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2005-07-04 11:51 p.m.

i thought it was the end; i thought it was the fourth of july

So, yeah. I was feeling a little effulgent yesterday. But it�s back to cynical old me today!

Though The Hawk did comment when I came in this morning that I seemed much happier.

You know what I like about myself? My insistence on referring to my root beer as �my brewsky.�

So, anyway. Cynicism. The Fourth of July. Whoo. Light a sparkler in my name, eh?

To celebrate, here�s some hopeful articles about the total disconnect from reality that is the Bush Administration and its supporters.

Good ol� Riverbend has a great entry about Bush�s latest speech.

�He speaks of �abroad� as if it is a vague desert-land filled with heavily-bearded men and possibly camels. �Abroad� in his speech seems to indicate a land of inferior people- less deserving of peace, prosperity and even life.

Don�t Americans know that this vast wasteland of terror and terrorists otherwise known as �Abroad� was home to the first civilizations and is home now to some of the most sophisticated, educated people in the region?

Don�t Americans realize that �abroad� is a country full of people- men, women and children who are dying hourly? �Abroad� is home for millions of us. It�s the place we were raised and the place we hope to raise our children- your field of war and terror.

The war was brought to us here, and now we have to watch the country disintegrate before our very eyes. We watch as towns are bombed and gunned down and evacuated of their people. We watch as friends and loved ones are detained, or killed or pressured out of the country with fear and intimidation.�

She links Juan Cole:

�Maybe 8 percent of the fighters in Iraq are foreign jihadis. Of the some 25,000 guerrillas, almost all are Iraqi Sunni Arabs who dislike foreign military occupation of their country. You could imagine what people in Alabama or Kentucky would do if foreign troops came in and tried to set up checkpoints in their neighborhoods.

Moreover, many of those jihadis fighting in Iraq wouldn't even be jihadis if they weren't outraged by Bush's invasion and occupation of a Muslim country.

The fact is that the US went in and convinced the Sunni Arabs of Iraq that we were going to screw them over royally, driving them into violent opposition. They aren't inherently terrorists and could have been won over.�

And this Mykeru guy.

�What's more, as a man, he [Bush] isn't even an ordinary man. He is, in fact, a deeply flawed man. Up to this point he has shown all the conscience of a proficient serial killer. To his knowledge he has never made a mistake. In his own mind, he is Yahweh's pet project. No matter how stupid he seems, he is convinced that the general public is even stupider and there's not a whole lot of evidence to prove him wrong on that.�

Tom Dispatch on the �immoral relativism� of the Bush crew:

�In his speeches, George Bush regularly calls for a return to or the reinforcement of traditional, even eternal, family values and emphasizes the importance of personal "accountability" for our children as well as ourselves. ("The culture of America is changing from one that has said, if it feels good, do it, and if you've got a problem, blame somebody else, to a new culture in which each of us understands we are responsible for the decisions we make in life.") And yet when it comes to acts that are clearly wrong in this world -- aggressive war, the looting of resources, torture, personal gain at the expense of others, lying, and manipulation among other matters -- Bush and his top officials never hesitate to redefine reality to suit their needs. When faced with matters long defined in everyday life in terms of right and wrong, they simply reach for their dictionaries.�

And here�s a very hope-inspiring little article on the new generation of fascists- I mean, College Republicans:

�His [Mike Davidson's] candidacy [for chairman of the College Republican National Committee] has been endorsed by Representative David Dreier and Ann Coulter, who hailed him as a pioneer of "the new McCarthyism." And with good reason. Last February, in a Horowitz-inspired redbaiting operation, College Republicans at Santa Rosa Junior College in Northern California posted fliers on the doors of ten professors' offices bearing a red star and a warning quoting a 1950s-era state education code forbidding "the advocacy and teaching of communism." One professor's crime was displaying a poster for the film Fahrenheit 9/11 in his office window. Soon after, a press release appeared on the California College Republicans' website identifying the stunt as �Operation Red Scare.��

Happy Birthday, America. I hope you have many more. But I worry. A lot.

pale in the flare light,

greyarea

Diaryland