[iwar] [fc:Mark.Morford:.'I'm.patriotic,.but.not.the.slightest.bit.reassured.by.Bush']

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-22 06:48:19
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Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 06:48:19 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Mark.Morford:.'I'm.patriotic,.but.not.the.slightest.bit.reassured.by.Bush']
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Mark Morford: 'I'm patriotic, but not the slightest bit reassured by Bush'
 Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle
<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/">http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/>

This much is true: It really is possible to love your country and value
your freedoms and still believe the government is full of fools and
prevaricators and BS artists and Dick Cheney.  Really. 

It is still possible to feel warmly patriotic in personal and important
ways and yet believe the military and the generals and the war machine
do not have your best interests at heart and really couldn't care less
what those interests are anyway but thank you for sharing now please sit
down and do as we tell you and by the way, thanks for all the flags and
the money. 

And it is still possible to feel unified and spiritually connected to
all that is good and righteous about your generally nonviolent
Americanism -- you know, wine and sex and good music, large dogs and
literature and clean water and tongue kissing in the streets -- and
still be depressed when our famously nonintellectual president talks to
the country like we're all five years old and heavily dosed on Ritalin. 

When Bush employs phrases like "bring the evildoers to justice" over and
over, 17 times in one speech alone, and he furrows his brow like a
serious Muppet and offers carefully scripted reassurances deliberately
lacking in polysyllabism and detailed explanation because that would be,
you know, complicated. 

When he repeats primitive little maxims like "There are no negotiations"
and responds to press-conference questions about the vitriolic anti-US
hatred that has blossomed around the globe by saying, "I'm amazed.  I
just can't believe it because I know how good we are," thus causing a
giant global spasm of multinational cringing and openly insulting the
intelligence of anyone who can walk and breathe at the same time. 

When he delivers very earnest speeches he had no part in writing, and
when he is forced to speak extemporaneously, sans script or
TelePrompTer, and is reduced to simplistic good-guy/bad-guy platitudes
and flustered, rapid blinking, and who cannot for the life of him
articulate a complex idea, some sort of nuanced elucidation of our
nation's motives and positioning, that contains more than one possible
level of meaning. 

But perhaps that's too harsh.  Unfair.  He's the president, after all. 
He is a Good Man.  He's our leader right now, he's doing his best and
he's all we've got.  This is our rallying cry, our motto: He's all we've
got.  There's your bumper sticker.  And there he is. 

Except for Cheney, which isn't exactly reassuring.  No one has ever seen
this man's mouth actually move.  No one can take one look at his oddly
spiritless and wan figure and not think, oh dear God, that man is
running on fumes.  From a bunker.  With ropes and pulleys. 

But you're not supposed to.  In fact, you really aren't allowed to
criticize the president or the veep right now, not supposed to feel
strangely leaderless and adrift, not permitted to look upon the events
of the past weeks with much wariness or bitterness or a disquieting
sense that we're setting things in motion that have no predictable
outcome -- ugly, subterranean, hateful things that could last years and
will surely cost billions and will deeply entrench the nation in a
bizarre and poisonous shell game with shadowy opponents of largely
unknown capability and do you hear that? That soft roaring? That's the
sound of the GOP-stroked military machine, quietly cheering. 

Never mind the staggering multibillion-dollar political mess in Saudi
Arabia that fueled bin Laden's network for years, or the enormous oil
fields that are desperately vulnerable to terrorist attack at any
moment.  Never mind the US government's outright rejection of new
advancements in alternative fuels to get us away from oil and out of the
Gulf entirely. 

Instead we get: Evildoers.  Air strikes.  Hundreds of dead civilians. 
Rumsfeld denials.  And Bush, squinting, saying things only small
children and GasMaskExpress.com shoppers find comforting and manly. 

It is, Bush tells us, a war on terrorism.  We will eradicate terrorism
through largely violent and aggressive means, because that is what we
must do and what we always do and everything else takes too damn long. 
We have to do something.  This is the common wisdom.  Bush said so.  Mr. 
Rumsfeld told him so, with his black and shiny hawk eyes all a-glimmer. 
Disagree? You traitorous whiner. 

This war, it will be just like the War on Drugs.  It will be potent and
effective and our objectives will be clear.  The nation had a nasty drug
problem and we declared a war on drugs and spent billions over many
years and now you can't buy drugs anymore.  It will be just like that. 

There is more than one way to respond to the horror of Sept.  11.  And
there is more than one kind of patriotism.  We forget this.  You do not
have to rally around Bush and tolerate Cheney's chthonic creepiness and
wave a frantic flag and believe every scripted half-truth that drizzles
out of the Pentagon, applaud the nonstop attacks on an already
demolished nation.  Pro-America does not mean pro-war.  Or pro-Bush.  Or
anti-Afghanistan.  Or pro-little-flags-on-SUV-antennas. 

It means thinking independently and getting better informed and
filtering your news very carefully and realizing that just because one
version of the American aggro attitude is currently being ramrodded down
society's throat doesn't mean you have to swallow. 

It means you don't have to find Tomahawk missiles really cool or think
all those tens of thousands of Europeans and Egyptians and world
citizens protesting the US bombings must be commie jerks, or feel sad
and morally depleted when you can't seem to draw any intellectual
nourishment whatsoever when Bush declaims, "Terrorists want us to stop
our lives, stop our flying, stop our buying.  But this nation will not
be intimidated by evildoers." You don't have to buy into that infantile
hokum for a moment. 

After all, this is America. 

Thoughts for the author? Email him. 

Reprinted from The San Francisco Chronicle:
<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/">http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/> 

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