters at home and over seas.
Are they somehow feeling more secure with the Governor of Louisiana secreted away in a federal prison? Are they reassured when the desperate voices of Katrina’s victims are silenced by their media friends? Do they feel vindicated when the outrageous crimes of Tom DeLay and Jack Abramhoff drift into the morass of yesterday’s news? Are they laughing and saying “I told you so! They’ll do nothing!” when they seem to have eluded the consequences of their illegal wire tapping? It is a grim picture of our descent from the rule of law, a grisly movie the world's worst watch for inspiration.
Are these usurpers frightened yet?
We, as citizens, might still claim that our failings here amount to no more than a little bad hygiene in the maintenance of our election powers and our democracy. We could, in fact, claim that had we somehow limited the spread of this greedy toxin to only the regions within our own shores. If that had been the case, our tragic embarrassment would have been solely our own private national affair, a domestic thing. We could have credibly told the world to wait, that we would correct our transgressions here at home, then, when that house keeping was accomplished, we would have once again begun to behave in a rehabilitated way consistent with our claims about ourselves. Consistent with our brave traditions. Consistent with our ideals and our national heritage.
Consistent with the incredible possibilities of our Constitution.
Sorry. It has spread beyond the borders and beyond our hope that it might be contained. It is raging around the world as a violent science fiction monster, encouraging every despicable cast off loser everywhere to abandon any fear of either our decency or our retribution. All these wretched little villains have found gangrenous bravado as they copied this President and his criminal friends. Whatever reluctance previously visited on the machinations of these little demons has been castrated. Now the brutes are finally emancipated from any concern that their monstrous ambitions might be countered, or even, criticized by the optimistic insistence of ideals from this country. Not only have we unleashed our own government’s threatening hubris on our own citizens, we have made the bloody spectacle of every tinhorn savage around the world abundantly acceptable. Once that minor detail was actualized, the blood bath began. And began quite horribly with a wrenching impunity that simply wasn’t there before we made a shallow, unmarked grave for our old high born thoughts here at home.
What in the hell are you talking about?
So the Russians invade Georgia, an ally of ours (or, at least, an ally of our President. Georgia turns out to be one of the three places on the planet where the locals still like him.). Naturally, as we sit here stupefied, bankrupt and effectively demilitarized, we are no more than a toothless bore as our President pleads with the new (not pretended) powers of the world to try to be a little more decent. Should our irritating complaints about Georgian sovereignty become too shrill, perhaps those mean old Russians will trot out the most deflating argument of all, the argument about our own failed colonial ambitions as we attack and occupy based on unexamined lies.
It seems that we have fumbled even the cheapest of our neo-con traditions, that is, of course, the choreagraphy of our famous, Republican "October Surprise." Its rescheduling to August is understandable, given the disheartening McCain campaign. The usual, really "stinky" side of things is certainly trotted out in fine form. McCain's primary international affairs adviser is a well paid lobbyist for the government of Georgia, no doubt providing a "wink and a nod" concerning that country's self-destructive challenge to the Russian Federation's 58th Army.
Massive deception being the currency of the neo-con realm, perhaps the Georgians were led to believe that, with our backing, their aggressive moves against their giant neighbor might be tolerated. Now, the Georgians, along with most of the rest of the countries in the world, understand that our backing is not much more than talk. Our "October Surprise," usually initiated by some sort of "unprovoked" attack by one of our "saved for a rainy day" enemies somewhere, is designed this time to use the military resources (and the blood) of others.
Will someone as inept as our President actually be able to replace the old "saber rattling" of our past "October Surprises" with an entirely "privatized" version where all the players are foreign? Wasn't there another Island of Granada somewhere with "trapped" college students closer to home? Sorry. Not if it requires anything from the American military. The cupboard is bare taking care of our violent international oil extraction schemes.
At least they can film a few dead Russians there in South Osetia to “justify” their violence.
Did we think that a punkish, out of date dictator such as Mr. Mugabe would show his blood soaked indifference to his people without the benefit of a failed, vacuous government here? Once his dread of some sort of American response to his outrages was nicely laid to rest, his real nature began to surface. Hollowed out as we are, the world can hardly expect the skeletal remains of the United States to actually do anything except send our useless diplomats to whine in chorus. Without an army or an economy those diplomats have also been rendered toothless.
In Sudan we have mastered the ability to countenance genocide. All of our promises after Rwanda have been made into cold soup for our meager breakfast. We dare not ostracize our cash master, the Chinese, or in any way perturb their profitable, and now, understandable complicity in the killing. Perhaps our task now is to learn how to continue our pretenses about ourselves while we watch helplessly.
Mr. Bin Laden’s great victory was once well diluted by our media and opinions. Now we see that he has emaciated our resources with his clever management of the poor, frightened old women in Washington. Bin Laden’s targeting was superb and astonishingly effective. With only a pocketful of insurgent tactics he has disabled our Constitution just as certainly as if he had hit Habeas Corpus with a shoulder fired grenade launcher. If we think the blasted hole in the Cole was a terrifying development, perhaps we should compare it to the ashy remnants of our Bill of Rights.
Bin Laden’s suspicious immunity has even become acceptable to us. Perhaps better said, his constant escapes have been made acceptable to us. We have even been slowly convinced that this failure, among all the others, doesn’t imply that we remain anything but a super power, an absurdity made possible by the ugly implication that skepticism had become treason.
This ugly list of nobodies who have embraced this opportunity to behave any way they wish could go on for many pages. Silly us. We thought Iran would be the next addition to this rolling disaster.
Do those vacuous eyes, wallowing in a pathos of psychotic bewilderment, betray a deep inner terror when considering the murderous complexity of Hamas and Hezbollah, now met with little more than hopeful abstractions of foreign policy? Do those weary jowls blush while watching Mr. Putin, into whose soul he claims to have glimpsed a trustworthy hint of reason, massacre our friends? Can his machine of deception somehow reconcile his associates’ rage about appeasement by the reasonable to his own desperate appeasement made necessary in the ruins of no other possibilities?
The awful example of our leadership has caused harm to the people of the world far beyond our borders. His comment that “Oceans no longer protect us...” is little more than a nagging migraine to those of us left stranded here in the corpse of America. We have long ago lost the luxury of bemoaning our own dilapidated state. We are now fully in “survival mode,” frighteningly distant and uninterested in much more than the painful, grave challenges we now face on almost every front. Our intuition as citizens now faces the unavoidable. We have lost a class war.
The whole idea of the protection of the oceans, frankly, became much more a warning to those outside our country. Our national self-serving misdirection and greed seem to have established themselves as propositions both devoid of shame and quite waterproof.
No comments:
Post a Comment