Well, he's the decider. If he tells you to go shopping, I guess you're going to keep right on shopping until and unless he gives you permission not to. After all, there's that new TIVO or HDTV you or your family want for Christmas, the new car you really need, the new appliances to replace the old ones, the new laptops that the kids need for school, the new cell phones, the new clothes, the new furniture. Sure, most of it is made in China, but if Bush wants you to buy it, it has to be the right thing to do. Has he ever steered you wrong?
We're a nation of consumers anyway. We're trained from a very young age to buy whatever it is we need. So if our needs should suddenly change, and we should need some different things, things like justice, truth, an end to an very expensive and senseless war, responsible government, no torture, the restoration of civil liberties, things like that, it is only natural for us to try to buy them. If we just send enough money to the right political party or non-profit organization, surely we'll be able to buy whatever it is we want. No?
No. Absolutely not. If you disapprove of Bush, and most Americans do, you have to begin to understand that you can't get rid of him by continuing to do what he wants you do to. There really are some things that money can't buy. Remember the Boston Tea Party? King George sent over what in today's currency would be a million dollars worth of tea. And instead of buying it, the colonists dumped it in the harbor. They wanted liberty. They wanted independence. They wanted no taxation without representation. And they got it by NOT buying his tea.
Haven't you always known that you get what you pay for? Well, the reverse is also true. If you don't pay for something, you don't get it. If you don't want Bush running the country, all you have to do is stop doing what he wants you to do. Stop shopping. We control 70% of the economy. If even 5% of the people who oppose Bush were willing to curtail their holiday spending, we could take at least a quarter of a trillion dollars out of the economy during the holiday season. The consumer confidence index would drop so sharply it would resemble a vertical line. And the big corporations that lost money would insist that Bush and Cheney resign immediately and be replaced with somebody who could restore consumer confidence. It's their lifeblood. They cannot survive without it.
Do you suspect that elections might not work? Do you wonder if your legislators listen to you? Are you tired of signing petitions that nobody looks at? Have you noticed the millions of dollars the Bush administration has spent supplying local law enforcement with crowd control gear, just in case people ever got organized enough to protest? Have you noticed that no matter how many lawsuits get filed, the courts keep throwing them out, and that the only place they can possibly end up is in front of the very Supreme Court that selected Bush and has since been supplemented with Bush appointees?
If you keep shopping like Bush told you to do, he'll continue to be the decider. But if you're tired of his poor decisions, and want your country back, you're going to have to stop letting him tell you what to do. It may be inconvenient, but not anywhere near as inconvenient as it will be if we let him stay in office.
Bush says that we're doing fine in Iraq and should stay the course. You don't buy it? Then DON'T buy it. You're the one paying for it. Bush says we don't need habeus corpus or that goddamned piece of paper we call our Constitution. You don't agree? Then why keep propping him up? He can't do it without you. He needs your help. He needs you to keep shopping. Are you going to keep doing what he tells you? Because he really appreciates your support.
