ConNiPtioNs

Kook?

I was looking over last week's posts and it looks like my kook factor was unusually high. Believe it or not, I haven't seen any black helicopters...yet.

I'm really not a wacko. I don't think that anyone is out to get me, however I do think that the United States is headed in the wrong direction on a lot of things. Most immediately is the planned invasion and occupation of Iraq, an action that is opposed by most Americans and most of the world. I'm not saying that majority opinion is necessarily right, but millions of people around the world are protesting and someone should take notice. Right now the US is trying to buy enough votes on the UN Security Council to approve military action, but if that doesn't work the Bush Administration will still go ahead with its plan.

The other thing that concerns me, in case you haven't figured this out, is the erosion of civil rights. Minister of Truth Attorney General John Ashcroft may have good intentions, but just because he thinks that he is doing the right thing does not make it acceptable to use any means to achieve his goal. For the past eighteen months this government has used a tactic of questioning our patriotism and telling us that we have to trust them to protect us. They want us to spy on each other and allow Big Brother the government to spy on us. They want to round up thought criminals potential terrorists and hold them indefinately.

While a war with Iraq will allow the US military to flex its muscles, it is the war against the elusive "terrorists" that will keep us in a perpetual state of war. This is the perfect enemy because it can be ever-changing. We can go in and bomb the hell out of Iraq and within a few weeks we would have to find another "madman dictator" to declare as a threat to world peace. But a War on Terrorism keeps us at war with an ambiguous enemy indefinately.

1984 was on cable this weekend and as I watched part of it I kept thinking that the Bush Administration was using Orwell's book as their model for governing. Big Brother, which personified The Party that ruled Oceania, used three methods to stay in power; it:

1. spied on citizens
2. controlled language
3. fabricated enemies

The Bush Administration does all three.

So, go ahead, call me unpatriotic, call me un-American, call me an agent of Goldstein, or just call me a kook.