I voted for
George W. Bush in the 2000 election. It wasn't entirely willing, but I liked the fact that the Texas Legislature hadn't been tearing itself apart with childish
partisan displays lately, and I disliked
Al Gore,
Joe Lieberman, and
Ralph Nader for longstanding personal reasons. So I voted for Bush and felt not too bad about it. But since then, I've been having
doubts.
I've started reading
weblogs.
Political weblogs.
Anti-war weblogs. I didn't have much faith in
Bush and his
American Empire before, and I should be hitting the zero-
faith point any day now. I've been forcing myself to
wallow, on a daily basis, in the ongoing
descent of
America into
lunacy and
fascism. I've watched the
goodwill that we had with the entire world after
September 11 turn to ashes as the Bush administration went out of their way to
insult and
alienate our traditional allies for the supposed crime of refusing to
rubberstamp everything we asked for. I've watched
attorney general John Ashcroft make a good run at repealing large swaths of the
Constitution with the
Patriot Act and the
Patriot Act II. I've watched the
So-Called Liberal Media shamelessly lob easy, loving questions to the president and
ignore absolutely vast nationwide and worldwide anti-war protests in order to protect their "
access" to a chief executive who clearly holds them in utter
contempt. I've listened to the
hawks in the administration push an
invasion that most of the world
opposes and that will have little real effect beyond
enriching
Halliburton/
Dick Cheney and making it easier for
Osama bin Laden to recruit more
terrorists. I've listened to more and more people, many of whom were
vocal critics of
the previous White House occupant,
thuggishly insist that criticizing
this president is
anti-American and
treasonous. I've watched our
insane Congresscritters change the names of
French toast and
French fries and propose digging up the graves of American
servicemen at
Normandy, all because our country no longer wants
allies, just
yes-men. I've watched Bush ignore the threat posed by a
lunatic with
nuclear weapons in favor of smacking around a
weakling with
model-airplane drones. I've watched the administration
lie about their
economic plans, about their
judicial appointees, about a dozen different reasons for invading
Iraq, about their connections to
Halliburton,
Enron and
California's
energy crisis, and so much more. I've listened with a great deal of
nervousness as George Bush sounds more and more like a
howling end-times fundamentalist, eager to bring about
Armageddon because he thinks he's been chosen by
God.
And I wonder, how in a million hells could anyone in this administration expect, even with all of the political
wizardry and
dirty tricks Karl Rove has at his fingertips, to retain the
White House in 2004. Does John Ashcroft not realize that eventually, there's going to be another
Democrat elected to the presidency? And then that
Evil, Evil Democrat is going to have access to all the
goodies in the Patriot Act? Of course, the
paranoid answer is that the
Republicans don't intend for there to be anymore
elections -- that way, they'll never leave office and can continue to hold onto all that
delicious power. But frankly,
paranoia is rarely
useful or accurate as a fortune-telling tool. The
UN didn't take over the world while Clinton was president. The
black helicopters didn't fly, the secret troops in the Utah
salt mines didn't march out, all the
guns weren't rounded up, and Americans weren't put into
concentration camps.
But sometimes, I like to let the little
paranoiac deep in my soul come out to play. How would Bush and Co. handle a
coup? My shifty-eyed paranoid alter ego says they'd arrange a
fake assassination attempt, either prior to the Iraqi invasion, to use as one final bit of
justification for an invasion, or before the 2004 elections -- to prevent the collapse of the
government, the elections will need to be called off, just temporarily, you see, until we can make sure these terrorists are safely rounded up, and to make sure the
investigation proceeds smoothly, we're sure all
law-abiding citizens won't mind having a little talk with Rev. Ashcroft's
Ministry of Truth, reporting the location of any
dissenters and Democrats, and accepting this
bar code tattoo on your forehead... But like I said, the paranoid view, while fun for a nice bit of
dystopian sci-fi, reveals nothing and proves less.
But in case anything
big happens,
remember where you heard it first...
Recommended reading:
http://www.cursor.org
http://atrios.blogspot.com
http://counterspin.blogspot.com
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com
What Liberal Media? by Eric Alterman
Blinded by the Right by David Brock
Silencing Political Dissent by Nancy Chang
Stupid White Men by Michael Moore