Washblog

The nuts and Dolts of America's downfall
        By Mark Drolette
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Oct  4, 2006, 02:13

[Excerpt]

"Who cares about `details' when our American way of life is threatened??" Dolt exclaimed, once again proving he never found an unrelated tangent he didn't like.

"I don't know, Dolt, maybe it should be threatened."

"Huh?"

"Well, with our long record of bombing whomever we feel obstructs our `right' to consume as much of the planet's resources we desire;

eviscerated civil liberties;

fixed elections;

super-galactic consumer and national debt;

a record trade imbalance;

an endemic, distracting addiction to shopping;

a poisoned environment;

bursting prisons;

a racist drug war;

wacko religious fundamentalism;

a dismal educational system;

enflamed xenophobia;

rampant sexism;

45 million Americans without health care;

oppression of labor;

and a government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations,

maybe our cherished way of life could use a little upsetting."

"Where do you get all this stuff?" Dolt demanded. "It's like we're living on different planets."

What a delightful I image, I thought.

"Besides," he said snarkily, "it's pretty funny how I never hear any of this on TV."

"Hel-lo! Have you not heard a word I've said?" I asked.

"I only listen if it's important," Dolt spat.

"Then listen to this:

you and your fellow good Germans continuously and willingly expose yourselves to, essentially, state-run media that spew ridiculous, non-stop lies

like: Clinton did nothing while Bush has done everything to protect America;

all Muslims are jihadists whose sole aim is to squelch your right to watch American Idol while you gorge yourself on toxic food and charge more useless crap from QVC;

the gutting of the Constitution is actually a good thing designed to, Orwellian-like, protect your liberties while simultaneously sending them down the crapper;

Lebanon and Gaza had it coming while tiny, oppressed Israel, the recipient of three billion U.S. dollars annually that help fund the world's fourth-largest military, is a democratic oasis simply defending itself against swarthy bad people

rather than a terrorist apartheid state whose main lobby, AIPAC, has both a stranglehold on American foreign policy and ensured anyone daring to criticize the Israeli government's inhumanity is automatically slandered as a Jew hater;

and on and on and on."

"Now, wait a -- ," Dolt began.

"No, you wait," I said. "I'm not done."

For once, he was silent.

"And so all of this," I said, "all of it, is spun and sanitized and sexed-up and spoon-fed in sensationalistic and sugarcoated sound bites to you and your fellow phony patriots,

assuring you it's all part of a grand scheme to keep you safe from some scary plan of world domination by `Islamofascists' that exists only in your masters' heads.

"You buy the lies and then, worse, spread them, repeating them until they've become gospel,

thereby making possible both the transformation of a land that once held forth truly lofty ideals into a neo-feudalistic, murderous rogue nation,

and the perpetuation of catastrophic atrocities like Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, and next, Iran, where your heroes fully intend, soon, to use nuclear weapons."

Dolt had remained silent and either had suffered a stroke or was still searching for his next Bushism. At last, he spoke:

"Whatever. You believe what you want to believe, Mark. The fact is, there really are people in the world who seek to obliterate America, and it's just like the president says: we fight them there, or fight them over here."

"Well, Dolt," I answered, "I'll concede one point: America does have mortal enemies.

But you're a little late. Had you taken but a moment to pry yourself away from the electronic doping tube to look around, maybe you'd have noticed millions of them have already been spread throughout this country for quite some time."

Panic creased his face.

"Really?? No! Where are they?"

"I'm looking at one."

Amen!
Now I feel better ... at least this morning.

It's the first day of my vacation ...
guess I'll go out, mow the lawn, work on the brick wall in the yard and help Lietta plant bulbs.

Naw ... that's boring stuff. I think I'll go downstairs and see what race is on and which college teams are playing on TV today.