Tuesday, February 03, 2004
The George Carlin Factor
CBS News: Poison Suspected In Senate0 comments
He's baaaaaaaack.
The Wallingford Wingnut seems to have resurfaced.
Or maybe it's one of his many wingnut brethren.
For, despite the propaganda-poster style of the news releases on bio-terrorism spilling out of the Bush White House, most, if not all, news accounts over the last three years point towards these bio-terror attacks coming from OUR guys. Pissed-off Americans with a chemistry set, time on their hands and a chip on their shoulder. Oklahoma City Redux.
And none of these self-styled American Bin-Ladens has ever been caught.
(Not to mention our also not finding the original Saudi version, of course.)
To be fair though, local and state law enforcement agencies have had their federal funding slashed to bits to pay for the Bush tax cuts, at a time when its been shown that agents from Justice and the DoD couldn't find twelve hookers in New Orleans or an Arab in Baghdad.
(A helpful tip to the Justice Dept. from Gotham Notes:
This is twice now that deadly compounds have been traced to the Wallingford, CT post office. Just a wild hunch here, but that might possibly be a good place to poke around in. Like I said, just a hunch.)
This new ricin report returns us to the linchpin point of the entire terror discussion. A point best articulated in the early '70s by none other than comedian George Carlin, who was trying to explain the various elements that go into the concept of Mortal Sin in Catholicism. After running through the list, his capping point, of course, was: Full Consent of the Will.
"Ya gotta WANNnnaaaaa...!" said George.
Which is exactly why we are fully and thoroughly unprepared for, and will remain fully and thoroughly vulnerable to, terror attacks.
Because terrorists "WANNnnaaaaa...!"
Period.
And, as such, they are totally unstoppable by conventional means—which are the only means we know and understand.
To give those in power their due, we are now fully prepared for wave upon wave of wild-eyed, hate-filled legions of murderers pouring across our borders, filling our skies with death and flooding through our ports, firing AK-47s indiscriminately in our cities and dropping nukes on our farmland, tossing chemicals into our water supply, killing our children and raping our women, and, god forbid, perhaps even having a negative impact on that day's Wall Street numbers.
Unfortunately, the Soviet Union no longer exists. But we ARE fully ready for them, should they ever get uppity again. And President George W. Bush's new budget request is crammed full of new Soviet-era, deficit-stuffing goodies for the generals and defense contractors.
Of course, to say that we can't afford them—and that all those military goodies are rendered totally moot and useless in the new world order of shadow terrorism, anyway—is to miss the whole point of cronyism entirely.What is a terrorist act?
An act that usually has little immediate impact in casualties or damage, but which is guaranteed to receive maximum news coverage. It is designed to create psychological damage, as it is squarely planted in the back of our brains by the 24-hour news cycle, followed by the horrific thought of, "I might be next..."
Your life as you have known it ceases to exist. (Years after 9/11, thousands of NYers still flinch when we hear an airliner flying overhead on its way into LaGuardia Airport. And there are scores of such flights daily.)Who commits such acts?
People who are fueled by what—they feel—is righteous rage. They are the aggrieved party here. This is their direct redress of grievance when they feel all other avenues are closed to them, and that their enemy is too powerful to confront directly.
If you are a poor Palestinian boy or girl, and you've seen your family, neighbors and/or village destroyed by Isreali tanks, you won't be staging a concerted Pan-Arab military offensive against Israeli territory, on your own, anytime soon. But, you can walk into a crowded cafe where people are relaxed and happy with twenty pounds of C4 strapped to your chest, smile and pull the cord, knowing that your young Isreali peers will never again congregate in public places and have fun without being afraid for their very lives.
And you know that YOU will have done that.
If you are some American "truck fleet owner" who's mad at the Highway Bill, as this CBS article mentions, and you are convinced that the entire U.S. system has let you down, or has actually gone out of its way to screw you personally, you're most likely not going to get any more than three or four of your buddies from the tavern to band together to take on the government and attack Fort Benning. You'll just have to go it alone. And once you've decided to cross that line, you've become the most dangerous man/woman in America.
Because now you "WANNnnaaaaa...!"
And no one knows who you are, what you're upset about, where you are or what you are planning. So, we can only deal with any event you create after the fact.
In these scenarios, the angry party has ALL the power. Any government is powerless to stop them directly. They can strike at any time. In any manner. From any direction. It's entirely their call. And all the King's horses and all the King's tanks are powerless to avert impending tragedy. All that we are capable of doing is responding too late. And perhaps plugging that hole for the next time. But they'll just find another. Those who hate are adaptive.
And those who hate, "WANNnnaaaaa...!"
And there really is only ONE WAY to stop them:
To make them NOT "WANNnnaaaaa...!"
And that is, simply, to make them no longer hate us.
That's it. That's the only way. End of story.
The rich irony here, of course, is that the compassionate, core human values which George W. Bush lied to us about bringing to the White House in 2000 are the very shield against terror attacks we seek. Leading with our hearts and minds, rather than with our greed, and extending the hope of safety and a better life to every corner of the world is our only real chance to live safely and securely ourselves.
Unfortunately, through the White House's politically driven actions in the Middle East, Asia and South America, and through all the ways this administration is running the domestic show from D.C., they are creating an unending breeding ground of hate—foreign and domestic—as fertile as any fetid swamp could be for mosquitoes.
And just like hungry mosquitoes, when they come out of these swamps, they "WANNnnaaaaa...!"
There is horror in these attacks, yes.
But, the real horror here is that we made these swamps, and we've done nothing to drain them.
Pop Quiz:
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or your Senator represented YOUR interests?
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posted by Gotham 10:32 AM
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