Sound Off: State of the Union Kabuki

Truthout has a story by Cindy Sheehan on 'What Really Happened' when she was forcibly removed from the gallery and arrested shortly before Bush rambled through his latest pack of lies during last night's State of the Union address. This is not America, is it? Well, it's Bush's America anyway.

Click for an mp3 of Cindy Sheehan describing her arrest and her feelings about it.

I wonder when enough will be enough and politicos and citizens alike will wake up and take the drastic actions needed to rip away the masks of respectability from the neo-con vultures, revealing for all to see their grotesque, hypocritical, dishonest, corrupt, bigoted, venal, greedy and ultimately anti-American pathologies.

Let's call a spade a spade. People don't like to say this out loud, in public, but you know it has real "resonance," as they say in the focus groups. The origins of the neo-conservative "movement" lie in hatred, bigotry, repression, suppression, imperialism, corporatism, militarism and anti-democratic impulses. The people behind the BushCo curtain hate the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, privacy, freedom, blacks, browns, tans, gays, immigrants, foreigners, uppity women, poor people, social justice, economic fairness, environmentalism, humanism, charity, free speech, grassroots activism and any culture that isn't entirely consumerist and materialistic. They hate science and intellectual openness. They hate freedom and pleasure and sex. And they really hate anyone who acts freely, thinks critically, experiences pleasure without guilt or thinks sex is natural, not evil. They love war and torture, punishment and control, lockstep and order, power and manipulation, bribery and lies, shock and awe.

Definitions:

Fascist: A reactionary or dictatorial person

Fascism: A political theory advocating an authoritarian hierarchical government (as opposed to democracy or liberalism). A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Project For the Old American Century explores the 14 points of fascism as delineated by Laurence Britt in his article, "Fascism Anyone?"

Is it just me, or was there an eerie, scary energy in the chamber last night? When the camera panned around the hall, we kept commenting that way too many in the audience looked like warlocks, vultures, vampires, pod people or whatever you'd call people so glossed up with fake facades that they look inhuman, alien. Grey skin tones. Waxy smiles. Poorly dyed hair. Bizarre facial expressions and body language. Way too many creaky space cadets thinking it's still the 20th century. Trained seals flapping their flippers on command.

I had a truly surreal and Orwellian experience hearing Bush brazenly promoting issues he'd fought against tooth and nail for his entire presidency. To hear him speak about America's addiction to oil was almost too much to bear. Yeah George, we've been trying to get you to do something about that for years now. In response you launched an illegal invasion of Iraq, drooling for control of more, more, more.

He managed to include one sentence about those suffering the aftermath of his botched response to Hurricane Katrina. I guess he wanted to toss at least one crumb to the "compassionate conservatives" in his midst. No moment of silence for the troops -- dead, delimbed or PTSDed, or for the "collateral damage." No mention of the suffering of the Christian Science Monitor reporter still held hostage in Iraq. No reference to the ABC News people who nearly had their heads blown off in the war zone. No admitting his tax cuts and prescription drug scam and miltaristic adventuring and "free" trade policies and lost jobs will result in us owing the Chinese at least two trillion dollars when all is said and done.

Oh, he cares about jobs and health care and energy efficiency and education and poor people and Coretta Scott King and peace and democracy and veterans and freedom and justice. Is there any president who has done less to promote these things or more to devolve our culture into a greedy, oily, selfish, imperialistic brew? I can't come up with a name.

I'm sure some will say I'm off the deep end, in tin-foil hat territory. Exaggerating. Misguided. Overly dramatic. Maybe. But didn't watching that coldly calculated display of choreographed kabuki make a chill run up your spine? It can't be just me, can it? Apparently this guy, for one, agrees with me. How about you?

I have a dream that one day Democrats will file into a Bush kabuki event and turn their backs to the stage for the entire speech. I have a dream that one day Democrats will refuse to follow the SOTU script, decline to clap and call Bush out on on his dishonesty, loudly, every time he lies. I have a dream that one day America will wake up to the constitutional and planetary crisis at hand and step outside the lines to confront our demons. But then, I've always been a dreamer --Barbara Wold

PS: Does this remind you of the rants you hear on right-wing radio? Good. I think we should start responding in kind. Time to take the gloves off.

Sound Off is a regular feature of the blog that allows individuals to voice their personal views on timely issues and controversies. Click on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand side of the page if you'd like to submit your own Sound Off.