posted on November 24, 2002 02:47:33 AM new
Do you remember the scene in Back to the Future II, where Michael Fox's character goes ahead in time to his hometown to find that it has followed a warped and awful alternative path? Instead of the quaint all-American town where life is good, it has become a sleazy corporate realm of neon lights, wheeler dealers, and ruthless real estate sharks. The good, kindly simple folk Fox hoped to find have all been replaced with sleazeroti. Fox staggers through the night, feeling as if he had entered a waking nightmare, filled with an awful fear and loathing.
Well, I know just how Fox's character felt — because that's how I feel about America under the Bush regime. It's like an Orson Wells version of Back to the Future Part II. Except you can't hit stop and rewind and return it in disgust to Blockbuster. You cannot go back in time and change the course of events so America is transformed into a gentler, kinder — hell, saner! — land free of Bushes, Rumsfelds, Rices, Cheneys and their corporate and religious wacko cast of thousands?
The thing that gets me most of all is the way everyone — even seemingly rational folk — seems to be playing along with this pack of unmedicated paranoid schizophrenics with religious delusions and their corporate con artist enablers. When I see the nightly news discussing the latest Bush doings and statements with such intense seriousness, I am filled with disbelief. The same when I hear allegedly mentally competent Congressfolk acting as if this man and his followers are to be respected and treated with great deference and followed in all things. It is as unreal as if they trucked in the clowns from the local Ringling Bros Circus, propped them up in the White House and declared that as of that moment, they are in charge of everything, including the national treasury and arsenal. Not only that, but Congress is directed to give the clowns anything — anything and everything — they want, including their first born and the keys to their own houses, cars, and safety deposit boxes. From that day on, the press comes in and interviews the clowns daily, carefully copying down every syllable of flubadub babbling, zealously recounting how many clowns fit in the VW that day, and recording every funny-horn beep. Not only that, but discussing these profundities day after day, hour after hour on prime time. Should any reporter fail to show due "respect" for the clowns, they are thrown out on their ear. And when anyone says, "Why on God's Green Earth have you turned America over to a pack of Circus Clowns? " everyone shrinks away from the questioner, horror in their faces, making the sign of the cross. This is Twilight Zone or Stephen King material! But it is not United States of America "leader of the Free World" material!!
Actually, in a Twilight Zone episode, some reasonable explanations could be offered for the bizarre behavior of nearly everyone in Washington. For example: They have all had their brains sucked out of their noses during the night and replaced with alien robot amoebas which are remotely controlled by evil alien clowns bent on destroying the world, starting with America. Anytime one of these poor brain-sucked sods — say Dick Gephardt tries to speak up, the alien clowns activate the amoeba and suddenly, the victim is turned into a protozoan who can only say…"Yes, great one ... I agree ... you are right, Oh mighty Bush Clown."
Of course, as in every good science fiction plot, you have your small band of good guys who are smarter than the rest and elude the brain-sucking-amoeba-implantation routine. But then, alas, as in any good science fiction, they are relentlessly stalked by the deadly alien life forms — clowns in this case. One by one, they are picked off. Each time, the untidy demise is a bit different. Remember the scene from Night of the Living Dead when all those zombies rise from the dead and go staggering through the night, rotting arms outstretched and groping menacingly, to the house where the Good Guys are holed up? Well, just replace the zombies with cross-over Republican voters in Georgia staggering off to the polls to vote against Good Guy Cynthia McKinney, holed up in the Capitol, and you get the picture. Another good guy bites the dust.
There are various sci-fi versions of hapless good guy demises in which the victims open the mysterious door/box/package and a cloud of killer bees/face-eating acid/alien larvae all swarm onto their face and sting/burn/eat them dead. Replace the hapless good guys with Tom Daschle and the other Democrats who were targeted in the fall of 2001, the door-box-package with a letter addressed in a crude handwriting, and the bees/acid/larvae with anthrax spores and you have a great alternative sci-fi scenario.
Inevitably, there is always the Good Guy who Warns the Townspeople. In most science fiction, this character always gets whacked before he can scramble back to safety, usually because he's gone back to rescue some straggling mother and/or child. Guess it doesn't take too much imagination to picture a parallel here ...
We mustn't forget the indispensable sci-fi thriller "terrifying realization" scene, in which the person everyone thinks is a solid good guy upon whom all can depend, shocks them all at the 11th hour by having an alien leap out of their chest or by ripping off their human-like mask to reveal a mutant lizard ... Or, how about by being propped before America on Meet the Press, cameras rolling, and, before the horrified eyes of the remaining good guys, revealing they have also succumbed to the brain-sucking-amoeba-implant treatment…"yes, master ... Bush is our king ... he is all wise ... we must follow Bush ... ." This very thing happened just the other Sunday when Nancy Pelosi appeared on Meet the Press. Tim Russert had barely posed the first question before Pelosi got this deer-in-the-headlights look and began to babble about supporting the president ... Yet another one claimed by evil alien clowns!!
What always saves the day in these thrillers is the courageous tenacity of a small core of good guys who persevere, no matter how many writhing tentacles, amoeba-brains, mutant lizards, and zombies are sent to attack them. In the end, they always manage to identify the aliens' fatal weakness ... and it is inevitably something obvious and simple — like the finding that the mutant pods will shrivel and disappear if left in the sun too long, or that alien clowns will die without a supply of pretzels. It's always something so insanely simple .......
The woman answering Tim Russert's questions might have looked like Pelosi but she sounded like a character from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". What had happened to the Congresswoman from California? Gone was the bold, combative, impassioned, progressive politician we've come to know over her 15 years in the House. In her place was a soulless pod person -- an empty shell mouthing the kind of pallid, inoffensive, focus group-tested and cringe-inducing platitudes that have driven two-thirds of the American electorate away from politics -- and a little more than half of the remaining one-third away from the Democratic party.
I couldn't help but wonder: Had Head Pod Terry McAuliffe given her a whiff of some life-sucking spores?
How else to explain, for example, Pelosi's mealy-mouthed response to the all-important question of war with Iraq. The only member of the Democratic leadership to vote against the president's use of force resolution, she had been unequivocal in her opposition to the war. "I have not seen," she said in September following a White House meeting with President Bush, "intelligence to justify the action that the president is suggesting."
But there she was, just 72 hours after her historic ascendance to her new post, vowing to back the president -- even if he decides to unilaterally attack Iraq without U.N. approval. "If our young people are called to duty," she said, "certainly we'll support the action of the president."
Here is the Pelosi position: I'll argue with Bush over this life-and-death matter, but I won't criticize him if he makes a wrong decision that I believe imperils the nation, in fact, I'll endorse it. This is the sort of opposition that a president need not worry about.
Helen
Hello,Snowyegret!, After reading the Science Fiction writer mentioned in your sig line, I'll have to say that I'm disappointed. Front page news wins the weird - spine tingler award. BTW...28 smiley faces belong "down there" Helen
The CIA agents are carrying the currency in denominations of $20, $50, and $100 bills, confirmed two intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The bills are neither crisp nor in sequence so the money can't be traced to the US government, much less CIA headquarters, and jeopardize the safety of local CIA contacts, officials say.
''Someone's protecting'' bin Laden, said Robert Baer"
LOL! Maybe they've been talking to Tom Clancy again.
posted on November 24, 2002 12:02:00 PM new
You all laughed at me a few months ago when I said that there was no second political party. You chided me for saying that there was no Democratic Party; that there are "Democrats" and "Republicans" only for appearences sake, in order to keep us divided amongst ourselves.
Now, after the last set of elections, do you still feel the same way?
posted on November 24, 2002 01:04:28 PM new
Helen, Harlan Ellison wrote a short story in the first person about a man's devolution into a storm trooper type that was more chilling than many of the so called horror writers. His vision of the future is dark, and usually involves totalitarianism. (He's also a person of rather strong opinions
As I seem to be lacking faith (possibly not in my genetic code), I find the front page a disheartening read, except when I see something approaching honesty.
You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on November 24, 2002 03:22:50 PM new
Does this sound like star wars or what?
Terrifying Fantasy of the Pentagon
"TO maintain space superiority, we must have the ability to control the 'high ground' of space. To do so, we must be able to operate freely in space, deny the use of space to our adversaries, protect ourselves from attack in and through space and develop and deploy a NMD capability."
posted on November 25, 2002 12:39:05 AM new
I used to have the cable news on all day long, switching back and forth to keep up with everything. Now, it makes me sick, to watch that swarmy man called the president being televised and quoted 24/7.
Twilight Zone is right! I feel as if I've been beamed to another planet where the people look like humans but they really are clones programed to obey and agree with the ruling supreme being.
I'm beginning to feel hopeless and helpless. New feelings for me which are just not like me and I don't like it!!
posted on November 25, 2002 05:51:21 AM new
Chococake
You stated that so well!!!
We're living in a country that is going to hell in a handbasket. While all the wealth is held by the upper 5%, schools are without books and teachers, health care is not affordable, civil liberties are being eliminated, the constitution is being ignored and war with the middle east is underway. Working class people in this country are without adequate representation and we are being led by a ruthless president who has expressed his desire to be a dictator. I've heard several people state that we are doomed and at the time, I thought that it was an exaggeration. Now, I believe it's the truth.
posted on November 25, 2002 07:26:32 AM new
Despite those wry observations of our situation, Helen, four-fifths of Americans are sitting back patting themselves on the back for what a wondeful President it is that they have! To me, that's more like the Twilight Zone than the media gone Orwellian. How can people cheer at loosing their civil liberties? How can they so blindly support a policy of imperial aggression? How can they posibbly vote for and support a political party bent upon their ultimate enslavement? How can they rejoice at all of this? That's not human!
posted on November 25, 2002 06:34:53 PM new
Borillar- As a Democrat I am starting to feel like a fish out of water. I believe there are millions of Dems who just will not vote against a wartime President. If Gore is the nominee, I think he will get about 1/2 of the votes he got last time. I said here a couple of years ago that the real major parties are Conservative and Liberal. Is the Independent Party in the middle? Is it the answer?
krs- Pelosi is a big mistake. The Dems are in real trouble and I don't know who could be the savior. Kerry?
posted on November 26, 2002 09:28:56 AM new
Thanks, stusi, but I hold my ground on this one. I say that there are not two political parties any more. There haven't been for some time. There is one political party and that party is not voted in by the People of the United States of America. They keep what's left of the Democratic Party and Republican Party around in order to keep Americans divided and against each other and focused away from the issues that are meaningful.
Right now, the ruling party is tired of the fascade of two parties and is removing the Democratic Party to begin with. Then, after Americans have gotten over the fact that we have a single party, they'll drop the pretense of Republicans as well, because you can't have a democracy in a one-party system.
It's been blatantly obvious to me for many years about this, since 1994 when the New Republicans came in and the Democrats rolled over and became Conservatives. The Democratic Party didn't fight or put up any challenge to the take-over; in fact, they embraced them by voting with them whenever they could. Maybe the rest of you weren't watching the votes, but I do and I was and I was shocked and angered each time they would jump party lines to go vote with the Republicans.
I could go on and on and on about how obvious it's been. And it doesn't take any rocket science to figure it out either.
posted on December 1, 2002 09:11:10 AM new
The world was great when Jimmy Carter was President. (Last true Democratic President). It's a shame we can't get more men like him in the Presidential office.
