In
The Kingdom Of Fear
By Sheila Samples
16 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org
"You're A Whole Different Person When You're Scared"
~~Warren Zevon, Hunter S. Thompson
My friend Bernie says since Democrats
won the Congress, George Bush reminds him of a cartoon where this destructive
Texas jackrabbit was careening headlong down a path, his eyes riveted
on a rabbit hole in the distance. A tortoise, sunning himself at the
side of the path, looked behind the rabbit where a baying pack of dogs,
in hot pursuit, was gaining on him. The tortoise smiled. The poor bunny
was in a race for his life. As he shot by, the tortoise called out lazily,
"Think you'll make it?" The rabbit, looking neither to the
right nor left, shot back desperately -- "I gotta make it..."
Bernie says Bush is running
scared. So scared he's "pantin' like a lizard..."
Pantin' like a lizard? Hah.
Having been raised in New Mexico with me, Bernie should know that Bush
is panting because, well, that's what lizards do...Especially the venomous
gila monsters, who are fun to chase, but only a fool would try to catch
one. That's why the few Democrats out there who appear to be chasing
Bush are, in reality, just trotting along in his wake. I suspect they
fear the holocaust he is capable of inflicting if they catch him.
For six long years, Bush
has "water-boarded" all who oppose him -- especially those
in Congress -- with a steady stream of 9-11. Each speech is laced with
visions of 9-11 -- 9-11 horror just over the horizon, 9-11 around each
corner, 9-11 behind each tree. "Fear Itself" is the only option
on the Bush-Cheney table, and they have used it relentlessly, not only
to wage genocidal war in order to gain control of the world's resources,
but to seize dictatorial power and to control the quivering masses.
Constant and repetitive warnings and false-flag alerts, evidence of
plotters and planners skulking among us, hateful ideologies swirling
above us like mushroom clouds -- is it any wonder our elected representatives,
once inside the Kingdom of Fear, lose all sense of direction, the ability
to reason?
In his new book, "The
Assault on Reason," former vice president Al Gore shines the light
of truth upon this Orwellian prison of fear in which we are held captive.
In fact, Gore says more in his Introduction than most people can manage
to get across in an entire book. He says there is a "connection
between the withdrawal of reason from the public sphere and the resulting
vacuum that is filled by fear, superstition, ideology, deception, intolerance,
and obsessive secrecy as a means of tightening control over the information
that a free society needs to govern itself according to reason-based
democracy."
Bernie says that sounds good,
but as far as he's concerned, they're all just a bunch of spineless
hypocritical weasels. "Something ain't right here," Bernie
said. "These Democrats are different from the ones we sent up there.
We elected them to do the two things they promised to do -- stop the
massacre in Iraq and impeach the shallow, warmongering fool who lied
us into his greedy war. They've been there nearly 11 months and they
refuse to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for their treasonous lies
or the massive destruction that gets worse every day. Blood keeps gushing
from the sands of Iraq. Bodies keep piling up."
Bernie glared at me as he
headed for the door. "Are they really scared, or are they just
playing politics?" he asked. "Either way -- how do they sleep
at night -- how in the hell do they sleep at night?"
If I knew the answer to that
question, I'd know why my hero, Sen. Russ Feingold, gave a speech on
the floor of the Senate in early October wherein he urged his peers
to take a stand and insist the $150 billion war-funding bill include
a timeline for beginning to withdraw troops because, he said, "There
have been more than 3,600 killed in Iraq..."
I was aghast. Perhaps Feingold
overslept that morning. Had he bothered to check, he would have discovered
that, as he spoke, more than 3,800 of our soldiers and marines had been
killed. He might even have mentioned the more than 37,000 injured and
more than 21,000 suffering from disease and other medical problems.
No matter how you stack them, that's a lot of bodies piling up...
I'd know why another of my
heroes, Rep. John Conyers, who had been out there hugging the peerless
David Swanson and the courageous Cindy Sheehan -- holding meetings in
basements, whipping up articles of impeachment -- suddenly shut up,
backed off, and dove under his desk when the polls closed. Freaked out
-- after 21 terms in Congress!
I don't know if House droid
Nancy Pelosi experiences fear; if she sleeps, or even blinks, but her
strident insistence that she alone is the Decider on impeachment is
a power grab indicating either her ignorance of, or contempt for, the
U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section 4 leaves no wiggle room, but
is a mandate -- "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers
of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for,
and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
Pelosi's mantra that "impeachment
is off the table" mirrors Bush's 9-11 broadside, and is clear evidence
that she is far more concerned with politics than with the faceless,
invisible bodies that keep piling up because of her inaction. In a recent
interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Pelosi said she is determined that
Bush will not escape his legacy. "This war is Bush's war and it's
Cheney's war. And now," she said, smacking her lips in delight
-- "this war is the Republican's war..."
So there you have it. When
Pelosi and other members of Congress were sworn in after the 2006 election,
2,761 American uniformed military had been slain. In the ensuing 11
months, while Democrats were caving in, kissing ass, and giving Bush
everything he demanded to expand his war, an additional 1,072 of our
young men and women have perished. With 13 months remaining for this
administration, one must wonder how many more innocent Iraqi citizens
and American military must die in order for Pelosi to write Bush's legacy
with their blood...
If Democrats in Congress
actually read that document which they swore to "support and defend
against all enemies foreign and domestic," they would know that
any member of the House can start impeachment proceedings by (are you
listening, Rep. Dennis Kucinich?) merely tossing a resolution in the
hopper for referral to the appropriate committee.
There is good reason for
Americans to be scared, for as George Orwell said, "It does not
matter if the war is not real, or when it is, victory is not possible.
The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continous...The war
is waged by the ruling group against its subjects."
It's them against us -- a greedy corporate cabal protected by a cruel
and sinister Dick Cheney and Bush, a vicious, brainless jackass who
endowed himself with "wonder-working" masturbatory power to
torture and kill at will.
I once read that the Constitution
is our birth certificate. If we are to remain a legitimate republic
and escape this Kingdom of Fear, we must impeach both of these illegitimate
warmongers. We must resist being fatigued into compliance with murder
and into relinquishing our freedoms.
As Hunter S. Thompson wrote
so succinctly just prior to the 2004 elections, "We are down to
nut-cutting time," and, again, with Warren Zevron, Thompson admonished
-- "If you can't run, walk...If you can't walk, crawl...But don't
look down...It's a long, long fall."
Let us begin.
Sheila Samples is
an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information
Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites.
Contact her at [email protected]
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.