Silence Isn't Golden
If people buy the Bush bluster on November Fifth, this country will have illustrated the problem of what happens when an electorate is politically and intellectually illiterate. The grotesquery of the Bush-Lite posture -- the cowboy so tough he doesn't need any friends -- is not only shameful and destructive it is dangerous and scary. From the environment to basic civil rights, the very heart of our nation is under siege by an executive oligarchy of unbalanced, immoralists who threaten the very survival of our society.
Our problem is that no matter how many guns and missiles we have, we are a wide-open society and so always vulnerable to attack by psychopaths -- we've seen it so vividly -- and we have no reason to think that they won't upgrade their attacks to include weapons of mass destruction. But that's what the Bush foreign policy promises to incite if it goes unchecked. Let us hope that the Democrats -- who fully share the shame in their silence -- will hold the Senate and regain the House on election day, as a last brake on these deranged Armageddics.
And while I'm whistling in the dark, here's the rest of my wishlist. First, Cheney, if he can't be jailed for Halliburton, should have serious heart problems that force him to resign with his lips pressed close together. Second, Rumsfeld should be fitted with a long canvas coat with sleeves that buckle in the back, and forced to watch Dr. Strangelove 'til his eyes water. Third, Rice should slither back to Stanford and take refresher courses in the personal integrity. Fourth, Powell should retire his embarrassing limpness to an old soldiers home in Vietnam (taking his son with him before, as head of the FCC, he fully cedes the public airwaves to the private broadcasters.)
Back to the other asses, when you think about it, the donkey silence borders on treason. The Democrats are bending over for the White House because they think if they oppose them they donkeys will lose the Senate again. The fact is that if they stood up to these thugs, they would win by a substantial margin, but they are too cowardly to stand for the truth. Instead, they are willing to push their country into war, to preserve their own seats in Congress. It really doesn't get much worse than that. If there were justice, those precious seats would be plugged into a wall socket.
Two Democrats who are not in office have spoken up. First, Al Gore, who even when he makes sense, as in this instance opposing the Bush-Lite war-mongering, sounds like he's running for something, which inherently discredits his words. Second is Jimmy Carter, who didn't do much while in the White House, but who in the subsequent 22 years has earned considerable respect world-wide as a thoughtful, peace-loving mediator. Said Carter, warning against the incumbent's saber-rattling, the very idea of a pre-emptive attack "is a radical departure from traditions that have shaped our nation's policy by Democratic and Republican presidents for more than 50 years."
The Bush people are counting on the electorate to hop on the war-wagon, ignoring the disastrous state of the economy, the miasma of corporate scandals, and the rights-abridging excess of the Ashcroft securitade. If it were only the ignorant poor acting against their best interests by failing to vote, again, I'd say too bad for them, but when our government stands against virtually every other in the world, incurring the wrath of madmen blinded by hatred for America, it is cause for alarm.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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