Brave Third World

remember these cynical observations, from back in 2000? when george and his jack-booted republican thugs had just stolen their first election?

1. Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the third world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of that nation's secret police (CIA).

2. Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won based on some colonial holdover (electoral college) from the nation's past.

3. Imagine that the self-declared winner's 'victory' turned on disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother.

4. Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district heavily favoring the self‑declared winner's opponent, led thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate.

5. Imagine that members of that nation's most despised caste, fearing for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in near‑universal opposition to the self‑declared winner's candidacy.

6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most‑despised caste were intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under the authority of the self‑declared winner's brother.

7. Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and that the self-declared winner's 'lead' was only 300 votes. Fewer, certainly, than the vote counting machines' margin of error.

8. Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district.

9. Imagine that the self‑declared winner was himself the governor of a major province, which had the worst human rights record of any province in his nation and which actually led the nation in executions.

10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions on the high court of that nation.

None of us would deem such an election to be representative of anything other than the self‑declared winner's will‑to‑power. All of us, I imagine, would wearily turn the page thinking that it was another sad tale of pitiful pre- or anti-democracy peoples in some strange elsewhere.

maybe this triggered the association, although it's one i've made often enough, that the united states is really a fourth-rate third-world country ..... i mean, just add that to the quotidien rich getting richer, poor getting poorer, and the middle class taking it in the shorts; add that to the corruption of the republican party, their kleptocratic approach to nepotism and cronyism, the awarding and rewarding of "loyal bushies," at the expense, the punishment and ostracism of competent, independent, qualified individuals ..... add that to the "no bid contracts" awarded to connected corporations like halliburton and kbr who, oddly enough, were headed by the man who is now the vice-president .... or is that president of vice?

think about the stacking of the courts, up to and including the supreme court ..... thank about the manoeuvering and machinations by which this regime now spies on its citizens, monitoring their mail and telephones and internet traffic; their bank accounts, their spending patterns, their yada yada yada yada yada ..... and then it came to me that, what better way to distract the placid multitudes from thinking about how badly they're being fucked than .... well, by golly .... than by starting a war!

boy, if that don't take yore mind off'n yore prollems, i cain't think of nary a thang that might .....

so i started to think about zimbabwe and mugabe, and how alike to george bush mugabe is ..... well, i know that a woman's life expectancy hasn't quite plummeted to thirty-four years from sixty-three in ten short years, as it has in zimbabwe, but we'll probably get close if that scumbag bush gets to repeal roe v. wade and shift birth control to alleyways or tijuana once again ....

maybe it was george's delusional desire to go to mars, a few short years ago .... whatever happened to that? and what can i do to get him on his way? i know the martians are yearning to breathe free, and george is the man to help 'em, just like he's done for the eye-rakis .... or like we done did to the haitians and the lebanese and the guatemalans and the hondurans and the mess'cans and the filipinos 'n' the ..... gosh, we done did he'p so many peeple drink the air of freedom i cain't hardly 'member 'em all ......

maybe it was bill frist, a doctor and the party leader of our homeland, sayin' that tears 'n' sweat spread aids ..... mugabe denies the existence of aids, or maintains that western medicine has no efficacy in its treatment ..... as far as that goes, he may not be too far off the mark; maybe shaking a leopard balls rattle at someone works about as well as antiretroviral medications, especially when they're unaffordable and insurance doesn't cover treatment ..... kind of like that republican saint, ronald reagan, who somehow managed to ignore a mysterious disease that killed tens of thousands of people before his aides woke him up and told him that people were dying and, even if they weren't contributors to the rnc, maybe he should mention it, even if just in passing ......

1984 came and went over twenty years ago; how long can you sell yourself as the party of smaller government and personal freedom as you expand governmental powers and diminish freedoms of individuals? a long, long time, i dare say; the american sheeple have long been conditioned to respond to fear and insecurity, starting with anxieties related to bad breath or "ring around the collar" or "underarm alarm" that went hand-in-hand with fear of "others," the dark-complected, the 'foreign," those speaking another language, wearing different clothes, yada yada yada yada ..... now all governmental depredations are sanctioned under the aegis of "security," and security is always a paramount concern in a time of war ......

we don't have a stellar track record with our wars ...... we kicked a lot of ass in world war two and then we got a little shaky: korea didn't turn out all that well, and neither did vietnam ..... don't tell me about our glorious victories in haiti or granada; taking lunch money from kindergartners doesn't count as being victorious ..... help me understand why we're still fighting "the war on drugs," and why cocaine is cheaper and easier to get than ever, or why the afghanis are having another bumper crop of opium, and help me understand why we capitulated in "the war on poverty ....."

i guess we'll be 'fighting' "the war on terror" for a long time to come, wouldn't you say?

and i guess that means you'd better get used to having the fbi up your ass, after the christians make room for them .....

third world mentalities, third world visions ..... they prevail, and washington d.c. has become jonestown ..... john mccain, that straight-talkin', straight-shootin' torture survivor who condones torcher's been to baghdad, where he went shoppin' 'cause things're much better over there than they ever beed; did he have a 10% off coupon for baghdad macy's? ..... he paid no attention to the five helicopters, his bulletproof kevlar body armor, and the one hundred grunts that were carrying his purchases; what is this man drinking? what flavor kool-aid is this? i altered my perceptions for years, but i never took anything strong enough to make me that deluded, or that big an asshole ..... this man is clear proof that the 'war on drugs' isn't working; why should the 'war on terror' be any more successful?

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