I watched Dubya's speech last night. Rhetorically speaking, it was the best one I've ever heard him give. He even sounded less like a robot than usual. That's why it made me want to throw up. Because the substance of that speech was this:
1) We're going to war. We don't care what the Taliban does, we're going to war. We've made absolutely sure that we will have an excuse to go to war against them by making demands they couldn't possibly meet even if they wanted to. I know some of you were confused about whether our main objective in invading Afghanistan was to bring the perpetrators of the WTC and Pentagon attacks to justice, or to get a good long war started that would keep the defense industry well into the black for decades and decades to come. Now you know.
2) This war is never going to end. That's because we've defined it so broadly that once we've plowed one enemy into the ground, there'll always be another one we can go after. We're psyched about that. We think it's cool. It makes us look resolute. And if you all ever start thinking, 'Hey, this war is pointless and destructive and I'm tired of it,' we'll just remind you about the World Trade Center, and that'll fire you right back up again. We can do this forever. Cause that memory will always be fresh.
3) This war is going to be global. Every single nation on earth has to declare that they are either with us or against us. This will polarize the entire world into two different groups of allies, who will then become locked in combat with each other. I think I remember from school that something like that happened after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914. I know people say that it was really about more than that, but I can never remember what all that stuff was. Oh well, it all worked out all right in the end.
4) Despite the fact that all of New York City has post-traumatic stress disorder, the Pentagon is still smoking, the airline industry is imploding because getting on a plane has become a life-threatening activity, hate crime is sweeping across this country like the plague, and I have just declared World War III, the state of our union is strong.
What can you fucking say, man.
And there the Congress is, clapping and cheering and stamping away like the bootlicking lackeys they are. We turned it off afterwards because I just could not stand to see the pundits talking about what a triumph this was for him. And then all we could really manage to do was go to bed and try to sleep.
This morning when we woke up we were talking about this, and I was talking about how Bush's speech ended with all that crap about how we would always remember what happened, and saying of *course* we'll always remember what happened, but I should hope that won't mean that we'll always be wanting to kill people, and that's about when I started crying. Cheney and his bunch are using all of that death and horror and grief as an excuse to start a war that is going to keep them in power, fill Cheney's pockets, and keep the world in a perpetual state of conflict for as long as they can keep the home fires burning. It's not just wrong, it's sick. They don't want us to heal, because the open wound is good for them. They don't want us to grieve because they never want us to get past anger. I don't know what all those dead people would have wanted, but I can't believe they would have wanted to become the justification for the next world war. I just kept saying, "They deserve better than this." All those people who are going to funerals up in New York and in DC just want their people back. I suppose probably a lot of them want revenge too, people seem to be like that, but when I imagine myself in that position all I can imagine wanting is for this never to happen again to anyone else. You hear all these reports about hate crime from everywhere else in the country *but* New York and I feel like that must be because in New York people are sick of violence and death and they know they don't want any more. And violence and death is exactly what Bush stood up there and promised to give them. Forever. Cause it's *infinite* justice, see.
So that's what makes me cry. The exploitation and betrayal of all the people who have died and all of their grieving loved ones by a government bent on turning the world into one unending cycle of carnage--in *their* name. I kept saying, "Why can't we *learn?*" If anything was going to teach us that business as usual is not working for us, you'd think it would have been this.
Sick. That's all I can come back to, really. I feel sick watching that. I feel sick knowing how hard they worked on that speech to manipulate everyone listening into believing that eternal global warfare is not only the only possible option, but the best way to honor our dead fellow-Americans. I feel sick knowing that it will work. I feel sick contemplating the prospect of raising children in the world that is being forged right now. And I feel sick thinking about all those dead people and all the people crying around them and how much more death we're about to bring into the world.
So I've lost it now. Maybe that'll be a turning point and I can go get some work done.
Hurl,
The Plaid Adder
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