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The
America I Live In: Notes for the Campaign
March
3, 2004
By Bernard Weiner, The
Crisis Papers
 This
is the America I live in.
A normal, average citizen, I unlock the front door and enter
my home. I don't know if anyone has entered surreptitiously
- perhaps a sneak-and-peek job by Ashcroft's black-bag boys.
I boot up my computer to go online. I don't know if my email
is being monitored, if my keystrokes are being recorded.
I call my attorney, about a family matter. I don't know
if communication with my lawyer, previously regarded as "confidential,"
is being listened to. (This, and the other examples above,
and many below, flow from the Bush-Ashcroft "USA Patriot Act.")
I visit my physician, and learn later that my employer found
out about a chronic condition I had and laid me off, to keep
his insurance costs down. The doctor-patient confidentiality
I thought existed is now breachable by government agencies
in cahoots with insurance companies.
This is the America I live in.
I learn about U.S. citizens who have been thrown into military
custody, with no access to the judicial system, kept uncharged
for however long Ashcroft and Bush decide to hold them as
somehow connected to "terrorists."
I know of American citizens, active in opposition to the
war in Iraq, who have been kept off commercial airlines.
Hundreds of citizens of other countries are rounded up as
suspected terrorists and sent to a prison camp run by our
government; they can rot there for years with no charges and
with no regularized access to the judicial process. To avoid
having to conform to international codes of conduct, the detainees
are not designated by the Administration as prisoners-of-war.
I hear Ashcroft telling Congress that those who raise questions
about the government's harsh police tactics are giving "aid
and comfort" to terrorists.
This is the America I live in.
In the daily newspaper, and online, I keep running into
stories about plans for future U.S. wars against other nations
- Syria, Iran and Cuba are most often mentioned - after the
November election, should Bush win. Moves already have started
to revive the military draft.
I read about GOP groups sending out doctored photos of John
Kerry, and passing on false rumors, based apparently on nothing
but partisan malice, about his private life.
The Bush Administration publicly revealed the name of a
covert CIA agent, apparently in retaliation for her husband
telling the truth about forged documents that were used to
justify a WMD lie. Her life is put at risk, her career is
in tatters, her contacts abroad are in danger. Revealing her
name is a felony, but the Chief Executive does nothing.
This is the America I live in.
I will be voting in my state's primary balloting and then,
of course, in November's general election. There are not adequate
safeguards against tampering with touch-screen computer-voting
machines (it's been demonstrated that they can be hacked into
easily and the tallies manipulated, with nobody ever knowing),
and there is no paper trail being used to verify the votes
on most of those machines. The proprietary software inside
those computer-voting machines are controlled mainly by three
companies, one of which is partially owned by a Republican
senator and the others by avowed Republican supporters.
Traditionally, when America (or any other country) suffers
a major civil trauma, investigations are initiated almost
immediately to find out what happened and why, witnesses are
placed under oath, and those responsible are fired, or resign,
or are indicted for their malfeasance. More than 3000 persons
died in the September 11 tragedies, but the Bush Administration
did everything possible to forestall an independent investigation
about pre-9/11 knowledge, nobody has been placed under oath,
and the Administration is continuing to stonewall and cover-up
today. Whatever it is they are trying to hide must be very
very embarrassing - or criminal.
All sorts of outrageous lies and distortions were utilized
by the Administration to get Congress and the American people
to approve Bush&Co.'s war in Iraq - the plans for which were
approved by mid-2002. All those untruths, exaggerations and
manipulations are evident for all to see these days - which
explains why, in current polls, the first adjective that comes
to the minds of many citizens when pollsters ask what they
think of Bush is "liar."
This is the America I live in.
The Bush Administration promised it would be dedicated stewards
for our air and water, but, as with virtually every other
environmental decision, has given in to whatever rollbacks
in environmental protection are desired by the polluting industries.
More arsenic in the water, more industrial sludge in the rivers,
more pollutants in the air, whatever. And when scientists
raise questions about the Administration's environmental or
global-warming policies, they are treated as the enemy - unless
the scientific judgment conforms to the Administration's political
agenda.
Bush claims to care deeply for our soldiers and veterans,
but he sends our young men and women to Iraq with the wrong
post-war battle plan - turning them into sitting ducks in
a shooting gallery - and without the proper body armor and
armored vehicles that would save their lives in the guerrilla
battle being waged. And he has provided no troops to guard
Saddam's huge ammo dumps around the country; these are the
same dumps that are scavenged nightly for armaments to make
bombs that blow up our troops. U.S. soldiers, poorly paid
in any case, were expected to pay for their meals while in
hospital, and veterans benefits are cut back home.
The commander-in-chief apparently did not complete his military
service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War, and
appears to have gone AWOL for at least a half-year, maybe
more. At first, he claimed there are no records, trust him,
he fufilled his responsibility, the proof being that he received
an honorable discharge. When the public didn't buy that, he
dumped hundreds of pages of records, which showed nothing
conclusive. (His records and arrest sheet reportedly were
"cleansed" of anything embarrassing before he ran for public
office.) He's had years to remember and contact members of
his Alabama Guard unit, to verify his claim that he showed
up, but he has no names to suggest, and nobody believable
has come forward. But Bush is quite happy to play dress-up
soldier, and to send young men and women to fight and die
and kill in Iraq and elsewhere.
The Bush Administration doesn't include the costs of war
in Iraq in the defense budget; instead, it comes to Congress
for "emergency" appropriations - $50 billion here, $87 billion
there - to pay for that war-of-choice, and then browbeats
legislators into passing those requests in the guise of "supporting
the troops." (Only a share of those funds "support the troops";
the fat slice goes to "reconstruction," meaning, in practice,
to huge conglomerates like Bechtel and Halliburton.) Those
who don't vote for those bills know they will be smeared with
the "unpatriotic" brush.
All those billions for the Iraq adventure are draining and
bankrupting the national treasury, building up half a trillion
dollar deficit this year (and, it is estimated, many trillions
more in next seven years) that will have to be paid for somehow
- but not by the wealthiest in our society, who are receiving
huge tax cuts. No, that bill is being paid for by the poor
and middle-class, whose public services are being cut left
and right, and whose children and grandchildren will have
to pay through the nose just to maintain the interest payments
on that humongous debt.
This is the America I live in.
A good share of the elderly, and soon-to-be-elderly, in
this country often have to face the excrutiating choice of
paying the rent or buying their required medicines. The Bush
Administration, knowing something had to be done before the
election, concocted a half-baked Medicare drug-scheme that
would permit the insurance and pharmaceutical companies to
make out like bandits at the expense of true reform and aid.
(Seniors no longer will be permitted to purchase those drugs
legally in foreign countries, at a discount; the Medicare
administration could get the drugs at a much cheaper rate
if it negotiated with the pharmaceutical companies to do so,
but that is now outlawed.)
Middle-class workers have paid into the Social Security
system for decades, expecting to receive their Social Security
checks as promised to help them through their retirement years.
Now, as the Baby Boomers are about to reach retirement age,
there is serious talk of cutting back on those promised payments
in order to help cover the gap in income caused by the Bush
Administration's wars and tax-cuts for the wealthy.
To distract us from examining Bush&Co.'s appalling record
of mistakes, mismanagement, imcompetence, and the ramifications
of its reckless foreign adventurism and greed-oriented domestic
policy, it has become so desperate that it's chosen homosexuals
as its designated scapegoat for all that ails us in this nation.
If Bush&Co. have their way, gays will be written into an amended
Constitution as second-class citizens, something that hasn't
occurred since slavery days.
This is the America I live in.
There Is Another Country I Live In
In this country, citizens cherish the Constitutional protections
afforded everyone, even those we may abhor. Our country does
not attack other nations as a choice of geopolitical strategy,
but only as a last resort in self-defense. The government
really feels for its citizens and their daily dilemmas in
getting through life, including the need for them to have
safe, well-paying employment and decent health-care. The administration
does not turn over pollution-control to the polluters, does
not privatize away its public services, does not favor the
wealthy corporate class in its tax policies. The government
does not attempt to alter the Constitution to permit bias
to be written into law. The leaders do not use divisiveness
to push us apart but rally us to be helpful and tolerant and
inclusive. The government does not attempt to keep its citizens
in a constant state of fright. Teachers are permitted to teach
and inspire, instead of mostly programming students for fact-based
test-taking. Our foreign policy is developed in concert with
our allies rather than as a sole, swaggering superpower bully
enforcing its way around the globe.
That is the America I used to live in. That is the America
I still want to live in. That is the America it is still possible
to live in, 9/11 or not, a new pre-election terror attack
or not.
The American people finally are starting to focus on the
lies, duplicity, greed, arrogance, incompetence and general
mean-spiritedness of Bush and his cohorts. They are not doing
so just because of an upcoming election, but because those
policies are doing great damage to each of us each day - to
the economy, to our jobs and job-security, to our health care,
to our air we breathe and water we drink, to our crumbling
infrastructure, to our declining and disappearing public services,
to our inadequate school systems, to our sense of ourselves
as a moral, forward-looking nation.
Beware of Cornered Beasts
Bush's "re-elect" numbers are plummeting, his performance
ratings are falling, his popularity is sinking. The arrogant
hubris that got him to the top, and that so flummoxed his
opposition for so long, is coming home to roost. He and his
cronies have been found out, and they'll be bounced out -
and few will mourn their going from power, not even many true
conservatives, horrified at how their party has been hijacked
by greedy, power-hungry neo-cons, who have turned the Administration
into a take-the-money-and-run system and into a huge, Big
Brotherish police-state enterprise.
But cornered snakes are the most dangerous. One can only
guess at the dirty tricks and surprises that Karl Rove and
his operatives have in store for the Democratic nominee, and
for us as a people. But those sleazy tactics may not work
as well this time. At last, Bush and his neo-con friends are
wounded, and may, through the determined and persistent opposition
of an aroused public, be brought down.
But these guys are not going to go easily. They fought like
tigers to get installed in power, and they will fight with
every weapon, legit or criminal, in their arsenal. That is
why it is incumbent on each of us - liberal, conservative,
moderate, independent, libertarian - to gear up, now, to help
defeat the Bush&Co. crowd in November. (This assumes that
in the wake of a new terrorist attack, any Bush attempt to
impose martial law on the country - "postponing" the election
until the "war on terror" is concluded - will be successfully
resisted.)
Holding One's Nose
That means, if necessary, our willingness to vote for the
Democratic candidate, even if we don't agree with certain
aspects of his program. That means sending money to, and volunteering
time for, whomever the Dem candidate turns out to be. That
means registering as many new voters as possible in the next
few months. That means pressuring the election officials in
our various states and counties to disallow touch-screen computer
voting until or if the software problems can be made transparent
and are fixed - and until alternative machines can be purchased
that provide a paper trail for verification. That means talking
to friends and neighbors and colleagues about the dire situation
in which we find ourselves under Bush - and, if he were to
win, the even more egregious things that will transpire after
the election - and the absolute need to change course.
Our country finds itself in one of those periods when the
shadow forces have emerged to take us back to darker, more
authoritarian and rigid times. But shafts of light are beginning
to pour through more and more cracks in the Bush&Co. edifice.
The force of light is coalescing across the country, and,
if we do our job correctly, will aid in swinging history's
pendulum away from the shadow world into a new dawn of hope
and progress.
Always, our eyes have to remain on the prize: to break the
back and momentum of the Bush&Co. juggernaut. Once they are
out of the White House, we can work to undo all the damage
they have done (and are doing right now) and set about to
push for true reforms and progressive programs. We will re-light
the lamps of righteousness, and illuminate the path to a better
country for all.
What you are willing to do will depend on which vision of
America you favor. Which America do you want to live in?
Let's get to work.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught government & international
relations at various colleges, served as a writer/editor with
the San Francisco Chronicle for 19 years, and currently co-edits
The
Crisis Papers
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