pantoum's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RADICAL QUAKERS THREATEN THE PENTAGON 280. So the Pentagon has been spying on Americans at the insistence of our president�a man who, when told that his wiretapping order violates the US Constitution, replied that it�s �just a goddamn piece of paper� and waaa waaa waaa baby wants what baby wants and he�s perfectly willing to kill 30 thousand Iraqis and your sons and daughters and the silly rules of Democracy�laws that only apply to little people�to get it.Maybe Nixon said this too before he was impeached . . . and knowing Nixon, he probably said it afterwards too as he blamed everyone else for his failures. Frankly, I want a president who treasures the Constitution more than his fucking life or any short-term goals he and his party might have. I want her to value public service over private interests period, to consider it holy, a calling. I want Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird or a grown-up Scout guiding our country, someone who will stand up to powerful interests who continue to fuck the people over for their own personal gain and insist on policy that is good for ALL the people, not just the few with deep pockets and lobbyists. I mean let�s face it, the Constitution is bigger than any one over-privileged Coke-snorting sneering illiterate squinty-eyed Republican cowboy who probably wouldn�t have even passed high-school grammar without Daddy�s connections. (And let me just say that my southern Baptist mother and plenty of other fundamentalist Baptists must be aghast to know that a so-called Christian uttered the words goddamn out loud�but then again we are talking about a cowboy who reminds everyone at every given opportunity that he is the commander in chief. "Commander in Chief. That�s me!" he must sing, just like some cartoon character spoof of himself . . . or, come to think of it, just like King Darling III in that campy theatrical version of Cinderella.: King Darling III, King Darling III, King Darling III. That�s me! Or maybe that's King Cheney I. I�m wondering if maybe W actually believes that he is gawd though. This make sense. He�s a cowboy on a crusade after all�on a goddamn holy oil mission, really�one with one hell of an agenda and it�s about money, pure and simple. And cowboy gawds with that much power can damn to hell whomever they damn well please, got it? Meanwhile, inquiring minds want to know what enemy so threatened national security that we had to bypass customary procedures that almost always grant permission to wiretap phones in about four hours anyway. Was it those terrorists that the FBI warned Condi and George about? Spies with nuclear bombs? Why no. It�s those scary Quaker anti-war activist terrorists, that�s who. (Quick! Move us to red alert!!) You�d think it would be obvious to anyone who knows anything about Quakers that they are opposed to violence, but maybe the chickenhawks consider opposition to the war our greatest national threat (and boy do I hope they�re right). ...And now, since I am an ADD distractable grrrl, I find myself humming the Simon and Garfunkel version of Silent Night, which includes a newscaster reporting on the Richard Speck serial murders of nine student nurses and the president saying that opposition to the war is the greatest threat to its continuation. You gotta admit that the parallels to those Nixon/FBI bugging anti-Vietnam protester days exist. And here we are all the way at the end of 2005 and anti-war protesters are still being stalked by our government and our president admits that he authorized illegal wiretapping. Can another Kent State massacre be far behind? � Meanwhile, thousands of coastal North Carolinians have reported hearing a series of explosive �booms� Tuesday afternoon at about the same time that nine military jets flew over Wrightsville Beach. The military won�t confirm or deny anything but thousands of people said it sounded like an atomic bomb went off and their buildings and furniture shook. And they are convinced that they are now irradiated. Oh sugar. The continental shelf just SHIFTED loudly! Oh Sweetie. That weren't no sonic boom, were it? Our president lies about weapons of mass destruction, lies about torture, lies about votes. No wonder we�re all jaded. But now it�s Thursday morning and I am, as Shakespeare said, in a holiday humour. If I�m not online again before New Year�s, here's a paragraph poem just for you: AND NOW let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious and great things.�Rainer Maria Rilke 10:48 a.m. - 2005-12-22 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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