Can We Save Ourselves?By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher
8-27-03How long before the whole mountain we call the United States of America comes down? As a nation, we've been sliding down that "slippery slope" for decades, grasping at a twig here, a rock there to slow our journey to oblivion.
All the rights and ideals embodied in our constitutionóthe glue that has held us together as Americansóare being rapidly stripped away by a criminal gang that has finally succeeded in seizing power and is bent on holding on to it at all costs.
To our criminal rulers not only are our constitutional rights legal fictions, but they have stood the constitution on its head to grant themselves powers denied them by the framers. So much for their nonsensical palaver about being strict constructionists.
Whether the presidential election of 2000 was the first to be stolen we'll never know, but we do know it was the first stolen election to receive the blessing of the US Supreme Court. In any other countryóthose lesser nations all that must be brought under the heel of the American Empire, one way or anotherówhat happened in 2000 would be called a bloodless coup d'tat.
Of course, it took 30 - 40 years of mucking with the educational system to dumb Americans downóthen decrying the state of public education while touting private and parochial schools where much of so-called learning is by roteóso the clucks wouldn't notice that fascism was about to replace freedom. Shoot, one F-word is as good as another, right?
For how many years were we force-fed the notion that government was bad, inefficient and wasteful, and corporations were good, efficient and thrifty? And we bought it, allowing government to outsource, deregulate and privatize everything it desired to benefit those inanimate persons called corporations. In case you haven't notice, those corporations are run by dummies subjected to the same dumbed-down public, private or parochial "educations." Worse, the people's watchdogsóa.k.a. "the news media"óare now under the thumbs of a handful of corporations whose vested (invested, actually) interests are intertwined with the rest of Corporate America.
Once George W. Bush was installed in the White House, the masks started coming off and Pax Americana was on. To blindside the public, a double-pronged approach was needed. Hence, the Project for the New American Century's call for a "new Pearl Harbor" came in handy. We felt the first prong on Sept. 11, 2001. The second prong was declaring Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda operatives the perpetrators, thereby legitimizing a military attack on Afghanistan.
You didn't expect Bush II, who denounced nation-building during his presidential campaign, and his minions to tell you that empire-buildingóespecially for oil, oil pipelines and anything else of value they could get their hands onówas what they had in mind, did you?
And you have to admit that Sept. 11 and Afghanistan, especially laced with words like "terrorists," "terrorism," "axis of evil" and "homeland security," diverted attention from the mess caused by energy deregulation in California that allowed Bush II's friend, Kenny-Boy Lay, and his buddies take the state for billions, followed by the collapse of Enron and all the other corporate scandals that cost their employees and investors billions. It also diverted attention from the tax cuts for the rich that sucked up a healthy budget surplus and plunged the nation into debt. Most of all, it diverted attention from the rights being stripped from the people in the name of "security."
Also going unnoticed while Americans were being kept in a perpetual state of fear was that Bush's evil twin, Ariel Sharon, and his fascist loonies were turning the Occupied Territories into rubbleómini-Afghanistansóas the US corporate media hammered away at the "evil" Palestinian suicide-bombers who were blowing up "innocent" Israelis.
At the behest of a cabal War Secretary Donald "Strangelove" Rumsfeld had secreted in the Pentagon, George, with the help of British Prime Minister Tony "The Poodle" Blair, embarked upon using cooked intelligence supplied by Rumsfeld's cabal and No. 10 Downing Street to convince Americans they were in imminent danger of being attacked, if not nuked, by former ally turned nemesis Saddam Hussein, who was harboring all these weapons of mass destruction. To compound those lies, Bush II told an even bigger one by accusing Saddam of being in bed with al Qaeda and, thereby, being responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Bottom line: we had to liberate Iraq from the evil Saddam, and the Iraqi people would greet us with kisses and flowers for doing so. Oh yes, the Bushies were going to bestow "democracy" on Iraq after trashing democracy in the US.
So at the expense of the lives of 270-plus American and some 51 UK troops (at last count), and countless Iraqis, the US military undertook an illegal invasion that destroyed Iraq, sent Saddam scurrying and then murdered his sons. There were damn few kisses and flowers, though, from "grateful" Iraqis, who now endure life in the rubble and try to survive the brutal heat without electricity, water or adequate medical care.
The US corporate media, though, aren't telling the American people how bad things are in Iraq or that the US is losing in Afghanistan, which has again become a battleground for the warlords and the Taliban, and the Taliban are winning. After the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad, the corporate media have finally had to own up to the guerilla warfare now taking place in Iraq, because Iraqis of just about every stripe want their occupiers to leave.
Meanwhile, here at home, Texas Democratic state senators have had to twice flee their state because US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, is demanding that the Lone Star State do a another congressional district reapportionment that will benefit the GOP. If you can't get your way at the ballot box or by stealing the votes, use any method you can come up with to get the desired result.
And in California, the Bushies have engineered the recall of a twice duly-elected governor with an eye toward installing Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, a B-actor who, according to published reports, likes to grope buxom women who aren't his wife and whose father was a Nazi Party member and a Brownshirt in Austria.
In both cases, the US corporate media are missing the big picture. If either effort succeeds, the floodgates will be opened and mob rule will prevailócorrection, rule by the rich mob. Any elected official who crosses the big-buck boys will be subjected to being removed from office by either a recall or by a gerrymander.
As we slide further down the slope, we are now in danger of having nothing more to grab to stop our fall. If the Bushies don't pull some more stuntsóanyone for invading Syria?óor start lobbing nukes, the Christian crazies are cranking up for Armageddon, with the help of the Zionist crazies in Israel (would you believe?).
Calling themselves Christian Zionists, they not only are influential in Washingtonóalong with the FarRight Zionist lobbyóbut they practice something called "dispensationalism" that emphasizes a literal reading of the apocalyptic passages in the Bible. They believe that the "end times" will occur when all the world's Jews are gathered in what they believe is historic Israel. This, they are sure, will herald the second coming of their savior, then the final battle and the Raptureóbut Rapture for only a handful of Christians. They are opposed to Bush's farcical Road Map for Peace and they continue to contribute vast sums of money for the building of more Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands.
Aligned with the Christian Zionists are people like Israeli Tourism Minister Benny Elon, the leader of the far right Moledet Party. The Moledet Party favors the forcible removal, euphemistically called "transfer," of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories. Elon goes a step further, according to Atlanta Palestinian Solidarity, "He has openly discussed the idea of fomenting a campaign of extermination to wipe out Islam (a genocide that would be far vaster than the Holocaust):
"'It's clear that Islam is on the way to disappearing,' Elon asserts with certainty. 'What we are now seeing across the Muslim world is not a powerful surge of faith but the dying embers of Islam. How will it disappear? Very simply. Within a few years a Christian crusade against Islam will be launched, which will be the major event of this millennium. Obviously, we will be up against quite a large problem when only the two great religions of Judaism and Christianity remain, but that's still a long way off.'"
With stolen elections, phony wars on "terrorism," stripping people of their freedoms to make them "secure," illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, an economy in the toilet, corporate crooks stealing people's pensions and investments, shredding the social safety net, shrugging off the destruction of the environment, placing corporate profits ahead of people and religious crazies on the loose, America has gone over the edge. Then Bush II has the gall to say they hate us for our freedoms and lifestyle.
Will enough rational people stand up in time to stop the slide and help us regain all that we have lost?
The way out of this mess is not by building more heinous weapons or waging more wars. Violence only begets violence. The way out is by changing our attitude toward other people, stopping the theft of their resources and labor, and treating them with dignity and respect.
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