I really try to be a reasonable person, and so when the Bushies are so frequently accused of being souless, murdering hypocrites, I will kinda step back and figure well, maybe they've got their reasons for at least some of this stuff. Then along comes some guy who really does prove the fundamental point--that for the Bushies it's not at all about ideas or truth, it's all, 100% of it, about pure power. This is the place where it's fascism, pure and simple. This is Mussolini saying "my policy upon taking the office of El Duce is simply to kill you." This is why Graham Greene called his book about fascism in Haiti "The Comedians."
We may recall, then, a few months back, when the Bushies in Congress once again brought forth their perennial bill to make desecration of the flag Unconstitutional. Never mind all the contradictions, the way this sort of attack on free expression actually attacks the fundamental things our soldiers die for (at least back in the distant, romanticized past), or the way it gets into trouble with those fat little right-wingers who like to wear American Flag undies or golf shirts, or those fine patriots who find it too much of a pain to actually take down their Old Glory at sunset each night. Never mind that. Here's the thing that really points out the true issues, which aren't issues (because that would be in the realm of ideas and discussion, "thought", doncha know), but just about power, a punch in the mouth: I direct your attention to the fine Texas yahoo who ran down the little crosses with American flags that Cindy Sheehan had set up at her camp across the road from Bush's fake ranch in Crawford.
Nice move, bro. So here's the logic. We want to hold up that flag as being as pure as Jesus Himself, and if someone has the audacity to, say, burn it in disgust at the warmongering bloody halfbaked halfassed foreign policy we're following these days in Iraq, well by gawd we're going to put that hippy to the rack just like we do to those nonpersons down there in Gitmo. But, on the other hand, if some American mother whose son died over there fighting Halliburton's War has the temerity to actually place some crosses with flags on them in view of the Cowboy President, to sort of remind him that he's running an operation that's killing people, and they're really dead--really, they're dead Mr. Bush--why that's just too damn much for Dubya to bear, and a loyal subject has every right and duty to just get in his big ole pickup and run the sombitches down, flags and all. And of course maybe that'll also send a little message to Miss Cindy that maybe she'd best get on home to California fore she gets run down too, huh?
Course Dub don't have to do none of this hissef. He can even wring his hands and "feel" Cindy's pain. Or maybe that's the wrong locution; since Dub ain't Bill he doesn't "feel" other folk's pain, he just understands their position or something, and their right to actually disagree cause this is America. Dub just needs to stay all balanced. And then the truck guy has the right to disagree too, of course. The fact is, they're all Americans, unlike that Canadian boy from Syria who was locked up in the Brooklyn jail but was never "in" America because of some "legal" thing or other which somehow manages to trump the physical realities according to the US attorney defending us against his suit for damages caused when we kidnapped him back to Syria to be tortured into proving that yes, he was a Canadian.
By then end of this week (Aug 17, '05 at the moment of writing) I am sort of expecting Cindy to be in some jail in Crawford for camping without a permit or some such bullshit.
Once they get her out of view they can really work on her. Who knows, she might come out with a different view. I would, and you would too, probably. Those were some damn tough guys who made the Russian Revolution, and Stalin had them all apologizing and kissing his boots and saying they were sorry before they were dispatched for the good of Uncle Joe. We grew up, those of us back in the '50s, reading about all this and shaking our heads and wondering why in the world the Russian children hated us so much, why and how could people be so fucked up in other places, when here it was just so transparent and happy and good, day after endless day. Meanwhile, in the real world, Nixon got a check from an ex-Nazi for $100 Grr and Joe Kennedy hired Sam Giancana to work the vote for his boy Jack, who was so busy with the poontang that the first thing he did upon "election" was reappoint J. Edgar Hoover, who knew everything about everything, and who probably checked off on the operation to put the country in more predictable hands in November of '63. JFK might have double-crossed Giancana, but he wasn't going to double-cross no Texas boys, by gawd.
So, you say: "A flagwaver run over a cross symbolizing a fallen American soldier and decorated with Old Glory??? No way, Jose!!" Well back in the late '70s somebody had a song about it, with the fine chorus, "Same as it ever was." This was the last bit of the cultural dialectic that started out with "the times they are a'changin'," and continued with "four dead in Ohio" and "we won't get fooled again." We listened to the radio as it all went past, down the years, all of us just working at our jobs and stuff, trying to live a life, and now we're watching this gigantic manipulation, Twin Towers falling, wars waging, another generation bleeding in the dirt and the dumb redneck in his truck running over those crosses. You saw him already too. He's the guy who shotgunned Captain America and Dennis Hopper in that cool motorcycle movie. Come to think of it, didn't Fonda have his Harley tank painted with that ole American flag too? Woooooh, calling Captain Kirk. Makes me wish I had a little something stashed away in my gas tank, although these days the gas itself is nearbout worth as much as the stash.
–Bill Hicks
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