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October 30, 2002
Flashback
Flashback
Have you ever been reading something and have it trigger that feeling of deja vu? I just read Ted Rall's op-ed piece that everyone's been talking about this morning, and felt like I'd been time-warped back to the 1960's, complete with a popular 60's song running through my head.Now some Democrats and progressive Americans are asking the unthinkable about an administration they increasingly believe to be ruled by thugs and renegades. Did government gangsters murder the United States' most liberal legislator?
"There's something happening here What it is ain't exactly clear There's a man with a gun over there Telling me I got to beware"Perhaps, the thinking goes, someone in the Bush regime decided Wellstone had to go. Excuse me? It would hardly be impossible to sabotage a plane chartered for an inconvenient politician. That's what I thought you said. So why did Wellstone's go down? Weather is the lead suspect. Well, duh. Local pilots, however, doubt that ice was a problem. How long did it take you to find a pilot who would say that? Contradicting the FAA, Carol Carmody, acting chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the site of the crash, says that the plane apparently carried neither. Were the black boxes lost or were they never aboard? Someone may know, but thus far no one's saying.
Ted, you're starting to worry me. Did you not take your medication today? Next thing you know he'll start ranting about how the scary bad men in the black helicopters took the black boxes from the plane crash site.
Presidents routinely cause their political detractors to take offense, but one would have to go back to Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempt to stack the U.S. Supreme Court or Richard Nixon's wiretapping and enemies list to find another American leader who crossed the line of acceptable discourse as extremely as George W. Bush has done.
I'll give you Nixon, but, uh, you kinda left out the reason FDR threatened to stack the Supremes. There was this thing back then called a "Depression," people were like, you know, starving, and the Supremes kept blocking FDR's New Deal programs. You know, the ones designed to provide jobs and stuff for the poor, like the CCC and NWA. So FDR threatened to enlarge the Supremes with his own appointees, and suddenly those programs became constitutional. I don't see the problem. Oh that's right, liberals don't believe in helping the poor by helping them find work. Liberals would much rather just give them money, provided they follow all the Kafka-esque rules. Easier to control them that way, right?
Ronald Reagan may have been a hard line conservative, but had Wellstone died during his watch you wouldn't have heard liberals asking whether the Gipper had had him offed. Bush is different. Asking mailmen to spy on ordinary Americans, Like they don't anyway? creating military tribunals for anyone deemed an "enemy combatant," We are at war, you know. locking prisoners of war in dog cages, I wish I had a cage that nice for my dogs. spending a decade's worth of savings in six months, Remember that little problem we had on 9/11? allowing journalists to die rather than provide them with help in a war zone, I have no idea what you're even talking about. Robert Fisk didn't die. smearing Democratic politicians as anti-American, Perhaps their behavior had something to do with that? invading sovereign nations without excuse--these are acts that transgress essential American reasonableness. Cool, we invaded France & they surrendered...oh, he's talking about Afghanistan, where all the terrorists were hanging out. "Were" being the operative word there. Drop a few DaisyCutters and watch 'em turn tail and run. Buncha wussies. What happened to that "I'm a martyr for Allah" thing?
A man capable of these things seems, by definition, capable of anything.
"Paranoia strikes deep Into your life it will creep It starts when you're always afraid You step out of line, the man come and take you away We better stop, hey, what's that sound Everybody look what's going down" (Lyrics from "For What It's Worth," Buffalo Springfield)Now, Teddie, calm down. No one's going to hurt you. Just go along with the nice men in the white coats, they're here to help you. You obviously need your meds adjusted.
Posted by Rita at October 30, 2002 01:58 PM