September 27
Life Against Death
I walked through a sunny graveyard in Vermont today and saw a headstone that looked like it said "SOOTHSAYER". As I got closer, I saw that it actually said, "S. OTIS THAYER". Still, I'm superstitious and can't help but look for meaning in every accidental occurrence. Hermes, the trickster, the messenger of the gods and all that. So I turned the idea over in my mind, like a song hook.It is the soothsayer, and what does the soothsayer say? If I was looking for a sign, to my in my own reality tunnel I found it, but it was not an answer, only the posing of the question. The soothsayer in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar said, "Beware the Ides of March," and foretold of Caesar's death. Today the soothsayer might say, "Beware the October Surprise".
But no soothsayer can say what will happen in these crucial two months because it is a reality that is yet to be made. There is a fork with two distinct paths, two alternate futures. One will manifest, one will not, as an act of collective will.
The polls -- whatever they are -- have been extremely discouraging of late. Fact or fantasy, they have forced one to consider the possibility that the Bush regime may retain power, that it may even this time "win" an election. Then we will be looking at a starkly different reality than we are today, or than we have ever faced before.
It will mean that Americans have actually returned to office, affirmed the policies of the rogue administration that seized power in late 2001 through an improper cessation of the electoral process effected by a collusion of political powers in strategic positions all the way up to the Supreme Court.
It will mean that after this corporate junta fronted by George Bush Junior seized power and then proceeded to break every promise Bush had made in the campaign as well as every essential principle of democracy or justice that has made the U.S. internationally revered, to the point of making the U.S. an aggressor nature often compared with the Third Reich -- and Americans affirmed his rule.
That is a terribly dire possibility, even just as an indication of where this country is right now, but what it indicates about the future of the country is even more horrific. The possibility of a return to power of the Bush administration for four more years is so horrendous as to be nearly unthinkable. The country is already unrecognizable in four years of Bush II rule. If the Bush syndicate is given an extension of the power it has seized illegally and exercised illegally, then the U.S. might just kiss elections goodbye forever. This right wing power bloc is rapidly undermining the electoral process and consolidating power under a one-party rule. It has shown by its actions in Iraq and in the U.S. that it is willing to slaughter thousands of people -- anyone who gets in its way.
Someone recently pointed to me out that the U.S. is not like Nazi Germany, but the progression toward the Nazi ideal is frighteningly rapid. The Weimar Republic did not become the Third Reich overnight. It was a progression. The fact that the U.S. is not yet like the Nazi empire at its peak is not very reassuring when the progress toward a right-wing military empire is so dizzyingly rapid.
So sure, I'm more paranoid than average, but if the Bush administration retains power, it is time to start looking at safe ways to expatriate. It is getting to be unsafe in America if you aren't a flag-waving supporter of the administration.
I hear many say that people "don't like George Bush, but they don't think Kerry's the answer." Kerry may not be the white knight that is going to rescue America from its current crisis, but he is the answer to one thing: the emergency of the Bush presidency. The Bush administration doesn't care about winning a four-year term. Elections are only an impediment to be somehow gotten around for these people. They want uninterrupted, unencumbered power. Nothing less than a landslide -- a mass movement -- will remove them.
The election is only partly about Kerry. Any of hundreds of politicians would be better presidents than Bush. The issue is Bush. The mission is stopping Bush. Getting behind Kerry is the only way to do that right now. I don't care if Kerry held a knife up to the neck of President Nixon to claim his medals, or if he uses botox, or if his grandfather was Jewish, or his father was an intelligence agent -- if he himself is an intelligence crony. He is the only hope of unseating Bush right now. And that must be done.
This election is about Bush or not-Bush. I would vote for the mayor of Hoboken over George Bush. A blank piece used as a marker would be better than Bush. Bush is lethal, toxic, a deterrent to human life.
This election is about overthrowing an agenda of death. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft offer America a vision of fear, war, uncertainty, instability, lawlessness, injustice, abused power -- that is the world of the Bush clique. They do not aspire toward a more enlightened future, a time when cybertechnology and biotechnology will lead toward more elegant solutions to problems, but backward to fossil fuels and territorial wars of conquest, a world of ancient slaughter and tyranny like that of Attila the Hun, the Pharaohs or the Roman Emperors. The Bush regime runs counter to all that supports life, all that is alive in American society. Overthrowing it will give peace -- and life -- a chance again.
As we enter the home stretch of this campaign it is time to take a serious assessment of where we stand. It's life against death. The possible consequences of another term of Bush should be enough to scare any rational, informed being into doing anything he or she can to work toward the removal of the junta. The alternative is just too grim to contemplate.