Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Fearful leaders ... or purveyors of fear?


You know, some days I think it's one thing; other days I think it's the other.

When I consider Dick Cheney and his one percent doctrine -- if there is even a one percent chance that some nation or group might harm America, they must be destroyed -- I think that I've never heard of a more fearful, frightened man in my life.

Behind that absurd, world-threatening doctrine, you can hear him saying, "Please! Please don't hurt me!"

This is the Vice President of the United States of America you hear whimpering. This is the man who is one heartbeat away from the presidency you find so often cowering in "undisclosed locations."

And what can we say of his boss, the Current Occupant if not that he is a fear-monger? What can we say but that he is a poisoner of American hearts and minds, a polluter of our souls?

He began peddling that filth of fear three days after he managed to control his own frozen terror at the thought of an attack on our nation. He went to New York, stood on a pile of rubble and grabbed a bullhorn from a fireman who had been working tirelessly since the towers fell.

With stolen stature and stolen voice, he pounded his chest and brayed for all the world to hear that we would not stand for what Usama bin Laden had done.

And then he climbed right down again to begin his true work of dividing a nation traumatized by the destruction of the loss of nearly 3,000 lives in the attack on the World Trade Center, the attack on the Pentagon, and the downing of a plane in a field in Pennsylvania that was said to have been headed for a collision into the White House.

George Walker Bush did not encourage the nation he is supposed to lead. He did not call upon us to find the strength of heart we've all learned from childhood is our American Heritage.

No. Instead, his venal political advisor rubbed his hands with glee and boldly declared that Bush and his Republican Congress could climb to a mid-term electoral win on the bodies of the dead. Simply instill fear in the populace -- terrorize them every chance they get -- and the election would go to the Republicans. As Keith Olbermann has shown, they terrorized us with dire warnings each time things did not go their way politically.

They terrorized segments of the population with their worst fears and nightmares, be it the spectre of "gay marriage," the idea that there is a war against Christians, or another attack on the homeland.

More and more we read how this fearful administration is classifying information long known to the public -- and sealing documents in presidential libraries. They are hiding our history, they are burying everything and anything.

Because they can? Or because they must?

George Walker Bush and Richard B Cheney -- these are our Fearful Leaders, and history will show that this is their legacy:

I have legalised robbery
Called it belief
I have run with the money
I have hid like a thief
I have re-written history
With my armies of my crooks
Invented memories
I did burn all the books.


-- Mark Knopfler, Dire Straits


Do you want to do something about it? Easy -- vote. When you're finished doing that, take your turn in your district's Election Protection program and defend the votes of your neighbors.

This might be the last chance.


h/t to crooksandliars.com for the QT link to Keith Olbermann's excellent work.