Divide and Conquer
"Reconciliation is difficult in a country that has been tortured and divided by a tyrant."
--President George W. Bush, press conference, October 25, 2006
My first question after reading this was he talking about Iraq or the United States? I mean how do you divide a nation? Well first off you take over control of the presidency with more than 500,000 votes LESS than your opponent then you govern as a hard-right religious fundamentalist. Then after September 11, 2001 you ask for unity from Democrats and you get it followed by kicking them in the teeth. You accuse them of wanting to practically fellate Osama bin Laden. You put pictures of war heroes next to pictures of bin laden and Saddam and tell people Democrats want the terrorists to win. You swift boat a war hero who volunteered for Vietnam and was awarded a Bronze Star a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. You tell people vote for Democrats and you'll die. You call half the country "defeatocrats" and claim critics of the Iraq war are Nazi appeasers. You call critics of the USA Patriot act as giving "ammunition to America's enemies" and "aid [to] terrorists." You say the words of the Democratic Senate Minority Leader "embolden the enemy." And the kicking in the teeth and the balls of half the country has gone on non-stop since September 12, 2001. The message is clear - if you are a Democrat or opposed to the Republican fundamentalists in complete control of the government you are un-American, you are unpatriotic, you are a security threat. You are to be hunted down and caged like the godless, treasonous, terrorist loving person you have been made out to be by this president and the plague of Republican supporters.
As for tyranny the Republican Congress just gave the President what he wanted - the ability to label anyone, including any American citizen in America, as an "enemy combatant" and to be arrested (disappeared) without any ability to challenge the claim or the imprisonment and to be held forever without any charges being filed or any court to review the arrest or any lawyer to assist in proving that a mistake has been made. I'm talking about the end of habeas corpus. Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University put it this way, "People have no idea how significant this is. Really a time of shame this is for the American system.—The strange thing is that we have become sort of constitutional couch potatoes. The Congress just gave the President despotic powers and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to Dancing With the Stars. It's otherworldly..People clearly don't realize what a fundamental change it is about who we are as a country. What happened today changed us. And I'm not too sure we're gonna change back anytime soon." These are despotic powers gleefully given to The Decider and it's just the beginning.
How do you reconcile a nation that has been divided and tortured? You get rid of those doing the dividing and torturing. And speaking of torture it looks like the "20th hijacker" of Sept. 11 may avoid prosecution because of our "aggressive interrogation" of him at Gitmo. Republicans torturing and dividing. So I ask again, how do you reconcile a nation that has been divided and tortured? You vote Democratic.
--President George W. Bush, press conference, October 25, 2006
My first question after reading this was he talking about Iraq or the United States? I mean how do you divide a nation? Well first off you take over control of the presidency with more than 500,000 votes LESS than your opponent then you govern as a hard-right religious fundamentalist. Then after September 11, 2001 you ask for unity from Democrats and you get it followed by kicking them in the teeth. You accuse them of wanting to practically fellate Osama bin Laden. You put pictures of war heroes next to pictures of bin laden and Saddam and tell people Democrats want the terrorists to win. You swift boat a war hero who volunteered for Vietnam and was awarded a Bronze Star a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. You tell people vote for Democrats and you'll die. You call half the country "defeatocrats" and claim critics of the Iraq war are Nazi appeasers. You call critics of the USA Patriot act as giving "ammunition to America's enemies" and "aid [to] terrorists." You say the words of the Democratic Senate Minority Leader "embolden the enemy." And the kicking in the teeth and the balls of half the country has gone on non-stop since September 12, 2001. The message is clear - if you are a Democrat or opposed to the Republican fundamentalists in complete control of the government you are un-American, you are unpatriotic, you are a security threat. You are to be hunted down and caged like the godless, treasonous, terrorist loving person you have been made out to be by this president and the plague of Republican supporters.
As for tyranny the Republican Congress just gave the President what he wanted - the ability to label anyone, including any American citizen in America, as an "enemy combatant" and to be arrested (disappeared) without any ability to challenge the claim or the imprisonment and to be held forever without any charges being filed or any court to review the arrest or any lawyer to assist in proving that a mistake has been made. I'm talking about the end of habeas corpus. Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University put it this way, "People have no idea how significant this is. Really a time of shame this is for the American system.—The strange thing is that we have become sort of constitutional couch potatoes. The Congress just gave the President despotic powers and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to Dancing With the Stars. It's otherworldly..People clearly don't realize what a fundamental change it is about who we are as a country. What happened today changed us. And I'm not too sure we're gonna change back anytime soon." These are despotic powers gleefully given to The Decider and it's just the beginning.
How do you reconcile a nation that has been divided and tortured? You get rid of those doing the dividing and torturing. And speaking of torture it looks like the "20th hijacker" of Sept. 11 may avoid prosecution because of our "aggressive interrogation" of him at Gitmo. Republicans torturing and dividing. So I ask again, how do you reconcile a nation that has been divided and tortured? You vote Democratic.
posted by Crankyboy at 11:27 AM
2 Comments:
Bravo! but I wish I could believe it's still possible to vote them out even if the great unwashed could get themselves to the polls on time.
People really don't care about their liberty anyway. The NRA just sent me a post card (I'm not a member) telling me to vote for their list of approved candidates - including Katharine Harris. People will vote their pet interests, like guns and they will despise anyone who takes a larger view.
I'm not an optimist about our future at all.
Thanks for being the first (that I've seen anyway) for using the ominous Latin American term "disappeared" for those who were vanished by ostensibly legal government prerogatives. We now know that as the dirty war there was sanctioned,... so too has it been here. I you don't hear from me for a while, search the stadiums...
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