March 7, 2003
Doom and Gloom from the Bully Pulpit
The Bushman gave his speech and all the media organs are using the same phrases to describe it,
words to the effect that he "prepared the nation for war," as if this one-trick pony has ever done
anything else.
Unemployment numbers came out showing 300,000 more jobs were lost in February. That is itself a
monstrous scandal, but who is paying attention? Certainly not this Bush who
never had to get a job in his life. Certainly not the major media who worship his every move,
not because of the content of his character, but for the power that is manifested in his
vacant stare, his birthright to rule.
The
trillions in projected surpluses when Bush took the presidency have reversed to hundreds
of
billions in deficits. It's all a mere footnote to Bush's war, his current in a string of wars
that will last a generation if he has his way, if Americans remain passive while he ravages
their country.
We don't need no stinkin' permission, he says. We can attack anyone, any time. Hell with you
all. I'll go back to Texas where they have more signs saying "Get out of the UN" than signs to
get out of Iraq.
It's a haunting, horrible feeling to think that there are at this moment hundreds of thousands of innocent
people living in Iraq, utterly uncomprehending of why Bush & Co. hate them so much and want
to destroy their lives and their country, who will soon be bombed, blasted, crushed,
obliterated, murdered en masse.
And here we sit, we in America, we who are ultimately responsible. We would like
to go to sleep and pretend it's all a dream, go to the mall and do some shopping, close the
mind. Bloodshed is not something we want to think about. But it is now imminent. And we as
citizens of this theoretically democratic society are complicit. This will become part of our
history. It will never go away.
As the people of Iraq await their extermination by America, we in America stand aside and wait
for our humanity to be extinguished. We stand by while our moral authority, our grand traditions
as a free and just society stand ready for destruction. In a very real sense it is us, the
Americans, who are awaiting destruction, the destruction of our souls. We are like cowering, cornered rats waiting for the final death
blow.
George W. Bush is leading us all like lemmings over a deadly precipice, and we are sleepwalking.