All the late night bargains have been struck | Between the satin beaus and their belles ... And most of the taxis and the whores | Are only taking calls for cash
"So what's he gonna do? Bomb them or shoot them down?" my daughter asked, peering over my shoulder at the ABC News story, Bush wants right to use military if bird flu hits.
This one has to be a classic—using the calculated withholding of aid to New Orleans to enhance and exploit a natural disaster, further erode and usurp civil liberties (giving free rein within the United States to the mercenaries of Blackwater, Titan and myriad other death squads), and continuing—under adverse circumstances—to arrogate to himself executive powers likely to drive the world's most demented tinpot dictators into apoplectic rages of authoritarian jealousy.
It's not just Bush's war on those not rich, white and American that sees the United States ranked lower than shark shit the world over. Nor is it his assault on middle-class self-entitlement. Nor, for that matter, his rape of the poor. Or his obscene enrichment of odious fellow travelers. Or, if you want, his entrenchment of martial law. It's not even that the U.S. media reports such bilge without so much as hinting at the administration's bald usurpation of fundamental freedoms.
It's that, despite it being the stock-in-trade behavior of every evolving police state and wannabe global imperium, and coming hard on the heels of a latter-day Gulf of Tonkin, WMD, dirty bombs, anthrax, an imploding economy, wars lost in Afghanistan and Iraq and looming in Iran and Korea, Americans swallow it lock, stock and hot, smoking barrel.
Despite knowing, within, that as the power grab becomes more apparent and crackdowns on dissent grow harsher, they are increasingly likely to be included among those on the receiving end of inhumane actions carried out by a devastatingly brutal and callously indifferent leadership.
To which there is no opposition.
We've been down that road before...
• Military may have to help in pandemic
• Bush Considers Military Role in Flu Fight
• Bush proposes using military in bird flu pandemic
• US may use military quarantine to contain flu
• Bush Suggests Using Military In Bird Flu Quarantine
• Bush Suggests Army Controls Avian Flu Quarantines
You get the picture...
I take it...
I don't know how it happened | It all took place so quick | But all I can do is hand it to you | And your latest trick
Dire Straits | Your Latest Trick
