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.JPG) Strange Days, Indeed
by Tracy M. Rogers
Perhaps I have become a jaded conspiracy theorist in my old age, but each
morning when I awake it seems the world is significantly worse off than it
was the night before. Each day it seems we slip further into an Orwellian
nightmare where all humans are created equal, but some are more equal than
others. We are trapped under an administration that has very little regard,
if any, for the laws and institutions on which this country was founded, an
administration determined to foist its own agenda on the American public
regardless of the will of the people or the good of our society, an
administration with so little regard for human life that they continue to send
troops to certain death in Iraq while deliberately confusing the debate on
abortion with rhetoric about the sanctity of life. Yes, all of us are equal
indeed. The pigs at Halliburton gluttonously feast on government handouts
while keeping the tastiest morsels to feed their ravenous money lust, each
penny they “earn” tainted with the blood of American soldiers who die each
day halfway around the world at the hands of extremists fueled by the hatred
for the American people that our government is perpetuating by callously
continuing the illegal occupation of another country.
In domestic and foreign policy, the Bush administration uses the rhetoric of
“the other” to justify their actions to the American populace, using fear to
manipulate public opinion. The neo-conservatives talk of the sanctity of
marriage while playing up the notion that homosexuals are deviant, perverse,
and “against nature.” Homosexuals are denied their basic civil liberties,
their basic right to the pursuit of happiness because of age-old prejudices
rehashed by the right. The military apparatus justifies the violations of
basic human rights of Muslim detainees at Guantanamo and in Iraq by playing
on public anxiety about terrorism. Muslims aren’t people, they are
terrorists, and they don’t deserve to be treated as humans. And, anyone who
disagrees is unpatriotic and unAmerican. Even woman are still considered an
“other” that the party must control by denying us the right to do what we
choose with our own bodies, by not trusting us to make our own decisions with
regard to our reproductive organs. Yes, some people are more equal than
others, it seems.
Each day our civil liberties are eroded more and more, while the Bush
propaganda machine spins and panders to the lowest common denominator, in
many cases out and out lying to the American public to suit their ends. The
White House recently fought tooth and nail for Congress to extend the Patriot
Act, an act which by definition gives the federal government exhaustive
powers of surveillance in direct conflict with civil liberties guaranteed to
all Americans. The supposedly liberal media now acts as a propaganda machine
for the administration, failing to report such important stories as the
Downing Street memo in which British lawmakers sought to find a way to
justify the invasion of Iraq to the British public. Meanwhile, the Republican
Party and the Bush administration fabricate weapons of.JPG) mass destruction and spoon-feed them to the
American public through once-reputable media outlets, while weakening the
checks and balances designed to keep power in balance at the federal level by
commandeering the congressional committee system designed to approve
presidential judicial appointments and limiting the power of the opposition
to block judicial appointments by filibuster. Rules and practices that have
been in place from the beginning of our more perfect union are now discarded
to suit the agenda of a handful of powerful politicians.
With each of these manipulations the United States slides a bit closer to
being ruled by the Republican Party. We are once again on the verge of the
very totalitarianism that Orwell so keenly observed in fascism, Nazism and
communism, wherein the party controls all and the media is nothing more than
a thinly veiled propaganda machine, wherein the government continually
invades the lives of its citizens without regard to laws and rights
established by the constitution, wherein we walk around in fear of being
deemed unpatriotic enemies of the state if we stand in opposition to the
party agenda, if we use the voice guaranteed to us under the First Amendment.
These are dangerous times we live in, not only because of the threat of
terrorism against U.S. citizens but because of the very real threat against
civil liberties posed by our own government. It is easy to give up a few
rights in the name of safety and security, but how much security do we really
gain when the government continues to intrude further into our homes and our
personal lives in the name of weeding out terrorist sympathizers, when they
tell us what we may and may not do with our bodies, when they tell us whom we
can and cannot marry? Yes, all white heterosexual Protestant men of “good”
morals and sufficient income are created equal. For the rest of us, these are
strange days indeed.
Artwork:
Undersecretary
of Absolution by Tom Block (top, left); Man of God (Voting Bloc) by
Tom Block (bottom, right).
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