Mood: ranty
Music: "Beyond the Invisible" by Enigma
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," said Franklin D. Roosevelt.
One other thing we should probably fear is complacency. Our own. The nation's. Accepting the will of Our Glorious Leaders that they know better for us.
I was innocently logging on to yahoo this morning when I see the news headline, "U.S. Mulling How to Delay Nov. Vote in Case of Attack." I went on to read the article, detailing how Tom Ridge, Homeland Security Head, is trying to get Congress to pass a bill that will allow the federal government to suspend federal elections any time they feel there is a threat:
[broken link]
I suddenly flashed on all those tin horn dictators in various parts of the world who always make it a habit of declaring martial law and suspending national elections just before declaring themselves President For Life.
After I read this article I read an account from the Houston Chronicle of a writer who'd scribbled a piece of dialogue in the margin of a crossword puzzle he was working on a plane, "I know this must be some kind of bomb":
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/2660471A panicky passenger reported him to the stewardess and when they landed he was hauled into the local Homeland Security Office and questioned hostilely by several federal and local police. Even when he showed them the novel in question on his laptop he was made to tell them the entire plot of the novel and told he was going to be placed on the Homeland Security watch list.
Excuse me???? Placed on the watch list, guaranteed hasslement at every airport he goes to from now on, because he scribbled a piece of dialogue in the margin of a crossword puzzle, even after he proved it was part of a novel???
Something deeply scary is happening here. And it isn't Al Qaida. The bigger threat to our liberty and way of life are the folks currently in the White House. Ultra-conservatives are always going on and on about how much they love this country and what it stands for. Well, what exactly is it that they love if not the Bill of Rights and the Constitution? Those documents are the corner stones of all those liberties we complacently take for granted, but Mr. Bush and his cronies routinely trample all the hell over those.
Al Qaida wants to destroy America, and this is the surest route to that end: make us so afraid that we destroy ourselves and all the things we stand for. Listen to the voices of people around the world. They will tell you that they didn't always approve of what America did, but they respected our rule of law. They looked to us as an example of what could exist in this world—a country in which no one man was above the law. They were fully cognizant of the injustices that existed here, that the rule of law sometimes ground slowly and inefficiently, and that sometimes horrible miscarriages occurred. But even our enemies had to acknowledge that we got it right a lot of the time, and that even if injustices occurred we had mechanisms in place that allowed us, sometimes, to right those wrongs.
That's what Al Qaida hates. That's what Osama and his crew want to destroy. Because as long as any kind of hope exists that men can do better in this world, it makes it much more difficult for them to become tin horn dictators in their own right. As long as hearts and minds have some kind of counter-example, tin horn dictators have a much harder time of selling their line, "My way is the only way."
But this administration has played right into their hands. Their abuses have crushed hope and erased those counter-examples in the minds of people all around the world. They have played on the fears of the American people and made us small and weak, cowering under the covers in the dark. They have tried to make us believe that their way is the only way.
They want the ability to suspend elections. If that doesn't put the fear in people, I don't know what will. Perhaps the Bush Administration truly believes what they're saying, that if Al Qaida launches an attack during the election it will seriously disrupt our country's democratic process. Or perhaps the Bush Administration believes that a terrorist attack just before or on election day could have the result that it did in Spain, of throwing them out of office in a landslide.
Personally, I think it's just as likely to have the opposite effect, that people will vote with their fear. A terrorist act just before the election could easily swing people to vote for Bush in a landslide. We need to keep our Strong and Glorious Leader at the helm in times of crisis.
We are prone to manipulation whatever way you decide to slice the cake.
But I've come to believe that this administration is as seriously paranoid about Us, their legal opposition, as we are about Them. I think they'll do just about anything to stay in office as long as they can keep at least the illusion of legality. They can't persuade the Supreme Court to put them into office again, that would be too obvious, so what about...
Because George Bush, after all, believes that he received a mandate. Not from the electorate, but from God. He believes he is pope-like in his channel to God, doing God's will, guided by God's hand, damned near infallible. If something whispers in his ear that suspending the elections would be in the best interests of the country because the country is confused and doesn't have as strong a pipeline to God as he does, what's to stop him? If Tom Ridge gets his way, that is, and gets the Republican-controlled Congress to pass that handy little bill which allows the feds to do it.
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