The Eve of Destruction

There's too much going on for me to even know where to begin.

We've got Shotgun Cheney, the building U.S. war on Iran, renewal of the UNpatriotic Act, Scooter Libby trial progressing, Katrina murmurs building, Dubai port deal stinking, and I've hardly covered anything.

2006 elections are brewing, impeachment pot is stewing, the propaganda is still selling, Iran is the new Iraq and Syria is the new Iran. Osama bin Laden lays in waiting until the administration needs a boost in the polls.

Everyday I read the news, and I see it spinning and being spun, as common sense slips further and further away.

A six year old got stopped at the airport for six hours, because her name was on the "no-fly" list.

The government wants to see my google searches.

Because "Everything changed after 9-11."

The Constitution is hindering criminal prosecutions.

After all, how can The Guvmunt stop The Terrorists from hijacking planes with boxcutters, unless they know what library books I'm reading.

Ted Kennedy was on the no-fly list.
(He may be a jackass, but he's not a threat)

James Moore, the author of a presumably unflattering book about Karl Rove, somehow appeared on the no-fly list, or so the story goes.

There are a thousand insults to liberty each day in America. After all, it's a new Millennium.

When I read the news, I feel like I'm watching a eulogy for what my country once stood for, at least in theory.

I recently found an interview with Hunter Thompson, in 2002 just before the September anniversary which inspired in part his novel "Kingdom of Fear," in which Thompson suggested the increasing federal power after "everything changed on 9-11" smelled a lot like a military coup . . . .

I'm rambling now, as I knew I would, because I can't form sentences or put together paragraphs to explain how far off balance I think we have gone. It's all happening so quickly, and America has such a short collective memory.

I find myself unable to


exactly.

I think I'll continue to have this trouble as long as newspapers like the Chicago Tribune find time and space to get outraged over the lies in the pseudo-memoir of James Frey, "A Million Little Pieces," while ignoring the lies which took us into war.

Bush even says now that he would have gone to war with Iraq to take out Saddam no matter what; Nevermind in 2002 and 2003 he claimed war was a last resort to take out "weapons of mass destruction" and other vague and frightening threats.

Never forget, the Congress has never declared war against anyone to give Bush "war powers," as stipulated in the Constitution.

The failure of what should be respected media organizations to point out blatant contradictions such as this, and the failure of supposedly intelligent people to see the contradictions on their own, leaves me with too much to say and too little time.

I'm tired, I'm rambling, and I might delete this post in the morning. But I wanted to attempt to explain why my posts here have been so few and far between these days.

It is all wrong and it all has to change.

WE have to change, and to do so we have to change the way we think.

--Mentalgongfu