I’m gonna say this right off the bat so that there’s no misunderstandings about how I feel: I’m with the Dixie Chicks. I’m embarrassed that George “Dubya” Bush is in control of my country and of the way he is running a potentially great nation into the dirt. I’m unspeakably angry at Florida; I DEMAND a recount—yes, now! Now is better than never, and I want it publicly announced that that blockhead lost the presidency by half a million votes, but got in anyway because he’s related to whoever it was (Senator? Governor? of Florida) that called off the recount.

Furthermore, I am beginning to hate the American public. You people are fucking stupid. Believing in this load of crap about a “War on Terrorism” and “Homeland Security”… Christ on a pogo stick!

Now to begin.

Things weren’t going too bad until 9/11. If I never hear that series of numbers again, I’ll die a happy woman. I was in Wisconsin at the time, and had no friends or family in New York. To be frank, I didn’t give a flying Fig Newton about the towers, except that we got a day off from classes and there was some interesting stuff going on. Yes, I do feel very sorry for the people who lost relatives and friends that day, and I feel even more for the firefighters, ambulance crews, paramedics, hospital employees, and volunteers who lost lives and comrades. It was a great loss. In fact, it was a great tragedy, with America as the hero.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Aristotelian definition of a tragedy and a tragic hero, here’s a fly-by working definition. A tragedy is a narrative that arouses feelings of fear/dread and pity (‘empathy’ would be the modern word). The fear/dread emotions reflect identification with and connection to the narrative (“but for the grace of God go I”); the pity closes the distance between audience and narrative, allowing the viewer to forget it is just a narrative.

More interesting is the tragic hero. A tragic hero must be highly renowned and prosperous without being preeminently virtuous or just, his misfortune must be brought about by his predisposition toward error, not through depravity or madness. This error—or fatal flaw, as it is more commonly known—is called hamartia. The predisposition to make this error (hamartia) is hubris, a word that now means pride, but used to be defined as willingness to take risks that may lead to advancement, or arrogance to go beyond human limits. Yeah, this sounds like America to me.

America has been living off of the hump too long. We’ve bombed thousands of unnamed villages in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and miscellaneous other parts of the Arab world. We interfere with any other countries’ governments whenever we can (the notorious example of Vietnam springs easily to mind). We use their women and children for cheap labor to make shoes and clothes that companies sometimes earn up to 500% profit on. We steal/degrade/mock others’ culture, and language, and force them to adopt out English and import Wal*Mart and McDonald’s. We dictate policy and cultural trends and trading and anything else we can wield power to change. We think our way is the right way and can’t understand why so many other people are pissed off at us for thinking so and trying to stuff it down their throats.

I’d-a fuckin’ bombed us too, if I was one of them.

Why is it when Muslims say, “Our way is the only way to run the world” it’s a problem and a terrible, terrible thing, but when an American says it, he’s only trying to make the world a better place? Listen here, bucko, no one agrees on anything. Your way is not my way is not anyone else’s way. Screw you. Yeah, not everyone wants to wear burkas and fast for Ramadan. But not everyone wants Micky D’s, Wally-World, and capitalism, either. Let’s stop trying to cram our big American dick up other countries asses, eh? Sometimes it’s bad enough for those that live here.

Right.

So 9/11 happened and while it was sad and I mourned for those that died, I also just nodded and thought, “Well, we sure had that coming!”

Not Mr. Bush. Or more likely, Bush’s policy advisors and speechwriters.

George Bush has all the spine of a wet piece of TP and the brains of a mailbox. It is nearly impossible for me to believe that he came up with this whole plan to strike back against the “axis of evil” on his own. He just doesn’t strike me as all that smart to know that what he was doing was, in essence, grabbing the public’s attention while the wounds were still fresh and directing their confused mass of emotions toward a particular target. That was amazingly clever; too clever for our un-democratically-elected friend, Mr. Bush. And what a load of horsepucky it was for those of us who were not involved.

So, you know, stuff happened in Afghanistan that most likely involved a lot of innocent people dying, but hey, that’s ok, cause it’s all in the name of a war. A war against terrorism. And wars against people who terrorize others is, of course, not terrorism, because it’s America that doing it and we never terrorize anyone, and hey!… they started it. It’s acceptable to bomb women, children, and innocent men when it’s us who is doing it, and naturally we aren’t being bad guys; we just want to get the people that got us.

That was offensive to me simply because America—the great, the powerful, the land of the free and brave—couldn’t just lick its wounds in peace, saying that yeah, we’d been hurt, but that we did not feel that need to hurt those who hurt us. We’re SO great, we couldn’t even turn the other cheek. I’m almost ashamed, as instead of being an example, we decided to hit back, like a bully on the playground that narrows his eyes and decides to punish the little geek that managed to slap him once.

Whatever.

So then, somehow, we moved from attacking Afghanistan to attacking Iraq. I guess to someone who’s not paying attention Osama sounds like Sadam… and besides all those foreigners look the same anyway, right? And even if they are different, it doesn’t matter ‘cause we need to show those evil Muslins we’re not gonna tolerate them existing any more, damn them! They are all planning to take down American with their weapons of mass destruction, like those damned American airplanes they used for 9/11!

Yeah, Iraq has been suspected of creating and stockpiling bio-chemical weapons for years… but so has Russia, Vietnam, and a few other choice places. And really, do you want to start a war with a country suspected of possessing bio-chemical weapons and thus give them the chance to use those weapons? Nuh-uh, I wouldn’t. They can stockpile all they want and as long as they don’t use ‘em, I don’t care.

But the American public was all gung-ho and stuff. They didn’t mind bombing more innocent people, destroying towns, breaking up families, invading someone else’s homeland. They were all for it, because it’s not their children being killed, their hometown bombed, America being filled with foreign soldiers. They were still baying for blood, the dirty bastards, unable for even one moment to find out why we moved from seeking Osama to seeking Sadam, unable to empathize with people halfway around the globe, unable or unwilling to think of the impact of the viciousness they called justice.

The humor about the war the lies in several factors:

One. Calling the whole mess a war against terrorism. ‘Cause ya know, we’re not terrorizing anyone by dropping missiles on their heads and sending in an army. What in tarnation do you think war is?! Teatime? Christ…

Two. The American public crying and whining over every American casualty or POW. Fuckin’ suck it up, you war-whores! You wanted a goddamm war; what did you think was going to happen? That the enemy would get whopped and all of our proud boys and girls might get a little dirty, but that’d be that? This isn’t tag or capture-the-flag. Real bullets, real bombs and missiles, real people trying to defend their country against us. Duh.

Three. The fact that there were no weapons found. I mean, that’s the punchline right there. We went on the warpath for a full year, defending our aggressive position by saying that Iraq had bio-chemical weapons of mass destruction… and nothing was there! Are you laughing yet, Mr. Bush?

‘Cause I sure am. It hurts, I’m laughing so hard, and I’m gonna laugh my way all they way to the voting booth the send your sorry ass back to the independent nation of smog-laden, environmentally-unfriendly Texas and bring in a president who can think for him/herself, empathize with other people, tolerate other cultures… I want a president with the balls to be able to say that we don’t have to hit back to be strong and the ability to make decisions that benefit everyone, not just those with a taste for blood and explosions.