Ahh, but we have so much to enjoy in the current scene. It's better than General Hospital. In fact, it is sort of like a general hospital … where everybody is nuts. Come one, come all, see it now … while laughing at your leaders is still legal.
The funny hypocrisy of cutting off food, health, housing, day care support, resources to schools for living children, while de-funding international family planning because it doesn't place the survival of the unborn before that of the parents.
Scene two, rounding up and deporting American citizens and others legally here, holding people with no charge, attorney, or due process, conducting surveillance on anybody defined as suspicious (guilty until proven innocent), collecting private information on children through their schools (no child left un-recruited), accusing any dissenters or critics of supporting terrorism … while claiming to be fighting for democracy and freedom!
The circus of a free people having to vaccinate themselves against being called unpatriotic, by saying they don't like Hussein or don't approve of terrorism, every time they merely question what their government is doing. "Well, I think 9/11 was bad, but why did they do that, anyway …" Who thinks 9/11 was good, besides Al Qaeda?
The hilarious display of pious shock in firing Trent Lott from his majority leader post, then attempting to pack the courts with the likes of Pickering, Estrada, Owen, etc., opposing affirmative action, overturning Title IX, attempting to turn public funds over to discriminatory organizations otherwise known as 'faith-based', and quietly placing Lott in charge of Rules and Procedures.
The humorous notion of a nuclear first strike. Where's my duct tape? How can any sober person be talking about this?
The spectacle of trying to induce welfarees to get married while making sure gays can't.
The amusing fiscal contortions of delivering on the promised redistribution of public moneys to private coffers while trying to feed a bloated Pentagon, pay for war, and bribe countries reluctant to go along with it otherwise (meanwhile exacerbating environmental, educational, and social problems that will be extremely costly for our children to correct).
David Hager for the Reproductive Health Committee of the FDA - a doctor who believes in prayer as the best form of birth control! What a laugh - those silly women who don't know what's good for them!
And in another scene that will tickle your funny bone, let's leave the other human rights abuser governments (Nigeria, India, China, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Myanmar … ) unchecked as long as they let the corporations in to rip open new markets and grab resources (or if they don't have anything we want) while attacking one that coincidentally doesn't want to share the wealth.
The knee-slapper of commercializing the flag and 'patriotic' slogans such as United We Stand. Come to our bank for a loan, and, by the way, United We Stand! Let's plaster the flag on our car, it's just like any of those great one-liners ("S--- happens"), advertising slogans, or team totems we love to look at on people's cars. We'll use our national symbol to make a buck by putting it on our store! Nothing is really sacred, even though we're holier than thou. Why, if anybody tries to say God doesn't belong in the Pledge of Allegiance, we've got Dr. Pepper to print it on the can, "… under God," by gum.
The riotous vision of a dry (maybe) drunk, cocaine-addled president who is NEVER questioned by the press regarding his substance abuse history or police record, while his predecessor was pilloried in the media for not inhaling.
And the Democrats are always good for a chuckle. They spend Bush's first two years sucking on his kneecaps while he puts theocrats in charge of Justice and issues tax cuts to the rich, especially after 9/11 putting up no struggle against Patriot I or Fatherland Security or nepotistic appointments or all-power to the executive branch or further de-regulation of corporate monopoly … then they don't win the mid-term elections, and think it means they should keep doing the same thing, only suck somewhere else.
The soap opera of the 2000 election - a sudden reversal of fortunes in a state run by a candidate's brother, hanky-panky at the polls presided over by a partisan state official who halts the vote counting (and later mysteriously gets elected to Congress), the craven opponent concedes, the Supremes declare their candidate a winner! If it happened in Gabon, everyone would be saying, well, what can you expect in a third world country? And I just heard that the new voting machines that all the states are buying are manufactured by two companies owned by Republicans … oh, no problem, business as usual. I must be paranoid to think that the lack of exit poll data from the 2002 elections is related to anything.
And what about the monkeyshines of those funny corporate crooks, uh, CEOs? I still remember the ouch! delivered by the energy scam, the stock option scandal, the check kiting or whatever other accounting games went on, but there must be something wrong with me, because no one else does.
Blaming forest fires on environmentalism, and using the fires as an excuse to dig into the parks and public lands for more timber. Haha! Frightening little consumers about the energy crisis so as to rip into those reserves in the ANWR and de-stabilize Venezuela, but doing nothing about developing non-fossil energy sources.
And global warming? No such thing, and we've got a brand new Bush-appointed pro-Chevron scientist heading up the IGCC (not sure of this acronym) who'll say so, (replacing the bad old one who said global warming was factual).
The ole switcheroo - warlordism isn't terrorism (if it's 'our' warlords), and religious fanaticism isn't fundamentalism (if it's 'our' religious fanatics), and seizing other people's land or toppling their governments by force isn't imperialism (if it's us or our buddies doing it). And who's Osama? The Taliban? Switch those faces fast, the public's getting restless. Who's next, Kim? Chavez? Fidel?
Changing the reasons for the war - justification of the day - is it human rights abuses? - oh, that didn't work - threatening neighbors? hmm, not really true - plotting with terrorists or Al Qaeda? too bad, no evidence - weapons of mass destruction? uh oh, lots of people have 'em - non-cooperation with Security Council Resolution? guess who's the big violator here - nothing seems to work, but who cares, it's a shell game, anyway.
While persuading, intimidating, bribing, or extorting other countries' cooperation, going through the charade at the U.N., we undermine or ignore every sort of multi-lateral and international effort - nuclear non-proliferation, environmental protection, the international criminal court, human rights declaration, child labor, family planning - and sow discord in regional organizations such as the EU and NATO. Those funny Europeans at each other's throats.
And then there's the greatest guffaw of them all - the sober, deliberate discussion of the possibility of using nuclear weapons - hoohaw! What a laugh. What are they smoking?
Have fun while you can, I say, because time's a-wastin' and imagine how not funny the world will be after six more years of this stuff.