December 30, 2005

	Bush flipping off America while hijacking democracy

Is Bush is Terrorist Appeaser

George W. Bush has famously told us that terrorists "hate freedom."  While I suspect terrorists actually hate being dirt poor and not having much freedom of their own (and blame a good deal of their poverty and lack of freedom on US policies), let's assume for a minute that Bush is correct in claiming terrorists "hate freedom."

We now know that Bush has responded to terrorism by curtailing freedom in the US and around the world with the (so called) Patriot Act, secret wiretapping, extraordinary renditions, torture, kidnapping, suspension of habeas corpus and so on.  I say the administration's record makes Bush a terrorist appeaser.

Whaaat you ask? Okay, I'll contrive an example... Suppose somewhere in a conservative Midwestern town live a small group of religious fundamentalists who hate music and, worse, dancing.  After one of their children is caught humming and swaying her hips rhythmically, a few zealots within the group self-righteously burn down a bingo parlor that is occasionally used as a dance hall.  Whether or not they also flog the girl (and, for good measure, her sisters too) is unknown as no one is permitted to see her.

The mayor, perhaps upset over the temporary loss of his bingo kickbacks, decides that the best way to "protect" citizens from further violence is to outlaw dancing (rather than enforcing existing laws against arson), effectively appeasing the zealots by restricting the thing (dancing) that really pisses them off. 

Similarly, if we are to believe that terrorists simply hate freedom, then Bush's devotion to curtailing freedom as a response to terrorism makes him a terrorist appeaser.  Does Bush believe his own simple-minded rhetoric and thinks terrorists will become demoralized (perhaps returning to quiet starvation) when they realize we have no freedoms left to destroy? 

In not so many years, as global warming shit splatters worldwide on nature's massive fan, those left alive will likely be wishing that we'd applied ourselves more to developing renewable energy (and energy efficiency) and to creating a distributed high tech organic recyclable innovation-sharing global economy rather than squandering our brightest minds and dwindling resources pursuing more effective and increasingly redundant and spectacular means to main, kill and exploit each other. 

Stray Thoughts from Don Alejandro
who often wonders what could have been accomplished with the lives and hundreds of billions of dollars already wasted in Iraq supporting an insane military industrial fear based economy for the pleasure and profit of a few ultra-rich megalomaniacs who apparently derive their jollies from orchestrating wars...