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Classics of Liberal Thinking

Tales from the Twilight Zone

Becky Burgwin

Ms. Burgwin’s writings have appeared in Time, Newsweek, New York Magazine, Counterpunch, Alternet  and OpEdNews as well as several other online Op Ed sites. She is on the Board of Aid Afghanistan and one of the founders of The Assisi Center for the Practice of Peace.

May 4, 2004. 

For those of us who feel like we’re living in the Twilight Zone, this column will be disclosing, exposing and uncovering amazing facts about the three-plus years that America’s worst president and his band of lying thieves have subjected us to. There will be several categories in these articles each week and I hope to have a little fun with it.

High Level High-Jinx:

Dubya is tickled pink by his interrogation by the 9/11 commissions. “It was tremendous.” I believe those were his words. He and Cheney had a good ole time. There was even laughter coming out of the Oval Office. I can’t think of anything less humorous than trying to get to the bottom of how over 3 thousand innocent civilians were killed on your watch. How would you imagine the husbands, wives, sons, daughters and friends of the folks who died on that day felt about hearing this? Are these guys capable of acting in a way that is even remotely appropriate…ever? Just wondering.

US Marines have now handed Fallujah over to the highest-ranking officer in Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. This is a guy who supported all of Hussein’s atrocities; gassing the Kurds, etc. Couldn’t we have saved a lot of time and money and lives if we had just gone in there and put the Republican Guard in charge and left? I’m starting to believe that either the Keystone cops are running our country or these guys have a very hidden agenda.

Of course I believe the latter and I think it has to do with Biblical prophecies and I intend to prove it with my helper who just finished getting a PhD in Religious studies. She is going to start researching the Christian right’s secret doings over at least the last 2 decades. I promise, you will be astounded and hopefully frightened enough to realize that this isn’t even a matter of the war or the economy or any of the other ineptitudes that this administration has perpetrated upon our country and the world.

This is about an apocalyptic vision that these guys have. According to Dr. Gerry Lower, who wrote an article published on OpEdNews.com, entitled, "We'll All Be Dead"  and with whom I totally concur. There is a much more disturbing agenda behind the doings of these sociopathic morons who are running our country. It’s about literal interpretations of the Bible that include some of its scariest, most maniacal, subjects, like Revelations.

Lower goes on to say that John of Patmos, the man who wrote Revelations, was a bitter, abused, opium addicted loser who managed to get his anti-Christian ravings into the New Testament. Not unlike George Will getting a platform every other week in Newsweek. According to Dr. Lower, 15-18% of Americans take every word in the Bible literally and another 30% are willing to overlook some of the strange concepts in the Bible and jump on board the Jesus train to salvation. (Lower calls Bush “an ill-educated, inarticulate Howdy-Doody.” I just love that.) That’s 48% kids. Read Revelations and be afraid, be very afraid.

Media Malfeasance:

Now that Bush is considering going to the UN for help, because we’re getting our butts kicked in Iraq, both Wolf Blitzer and Judy Woodruff are asking all their guests, “Now that Bush has agreed to ask the UN for help, doesn’t that make John Kerry’s platform on the war exactly like his?” Huh? First of all, Judy, Wolf, if John Kerry were president we wouldn’t be in Iraq. So John Kerry stating that he would do what should have been done in the first place, which is sincerely ask for help, doesn’t negate the damage that Bush has done by insulting the UN, getting their Iraq envoy killed and announcing to the world that only coalition countries would get reconstruction contracts.

 Judy, Wolf, read the Guardian or Le Monde, they HATE US. They think George Bush is more evil than Saddam Hussein and everybody in the entire world, with the exception of the 48% who are riding Jesus’ coattails to eternal salvation, is more afraid us than they were of Hitler. We ARE the country that is ruled by the evil despot who has WMD’s.

Then immediately following Wolf and Judy comes Lou Dobbs saying, “The president told the UN that they were not needed and not wanted. So I imagine that they’re not too gung ho about helping us now that we’ve made a total mess of it.” Thank god for Lou Dobbs.

Tim Russert has a way of asking questions that makes me think he’s just not all that on the ball. Last week he asks John Kerry, after Kerry went into great detail about his plan to clean up the mess in Iraq, “Well, Sen. Kerry, what if Iraq isn’t secure enough for you to go in there with the UN and a bunch of our allies?” Well, Mr. Russert, that would mean that George Bush had failed miserably in his bid to bring Democracy to Iraq and at the rate we’re going there would at least be another 1000 dead US soldiers, and ten thousand more dead Iraqis, so Mr. Magoo could go in there and do a better job than these guys.

Russert also got a lot of kicks out of showing  24 year old John Kerry, coming back from Viet Nam a decorated war hero in the early 70’s and getting right into trying to help our country out of that deadly quagmire, and, naively perhaps, saying things about what he saw there and what he’d like to do about it. I don’t recall any footage of Junior getting his cushy Air Nat’l Guard position ahead of hundreds of men on a waiting list, getting his teeth looked at, going AWOL and getting his pregnant girlfriend an abortion, which is what our president was up to in the early 70’s.

But my absolute favorite thing I’ve ever heard Tim Russert say was, after Kerry said he plans to create 10 million new jobs and cut the deficit in half during his first term in office, Russert says, (you gotta love this,) “Well, Sen. Kerry, if you are not able to accomplish these goals would you be willing to forego running for a second term?” Oh my god, that is rich. Yea right, Tim. Because of course we’re expecting the guy who created these problems in the first place to come out and say, sometime before Nov. 2^nd, “My fellow Americans, since I have made such a disgusting mess in Iraq and I have run up a record deficit after inheriting a record surplus and because I am soley responsible for the loss of over 3 million jobs, I hereby decree that I will not seek a second term and will concede the election to decorated war hero, John Kerry.” Yea right Tim. That’ll happen. He’ll decline to run for a second term if in four years he can’t rescue the country from the unprecedented destruction of everything America holds sacred that Bushco has managed to achieve in just 3 short years.”

Tonight Lou Dobbs said and I loosely quote, “Apparently Paul Wolfowitz is unclear about how many casualties the coalition has sustained in Iraq over the past year. Yesterday, he said at a televised meeting that they have sustained a little over 500 casualties, 350 of those being combat related.” (Dobbs then showed the clip.) Today his people released a statement saying that Mr. Wolfowitz, one of the main architects of this wonderful plan to give the Iraqis their freedom, misspoke. That he actually is aware that there are now almost 800 coalition fatalities, April ’04 being the most deadly month yet. Thank god for Lou Dobbs.

Ironically, well, tragically, just one year ago, flying ace George Bush was prancing around the flight deck of the USS Lincoln declaring, ‘Mission Accomplished.” Actually, that might be truer in ways we still can’t fathom…their actual mission possibly being far more sinister and deadly than we can even imagine.

The Elephant in the Living Room: (Questions no one seems to want to ask.)

1.      How many Americans now think that they will see the Apocalypse in their lifetimes?

2.      After he has done more damage to the planet than any president in history, will Bush be our last president?

3.      Am I the only one who noticed that when Bush got off the helicopter from Andrews after returning from yet another vacation for his press conference, he looked stoned?

4.      Where are the ten thousand plus dead Iraqis buried? Mass graves?

5.      Does it look to anyone else as though someone is trying to start a nuclear war?

6.      Why did the commander of the unit that was guarding the Baghdad prison, where someone was photographing Iraqi prisoners being tortured in frighteningly bizarre ways, get re-assigned while her troops are being prosecuted?

7.      What on earth were these guys thinking?

8.      What would make them behave that way?

9.     Can anyone imagine what would happen if we saw pictures of Iraqis doing this to our soldiers?

10. Has anybody stopped to think that these might have even been innocent Iraqi citizens and not members of whatever group of miscreants we happen to be fighting that day?

11.  Can someone explain to me why we seem determined to piss everybody in the entire world off?

12. Why, when over ten thousand people died in France from the heat wave last year does our administration keep insisting that global warming is a myth?

13.  Am I the only person in America who remembers that Saddam requested a meeting as we were amassing our troops to attack?

14. Am I the only person in America who remembers that around that same time UN weapons inspector HanHans Blix was saying he wanted more time, that there was no evidence of WMD’s?

15. Why did Bush back pro-choice Arlen Specter in PA? To get the more moderate PA voting block? Fellow Pennsylvanians, don’t fall for it.

16. Should Arlen back away from Bush now that he has the nomination? I would.

Absurdities:

Kerry’s getting Gored. Herr Rove is up to his old tricks trying to portray John Kerry as a coward, who doesn’t deserve one of his 3 purple hearts. Here’s the good news, though. We aren’t as stupid as he thinks we are and we’re not going to fall for that tactic of calling decorated war heroes unpatriotic again…are we? Neither Rove, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle or Rice have ever been anywhere near a battlefield and neither have any of their children. I just have one thing to say, “Give us a little more credit than that because WE’RE ON TO YOU.”

Good News:

The Log Cabin Republicans are not voting for Bush this year. They are astounded that Bush didn’t take advantage of their almost automatic endorsement (I’m sorry girls, but I just don’t get it.) and have made it plenty clear that they will not vote for him if he backs the anti-Gay marriage amendment. The upshot of the past three years of total lack of diplomacy, out and out bigotry and a stunning lack of regard for the truth brings to my mind a glimmer of hope, that the good thing about criminals is that, for the most part, they’re really stupid.

Humor:

Once upon a time, there was a Presidential election that was too close to call. Neither the Republican nor the Democratic presidential candidate earned enough votes to win the election. Therefore, it was decided that there should be an ice-fishing contest between the two candidates to determine the final winner. The candidate who caught the most fish at the end of the week would win. There were to be no observers present, and both men were to set out separately on the lake, returning daily with their catch for counting and verification. At the end of the first day, decorated war hero, John Kerry returned to the starting line with ten fish. Soon, Junior, the ignorant, spoiled son of a rich Texas oilman, returned with none. His supporters secretly hoped he wasn’t going to be as inept at this endeavor as he was at everything else he tried and prayed to Jesus that he would catch more the next day. At the end of the second day Kerry came in with twenty fish. Again, Junior came in with none. That evening, Junior's daddy got together with his son and said, "I think Kerry is a lowlife cheating [expletive deleted]. I want you to go out tomorrow and don't even bother with fishing. Just spy on him and see if that good for nothing polecat is cheating in any way."  The next night, after Kerry came back with fifty fish, George, Sr., asked his son, "Well, Junior, what about it. Is Kerry cheatin?” Junior replied, “He sure is daddy. He’s cuttin’ holes in the ice.”

Whoever wrote this, let me know and I will be glad to give you credit for it in my next column.

Thank God for the American sense of humor.