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Claudia Long: 'Mourning in America'
Thursday, November 04 @ 10:25:02 EST
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By Claudia Long
The terrorists have won. How could they lose? They had everything on their side - fear, greed, superstition, ignorance. They even had Osama Bin Ladin. Yes, after the administration warned us for months that 'terrorists' were going to try to disrupt the election, Osama appears, just like they said, just in the nick of time to scare the hell out of people, scare them enough to vote for a war that has already killed 100,000 innocent women and children, [remember the Culture of Life?] that has made the world more dangerous, that may not end in our lifetime. How convenient. How well cared for Osama looked, how well rested and fit.
And of course, they own the voting machines, don't they? Who cares if the exit polls in Florida and Ohio were wildly out of sync with the 'results'? So what if the chief executive of Diebold, the Ohio corporation that makes most of the voting machines, promised publicly to deliver Ohio for Bush? Will anyone investigate?
They own the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, the Congress, the Supreme Court. We will never know - just as we will never know what really happened on 9/11. Just as we will never know what happened to the tons of high detonation explosives at Qa Qaa, or the billions of taxpayer dollars allocated for the reconstruction of Iraq, which simply disappeared, evaporated, gone with the wind like the Coalition Provisional Authority. Nothing seems to survive of the CPA, no paperwork certainly, no one in government now seems to remember it existed. Paul Bremer? Never heard of him.
It is difficult even to think about all that could be lost - objective reality, tolerance, the Constitution, clean air and water, health care, public education, the middle class, the Rockies, science, the Age of Reason. Is that an exaggeration? At this point, I don't honestly know. I do know that all these things are threatened, and that vast changes can overtake a society in a relatively brief period of time. Germany in the 1930's comes to mind.
But after the first wave of horror and nausea and denial passes, it is time to move on, because that's all we can do. The one good thing that has come of this is the great number of people who have become keenly aware. Not enough yet, but many. What we must not do is give up and let each other down. Mourn, if you must - eat a bacon and cheese sandwich or a whole pint of Cherry Garcia, buy a pair of shoes you can't afford, call someone you love and get it out, wear a black armband, ride a motorcycle, go out in the woods where no one can hear you and scream.
But then you will get up and go on. This is our country. We will not walk away, we will not back down. There's a lot of work to do.
Comment: Is flying a flag at half-mast warrented as a way of honoring our fallen soldiers who millions chose to ignore by voting Bush into office? (Remember he was APPOINTED the first time.)
Catherine
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"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."
Honore de Balzac
"Democrats work to help people who need help.
That other party, they work for people who don't need help.
That's all there is to it."
~Harry S. Truman
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