Ever notice that the right always seems to turn everything into some sort of crusade? Considering the right has allied itself with both organized religion and corporate America, this really shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. The success of their bandwagon propaganda, and the absolute loyalty of many of the right’s core members should frighten even the most moderate of liberals right out of their socks. Those who are truly in charge of promoting the right-wing agenda aren’t looking for anything short of absolute power over our lives, our liberties, and our minds, and they’ll stop at nothing to shove their views down our throats and make us swallow. Like sheep being led to the slaughter, loyal party members are walking lockstep to the canter being bantered.
The first rule of propaganda has always been- “Lie convincingly and consistently and people will turn it into the truth in their minds.” This philosophy has worked well for the right. They have convinced people that there is a “credible threat” where there are none, they manage to keep us all at some level of concern over another attack on American soil that behind the carefully constructed facade of fanatical patriotism lies the most fearful betrayal of all: the willingness to give up the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in a Democratic Republic for nothing short of an illusion of security.
Our recent involvement in Iraq is yet another example of the abuse of power being done right before our eyes, and yet very few have blinked. The questions being raised by the utter lack of any credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction has caused the current administration to backpeddle into admitting they are now looking for evidence of a weapons program, rather than the weapons themselves. I am doubtful as to the existence of WMD’s in Iraq. I am doubtful that we will find anything resembling an intact weapons program. Just like the man who ran Iraq’s Information Bureau. Should we be surprised that just about everything about Sadam and his regeme have been a delusional sham?
Let us entertain the notion that our President and his top advisors are right, and Iraq did indeed possess a viable weapons program and a stockpile of WMD’s ready to be used. Since the invasion, we have found no trace of anything which can be credibly proven to have anything to do with either a program or weapon itself. If Bush is right, this means that, as a result of our invasion, these weapons have been taken elsewhere, and may even be in the hands of someone less scrupulous than Sadam. Seen in this light, if we want to discuss who has perpetrated the biggest threat to world terrorism, it is George W. Bush whom we must consider guilty as charged. If the WMD’s were in Iraq, they don’t appear to be there now.
The inquiries into what our President and his advisors knew and when he knew it, seems to me to be nothing more than polite “lipservice,” rather than the kind of hard-hitting and spectacular showmanship we saw during the Watergate and Clintongate hearings. The same acceptance of the Warren Commission’s findings into the assasination of JFK is probably all we will ever get from this whole mess. How can anyone forget when the right wing was calling for Clinton’s head on the impeachment platter? How can we justify the spending of an excess of 40 Million dollars in a witch hunt of our former President for the possibility that he lied about a fraudulant land deal before he was President, and whom he had intimate relations with, when the standing president is lying about our reasons for going to war and nobody is doing a damn thing about it?
Many people remember the melodramatic moral outrage over Clinton’s behavior in the White House with Monica Lewinski. We all remember the rabid drooling furver in which the right went after him. What were the results? A president lied about having some form of sexual relations with one of his interns- people lost face, people lost credibility, the integrity of the Oval office may have suffered. Now we have a president who has been caught in a number of lies designed to dramatically shift domestic and global support in favor of an unpopular war, in which Americans have been wounded and killed, and our international credibility has been tarnished, and barely a whimper is heard. The moral outrage of the crusading holy rollers from the right seem to have placed far too much emphasis on where Clinton may or may not have put his penis than they have on whether or not Bush deliberately exaggerated Iraq’s WMD’s, and people died as a result. I sense a loss of perspective here. I myself care far more about the lives of our service men and women being placed in harm’s way than I do about whose smoking the President’s sausage (or cigars for that matter).
I have to say I almost pity the parrots on the right. Many of them have been badly duped and manipulated by a masterfully crafted marketing campaign. One has to admire how well they have done in fooling the majority of conservatives. The judicious use of repeating the same rhetoric over and over again until people believe them was the primary philosophy of Joseph Goebbels, who was Adolf Hitler’s Propaganda Minister. One hears the same broken record being played over and over again: “The left are socialists,” “The left are unpatriotic and hate America”, “The left are communists,” “The left want to drain the moral fiber of our Christian Nation”,”The left want to tax the rich to death and give it all to the poor.” Again and again, over and over, this spin keeps playing and people keep paying. If we don’t stop this deliberate distortion of the truth, we are doomed as a nation.
I continue to see proof around me that for most Americans, ignorance is bliss. Both sides of the equation need to wake up and smell what they’re shoveling. The left has become flacid, fearful, and stale, while the right continues to be extremist, boistrous, cunning, and in charge. As long as we are willing to “look the other way,” and not question those in authority, we may as well take our place in line at the slaughterhouse and hope for a high number. If the price of freedom is vigilance, then far too many Americans are asleep at the wheel.
Maybe its all a bad dream, some sort of twisted version of Alice in Wonderland, or the Wizard of Oz (I can envision Ashcroft fitting the role of the Queen of Hearts, with her “Off with her head!” Bush, the Wicked Witch of the West: “I’ll get you my pretty, and your WMD’s too!”). Maybe if we start clicking our heels and saying “There’s no place like home,” we will wake up in Kansas with our family, and everything will be all right. Too bad some fantasies just aren’t real.
If one allows themselves to fear for their life so greatly that they are willing to let liberty die, the point of living has been lost and our adversaries have already won.