Most excellent DU front page article today!

[chiburb]

Called "Safety First, here's a snip:

All the same, it would appear that one thing they do not feel confident about being able to control is the population of an English-speaking industrialized nation which still enjoys a few civil rights and liberties. Because there again, the important thing to protect from their point of view is not the president himself, but the fiction of his universal power and popularity. And in a free country, the only way to protect that fiction is to clear a space around Bush from which everything but adoration is excluded. And in a free country with an actual free press, protecting Bush's image from the natural consequences of his actions requires the constant attentions of 14,000 cops.

The bottom line is this, folks: Bush's handlers feel that he is safer on a military base in the middle of a bloody war zone than he is walking the public streets of a free city. And this is a problem, because it suggests that free cities - and free citizens - are a serious threat to the Bush they really care about protecting. Which suggests that from Rove's point of view, turning all of America into a bloody war zone would actually be preferable to leaving it free. Because it's only once they're surrounded by heavily armed soldiers and being filmed by a compliant and coerced state-controlled media that Bush and his crew feel truly safe.

Read the rest here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/plaidder/03/06.html

[opihimoimoi]

1. Makes perfect sense to me

A wonderful article.

More, please.

[chiburb]

2. Can you violate copyright rules in/on DU?

I mean, if an article is ON DU, can you use more than 4 graphs?

A great snip from same piece:

But Plaidder, I hear you say. This is all very well, but the truth is I'm still scared. I'm not over 9/11. The fact that not a day goes by without news of several nasty bombings in the Middle East terrifies me. The Iraq war has set off a global wave of terrorism and it is impossible to believe that it will not crash on American shores at some point. If not when, isn't that what they keep telling us? So if piling on more cops and guns and barricading ourselves into smaller and smaller spaces isn't going to protect us, what will?

Well, I can give you my answer, but I know you're not gonna like it.

We're human beings. We're mortal. So are all the people we love. And that means that we are all always in terrible danger, all the time. As long as you are inside a mortal body or you love anyone who is, you are not safe. I could be killed any day of my life out on the highway. My partner could die any day of her life in a train wreck. Neighbors of ours just lost their 20 year old son - not to a terrorist attack on US soil or to fighting in Iraq, but to a sudden and unexpected infection that no one seemed able to control. Everything that matters to us is fragile and vulnerable and made to be lost. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that any of us can do to change that.

So vulnerability is the price of freedom; but it's more than that. It's the price of love. It's the price of humanity. It's the price of compassion and sympathy. Since 9/11, what the crowd in charge has been doing is trying to convince us that it's too high a price. Instead of being vulnerable, we have to be secure. And that has meant denying our kinship with the people of the world, denying our feelings of compassion toward the people we are trampling in our panic, denying our own need for light and air and room to move. I am tired of watching the world burn, and I have decided that if the world Bush's team is forging is 'safe,' then I would really prefer danger.

[Cronus Protagonist]

3. Plaid Adder is tops with me

She's always right on the money.

LICK BUSH Buttons, Stickers & Magnets

[in_cog_ni_to]

4. That was a great read, Plaid!

When was the last time the squatter was out, walking the streets, shaking hands with his admirers? NEVER! The only time you see him is in front of INVITED guests, speaking to RW think tanks, staged press conferences, fund-raisers or military bases where they HAVE to be nice to him. He is truly a gutless wonder and his handlers do prefer a police state to keep their puppet safe. One more example of the coming of martial law if we don't stop them. :(

[chiburb]

5. Kickeroo... n/t

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[Plaid Adder]

6. Thanks, chiburb! Wanna be my literary agent?

You do a better job of promoting me than the two I've already fired ever did...

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[chiburb]

7. Fyi...

I sent today's column to Morford cuz I thought he'd enjoy it, and I sent your 1st one to Mike Miner at the Chi. Reader cuz I think your stuff is worthy of the front page there.
Just sharing a treasure with the world!

[Plaid Adder]

9. Holy shit, chiburb, you ARE my literary agent!

From now on, you get 15% of everything DU pays me!

Which is of course nothing,

The Plaid Adder

[chiburb]

8. For the lunch crowd....n/t

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