Irony on the rocks with a twist...

Las Vegas Sun - Thursday, May 18th 2006
Letter: 'Bush economy' sure does explain a lot

The "Bush economy" explains a great deal about why George W. Bush failed as a businessman and went into politics in the first place.

It seems cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans is sort of like paying them "dividends" on their campaign contributions.

Who do you think the Right will blame when the bill comes in?

TANSTAAFL!

©J.S.Brown 2004-2006

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(Just Whose Government is it anyway?)

I would rather die a free man than live one moment as a slave to fear.
-TANSTAAFL!

You’ll have to pardon my utter contempt and cynicism (or at least put up with it for awhile). I find myself waxing nostalgic: I miss “The good old days,” when politicians actually pretended to care and the people pretended not to notice. I remember all the puckering lip service as if it were yesterday. But things are different now. Thanks to endless tabloid “witch hunts” and scandals, we’ve been desensitized to the point that our politicians need not bother pandering to the people anymore. Our leaders don't seem all that concerned about the “finer points” of the law either. Why should they? It’s not as if anyone is going to hold them accountable or anything. The whole grand façade, the “movie set” that looks so real from the front, but is so fake from the back, has been laid bare, and guess what? Nobody really cares (and those that do are discredited, “outed,” drowned out, disassociated, and in all ways cut off from the great American teats).

If it were possible to bring together the best horror and science-fiction authors of the previous Century, they could not possibly spin a nightmare scenario as bad as the one we’re living in right now (and most can’t/won’t believe that we're really in a world of hurt). Our not-so-esteemed president was elected not once, but twice (amidst credible allegations of vote fraud), even though he allowed our nation to be attacked by “terrorists,” embroiled the U.S. in an illegal invasion and occupation for no good reason, went on vacation while Americans just a few states away were drowning, and he has the gall to ask us to “trust him” as he spies on us without any legal authorization to do so (after all we should want him to catch those "dastardly terrorists" among us recklessly talking on their cell phones while driving). Alas, I fear the fine art of misdirection in politics is alive and well in America. I suspect the politicially sanitized "sock-puppet theater" that we are permitted to see is nothing compared to all the sleazy lapdances going on backstage.

Since 9/11/01, the American public has been fed a steady diet of fear. We fear the terrorists, we fear anthrax, we fear “dirty bombs,” we fear WMD’s, most especially, we fear that if we don’t give our President more power in exchange for less freedom, the terrorists will attack us again (tis only a matter of time they say)! The “boogymen” are already here, right now, sleeping in their cells, injected deep in the heart of our nation. They’re just waiting for word from Osama to join the great jihaad, so they can go to heaven and spend their eternity deflowering virgins. Yes, apparently the god worshipped by religious fanatics sees fit to reward his highly repressed, ignorant, angry, genocidal maniacs, with eternal bliss for killing many infidels (sorta-kinda makes Christians look like bargain-basement pikers doesn't it?). We must fight this scourge (anyone remember how much George Bush Senior liked that word?) [INSERT POLITICALLY EXPEDIENT PATRIOTIC AWE INSPIRING WAR RHETORIC HERE].

Shhh…don’t tell anyone, but our government has been sleeping with big corporations. The worst kept secret in Washington should come as no surprise to anyone, but does anyone truly suspect just how extensive this “tryst” really is? The corporations own the mainstream media outlets; they control what we are told, what we hear, and what we believe. Thanks to illegal government spying programs, they are also sharing all sorts of private information on every single one of us, and they have armies of marketing gurus telling them how to keep the dumb-fat-happy consumers consuming. They can aim their carefully crafted strategies at us with the precision of a laser; saying just the right combination of words and phrases, specifically designed to have us salivating like Pavlov’s Dogs at the ring of a bell. They’ve got all the greatest hits in one collection: Abortion, Gay Rights, Immigration Reform, Political Reform, Gun Control, Religious Freedom, Religious Persecution, Drug Prohibition, Tobacco, Alcohol, Firearms, War, Peace, National Security, Secret Gulags, NSA Spying, Enemy Combatants, Terrorists, Outsourcing, Insourcing, Union Busting, Bush and Cheney wiping each other’s asses with the Constitution, Incompetent leaders, Rich Oil Companies Gouging Consumers, Global Warming, Hurricanes, Medical Insurance, Social Security, Economics, Deficit Spending, Corporate Scandals, Political Scandals, Property Rights, Right-to-Die, Right-to-Live, Medical Marijuana, Education Reform, Death Penalty, Victim Rights, Criminal Rights, Missing Persons, Found Persons, Strippers partying with college Lacrosse teams, Slow News Days, Fast News Days, Police Car Chases, Nuclear Weapons, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, North Korea, China, Which Star is Sleeping with Which, Which Star is Pregnant, Which book is on Oprah’s List, The War on Drugs, The War on Poverty, The War on Terror, The War on Christmas, The War on Easter, The War on Peace, The War on War…all this for 50 easy payments of $19.95…supplies unlimited, but you must act right away! Just wait! There’s always more! They wind us up and push all the right buttons, and just look at us going…and going…and going…

I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t (and won’t) be afraid of another terror attack (I just don’t have the time, what, with gas prices and all). I know we can’t trust George W. Bush to “protect us,” because he’s proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that not only he’s completely incompetent, but also he’s totally untrustworthy to boot (it certainly begs the question: what kind of boobs voted for this bozo in the first place?). But still, I am going about my business as if nothing’s happened. When my nation eventually rusts out from under me, sorta like when the floorboards my mother’s ’68 Mustang, I’ll just have to pick up my feet and watch the road moving by through the holes. It’s a pickle, we’re damned if we do and darned if we don’t, we’ve flopped out of the frying pan and we’re rolling around in the fire, up a creek without canoe. If there is a light at the end of the tunnel it surely is a fast-moving train, and it's coming right for us. Does anyone else feel like we should be doing something, anything at all, but we’re just not sure what that something should be? Maybe it just comes down to asking ourselves a few questions: How many freedoms are we willing to trade for an absolute-complete-fake-sham-illusion, of security? When will we finally had enough of Bush's stupid shit-eating grin to kick him square in the teeth? Are we finally ready to handle the truth (and do we really want to)? Perhaps some of us are happy living in the blissfully ignorant shade of Bush's "truthiness," but maybe, just maybe, enough of us will swallow our collective prides, tuck our tails between our legs, set party loyalties aside, and admit to ourselves that the emperor hasn't any clothes (and he never did).

Every day, we are given just a taste, a little “sliver” of the “big picture,” (but never enough to actually see what the puzzle would look like if we had all the pieces). Secrecy is the word of the day, week, month, and year. We are the blind in the land of the deaf and dumb. We are wanderers without a map. We have been so hopelessly turned about, and distracted that we aren’t even aware we’re up to our necks in useless bureaucrats, rubes, stooges, criminal conspiracies, cronies, and spinmeisters. Despite the warnings, despite the “Holier Than Thou” celebratory attitudes of many conservatives, everyone knows something around Bush doesn’t smell quite right. Red and blue states are turning purple with rage, but nobody has a clue what to do. Everyone seems to be waiting for somebody to come up with a plan on how to get our country back. Meanwhile, the Democrats are still cowering under their desks waiting for the crisis to pass and the Republicans are too busy counting all their “soft” money to be bothered. We’re on our own. The only thing that seems clear is our nation has a very dirty diaper and nobody wants to be the one stuck having to change it.

TANSTAAFL!

©J.S.Brown 2004-2006

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