By Mark Drolette
Those of us who actually possess developed brains and thus can’t sleep at night contemplating the death-dealing horror this country has become have long been infuriated not only by the naked neocon emperors and their oily collaborators, the Vichy Democrats, but also by the millions of our fellow citizens who think everything’s just ducky with our New American Century of torture, mass murder and looting and thus collectively just sit there, motionless, like a giant rotting carcass unapologetically blocking our path while we desperately clamor to halt the whole hateful hell before it’s too late.
(Whoops: too late.)
Consider:
In the latest Gallup poll, thirty-three percent of Americans approve of the job George Bush is doing -- whatever the hell it is he’s doing, that is (besides fucking up the country).
Thirty-three percent!
Think about this for a second: One third of the so-called adult
population in America still thinks actions taken by Dubya, the wretched
creature whose administration has exponentially broadened the
parameters for the term “Orwellian,” are A-OK.
One shudders to think what unspeakable atrocity Bushco would have to perpetrate to finally get these Neanderthals’ disapproval. So we don’t waste unnecessary time pondering, here’s the answer: there is none. If the wiping out by Bush, Cheney and the rest of their despicable ilk of 655,000+ human beings (in addition to three thousand Americans x two) solely to pursue more power and wealth won’t convince them, then nothing will.
Yes, I know: the most consolidated, tightly-controlled media in U.S. history are a Goebbels wet dream and have done a bang-up job of dishing disinformation for many years now, thereby brainwashing tens of millions of Americans into endorsing the next purely-for-profit war with constant barrages of patriotic pablum, dulling their already dull minds to the effects of real violence by constant desensitization, assigning the ever-needed enemy brown faces and a false and threatening religion while the entire time conditioning their stunted psyches from day one to pursue the holy grail continuously held high by their fascistic masters: the attainment of self-worth through mindless consumerism.
Even so, ask yourself: Don’t you have an inner alarm, a gut feeling, a sudden jet of hot gas shooting painfully up your esophagus (though that could be the pepperoni pizza you ill-advisedly just had) -- an innate something, for crying out loud -- that alerts you when there’s trouble afoot?
Well, of course you do, because, being the intelligent, aware and clear-thinking individual you are -- one who has extremely good taste in columnists, too, I might add (yes, I am shameless) -- you instinctively know when someone is trying to pull the wool over your eyes.
You also have known from the beginning that Bush and crew are so obvious they don’t even bother with the shearing first and just toss the whole damn sheep at you (insert own GOP/ovine joke here).
For that staunch thirty-three percent of Bush lovers, however, it never flockin’ registers. They don’t see it, they don’t hear it, they don’t get it and they never will. The disconnect is breathtaking.
They have drunk the Kool-Aid and vehemently defend the chief executive ogres, as amply demonstrated here in Sacramento recently when about thirty of us protested against the war for an hour in front of the city zoo. (Appropriately symbolic, I thought.) Afterwards, we marched several blocks to Congresswoman Doris Matsui’s house in front of which we stood and sang peace songs, engaged in non-profane chants and displayed signs and banners urging her to vote no against further funding the slaughter.
Not too long into our mini-demo, a truck came down the quiet residential street and stopped briefly, at which point the driver shouted fiercely: “Get out of my neighborhood!” Moments later, eggs came flying from behind the fence of a nearby house, knocking a little girl’s toy from her hand.
Because the truck took off quickly and no one at the egg-throwing house answered the doorbell rung by one very irate mother, I couldn’t ask directly to be sure but I’ll go out on a limb here and assume that if either (ir)responsible party were asked if he or she is patriotic, the answer would be a resounding: “Of course!”
Yet numbskulls like these unfailingly demonstrate a profound ignorance of, and deep hostility toward, perhaps the most fundamental right we Americans (arguably) possessed before the Constitution was gleefully torn into tiny little pieces: free speech. Judging by our detractors’ (and attacker’s) irritation at our presence, it’s safe to assume they support the war, apparently caring not a whit that the unmitigated catastrophe has been based on lie after lie. They seem to prefer the stinking status quo just fine and view us, the ones who have been right about all of it -- all of it -- since its sickening beginning, as troublemakers, while giving the true criminals a free pass to continue their lethal thieving and pursue, unchecked, a long-standing, plainly stated agenda of global corporate domination.
Thus our little gang of protestors, conspicuous by our calls for something so vile as peace and long sneeringly painted by the right as out-of-touch navel-gazers for seeking to take the mega-bazillions stuffed into the military industrialists’ bottomless pockets and use them instead for frivolities like education, universal health care and a clean environment, had encountered two oh-so predictable members of that rock-solid, rock-headed thirty-three percent who, if our crazy notions are to ever outlive this nation’s Age of Endarkenment and ultimately manifest, must be worked around (or plowed through) considering the intractability of their troglodytic logic.
But that’s OK, because now with the fearless leadership of the majority Democrats, it’s only a matter of time before the plug is pulled on the funding of the war(s) and…
Uh, never mind.
I think I feel more sleepless nights coming on.
