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Sept. 14, 2004 What really strikes me as odd in this very early morning hour is that the more of the right wing rant I read here at useless knowledge I read the less education I want. It seems that if I am to fit in the prevailing conservative world view and become comfortable with the current administration I must ‘ignorant up’, dumb down or, learn to believe pretzel logic. We know that the Bush and Cheney gang will say anything, tell any half truth or commit any deception because they know they can do so with near impunity. They know that if they put it out there and then back pedal they will get away with saying “it” because they back pedaled away. Yet “it “is still out there, for example; Cheney saying that if we vote for Kerry, then we will open ourselves up for attack again. Well two days later he back pedaled away from the statement when he said ‘I didn’t mean what I said to be taken the way the words I said meant.’ Yet the fact is that the words he said were said and are still out there and he will not be held accountable for them. The simple fact of the matter was Bush was sitting in the Oval Office when the World Trade Centers were destroyed along with the lives of nearly three thousand families. Despite all that came before, Bush was in office when the most heinous attack against this nation since the sneak attack in Pearl Harbor happened; but he is, for some ideologic reason or another, excused from that and the responsibility is illogically shifted to the previous administration. The responsibility is shifted even though that administration has said that before leaving office Bush, the incoming president, was told on a number of occasions in transition meetings, that Osama bin Laden was the number one security risk against the United States and that same Bush administration chose to focus on Iraq instead. Bush says he is for the ban on assault style weapons and the support hardware that allows our own American thugs to kill up to sixty people at a time to remain in place. His statement of support is out there so he can refer to it but he did nothing, NOTHING, to assist the ban to stay in place. Why? Because he is currying favor with the NRA money lobby despite what 80% of the citizens wanted, which is for the ten year old ban to stay in place. He wants and apparently is having his cake and eating it too. What kind of a leader is that? Certainly not a principled one. What also strikes me as curious is that when the Swift Boat Veteran ads against John Kerry were broadcast and a close link between the Bush campaign was shown, in the guise of a shared attorney advisor, the pig of conservative principle and law did not squeal yet when the records of the lack of honor in Bush’ own war time service finally were made public that same swine hollered from the mountain tops that it was a put up job and the records were falsified. Why is it that the conservative wing believes it can have it both ways? So somebody answer me…what is the difference between Clinton going to England as a Rhodes scholar to avoid war time service and Bush going to Alabama as a political hack and Cheney taking five student deferments as an art student to do the same? Seems to be which side of the fence you’re standing on is the only difference. There is a great divide in this nation and it is not getting smaller but it is getting more fractious and split along ever more diverse lines; race, wealth, creed, sexual orientation, gender to name a few. Bush won’t give a speech before the NAACP because they don’t support him, Bush wants a constitutional amendment to outlaw homosexual marriage, and Bush won’t support continuing a ban on assault weapons, even though they are the American gangster weapon of choice, Bush gives a few hundred back to taxpayers and a few billion back to business. Bush would rather not see protestors at his campaign stops so it is perfectly legitimate to violate their first amendment rights to prevent that. Bush, an oil man, presides over an economy that sees record high prices for heating fuel and gasoline and by the way profit for oil companies. Bush sees the greatest loss of decent paying American jobs since the Great Depression of seventy years ago and when they are replaced by half as many poor paying, no benefit jobs; he and his shills would have me believe that the economy is in rebound and because they say it; it must be so. Sorry folks if it looks like a dog, barks like a dog and smells like a dog it ain’t an elephant… it’s a dog. Although there is a clear statement in the United States constitution banning the marriage between church and state Bush wants to continue to turn this nation over to the Falwell’s and Robertson’s of the Christian right. An American white male idea of what it means to be a “Christian.” I guess I am the only Christian white male to whom that idea sounds repugnant. What is the most amazing thing about this all is that the people who support this president do so with such a rabid fierceness that they are willing to trample not only on the civil rights of others to see him re-elected but on their own as well. That they see nothing wrong with giving the government expanded authority to conduct surveillance on its own citizens speaks against everything they say they want. Smaller less intrusive government that collects less taxes; I hate to tell you folks but the more you allow your government the more it costs both in terms of your privacy and your dollars. I have come to this place and read the polemic of the conservative side of the aisle for a few months now and have stayed pretty much out of the fray to run my own candidacy but I can not stay silent any longer. I am not a liberal who suffers the insult to my intelligence easily. And while I am certain that if I were to be one on one with the president I would find him a charming and gracious host, I do not find in him those qualities which make for a world leader. And very few of the qualities of say FDR or Churchill in any world leader today. Just because one can make a decision does not necessarily make it true that it will be the right decision, was the Iraq war a right decision? Or was the right decision that we were the victims of state sponsored terrorism and that state was Afghanistan and the sponsor was the Taliban and we should have pressed that front on the war on terror until bin Laden was caught or killed? History now will be the only judge of that because it is too late to undue the civil war we have begun in Iraq. Just because one says they are a “compassionate conservative” it is not true when the actions of that same one dictate otherwise. The prescription drug program for Medicare is turning to a boon for drug companies and not for the people served by Medicare, while the largest price increase for the cost of Medicare, which by the by equals about three times the value of the “tax cut”, is in the wings for the nations elderly and disabled. To say one cares about the nation’s urban youth while standing by and allowing assault weapons and associated hardware to legally return to our streets so one will not lose the support of the NRA is not compassionate to say the least. Nope, I don’t understand the new conservatism of the past ten years; I don’t see it and probably never will. What I do understand is that I personally do not feel safer with George W. Bush in the white house or with Dick Cheney steering the hawk of state. I fear more for the future of my nation now than I did on September the twelfth two thousand and one. I fear more for the future that we will leave to the next generation of leaders now because they are being trained in the neo-conservative style of dissimulation and lies that are expected to be accepted for truth as opposed to being shown the light of critical thinking and logic. Will Kerry be better for the nation? The honest answer is I don’t know. But the truth is he can be no worse than George W. Bush. ------------ About the author: Mark Durfee is a free thinker who is swayed by logic and truth not ideology and deception. Email: mcd5255@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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