Lies or not, America bleeds

The Rape of political discourse and liberty in America

For 7 years, George Bush has stayed his course, painting dissenters as anti-war terrorist sympathizer and leading a pack of reactionaries on an assault against “anti-Americans” who were guilty of nothing more than dissent. If you’ll permit me to make a crass, but powerful analogy, the word TERROR as used by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11 was analogous to a woman screaming RAPE under false pretenses.

I decided on rape as an analogy because victims of rape are sometimes the accused. This isn’t a piece about Muslims or the hundreds of thousands of dead civilians that have resulted because of the President’s decision. This piece is about a president who made a very serious charge and has not and may never be held accountable for his actions because of the severity of the problem that we find ourselves in overseas.

Relinquishing rights in vane, the truth won’t set us free

When a person lies about a serious offense, its often done out of an irrational fear that telling the truth might result in terrible consequences, so the alternative (e.g. lie) can be the only rational choice for them. When President Bush lied, misled, deceived, mistakenly led… –however you wish to qualify what bush did to our country– many people, including staunch conservatives bit hard on his words. They didn’t do so because they were war-mongers as liberals like to point out, but they did it out of loyalty and faith in their leader who at the time gave them no reason to believe he was being anything but honest. Bush’s staff, led by the likes of Colonel Powell, Rumsfeld, et. al., and everyone else that dropped the ball on Iraq, have created a problem for Republicans that leads me to believe they will turn on him before the 2008 election.

In the wake of 9/11, it was argued by some “experts” that what Bush did was justified and proper given what we knew about weapons of mass destruction and the dangerous lunatics who ruled that part of the world. The idea then, was to search for weapons of mass destruction and hunt down Saddam Hussein, a man that our government sponsored during the Reagan years.

5 years after the fact, evidence that Bush presented to the American public is now known to have been based entirely on assumptions or derived from faulty logic by some scapegoat to be named later. Politicians in Washington who both happily and begrudgingly supported the war behind President Bush now like to refer to it as “poor intelligence” or “bad intel.” Oops, our CIA operatives somehow thought they’d seen weapons of mass destruction in the axis-of-evil recon files, but it was a false alarm, sorry!

Yes Mr. President, you’re allowed to make mistakes…

This problem we face, is bigger than politics, the executive office and the powerful force that is the United States.

Republicans are going to face serious voter backlash after crying wolf on the issue of 9/11 ’s and its link to Saddan Hussein. The Iraq War was supported by an illusory relationship and many Americans are mad, few are in an ‘I told you so mood’ because what has happened to the United States is a tragic tale of a dying American Constitution and many soldiers who are caught in the line of fire for the unforeseeable future. For the angry people out there, I know that the lie was not intentional, and crying wolf would imply an intent to lie, but his premise required absolute certainty or something close to it and he didn’t have it and he knew it and now America knows it! Even if you defend 9/11 for political maneuvering and call it something clever like “in the best interests of our country,” you cannot destroy what we’ve learned from polls, public opinion, experts, research and the’ liberal media’ ™ as a result of President Bush’s administration’s failures.

People are sick of the president’s tired act and many are offended by the lack of discussion going on with respect to political issues. The 9/11 exploitation and war rhetoric is blowing up in peoples faces, just ask Rudy Giuliani what he thinks about Ron Paul who he tried to paint as an un-American terrorist sympathizer. (FYI: Ron Paul is a devout Christian, true American patriot, with a libertarian philosophy that would make him the first of his kind to become President, unless you count our founding fathers who were true libertarians)

Where we stand
Americans want a leader who can and will stand on his feet, who won’t fumble over his words and respond to all policy challenges as unpatriotic and unAmerican. These days, it seems the easiest way to get out of a policy debate or weasel out of a tough political pickle is to simply utter the words, “YOU ARE ANTI AMERICAN IF YOU SUPPORT THAT UNAMERICAN POLICY,” or just say the word “TERRORIST”.

The Patriot Act was born of an abuse of power and manipulation by fear

The Patriot Act is an example of law that is highly controversial and never passed through the proper channels. The use of fear and resentment helped fuel the drafting and subsequent signing of this bill. The patriot act is a symbol of the very evil we hope to destroy with our American blunders of the millennium (Iraq, Bush). The act removes freedom that our men have fought and died for.

On memorial day we celebrated lives of the men who have fought to keep us safe. We celebrate every year to remember the men and women of the armed forces, and to remind ourselves what our country stands for. Yet, in 2007, over 200 years after we celebrated the first memorial day, we’ve allowed an American president to dishonor our troops by leading a war based on deception, and failing to capture Osama Bin Laden.

Our country is in such disarray that Americans now simply wait for the next election to come around because many believe that its the only time we might hope to see results from this administration and our indefinitely gridlocked congress. Whats worse, is we haven’t just made mistakes at the highest levels, we’ve allowed political lunatics to take dissenters out of the conversation by systematically applying political words of mass destruction against people who are frustrated with politicians in Washington.

President Bush revived McCarthyism

The era of McCarthy brought us an evil version of America that we could easily rediscover if we aren’t careful. If you’ve seen the movie V for Vendetta, it has a strong political message about freedom and censorship, government intrusion into the private lives of its citizens and paints a grim picture of a regime that would make the Hitlers of the world proud. The movie ends in chaotic destruction of English monuments in a political demonstration of civil disobedience. The act was designed to raise awareness in people that the will of the people does matter and the conversation should never be cut off in the name of “terror” or “God,” no matter what your politics are.

We have the power to use collective force against government corruption and in 2008 the force that will change the landscape of American history should be an all assault on the political games that plague our government. This isn’t a call to arms or anything of that nature, but if you take anything from my writings, let it be an interest in living freely.  You should speak for what you believe in and never allow yourself to be censored by men of authority or you become a victim of the very terror these men claim as our mortal enemy. One final note, don’t keep your mouth shut because you fear political backlash, never fear words like unAmerican or “anti-American” as used by some political nut job in an attempt to stifle the power of your conscience and sense of morality. If your adversary cannot argue political issues on merit, then it is them who are unworthy of sitting at the discussion table, not the so-called “unAmericans.”

A final word on Congress and Political power

Since Congress got a makeover and power shifted to Democrats, they’ve accomplished little. The public is outraged and because of the lacking spine that congressional democrats have, they’ve even rated Congress’ performance lower than President Bush. There is something very disturbing going on in American politics and the only way to see improvements in our beloved nation is by removing those men who seek to destroy her.  I’m going to help Ron Paul make it to the national stage by supporting his unAmerican revolution, I am going to create my own revolution… call it the political revolution of Silicon Valley, call it whatever you like, but know this: I aim to see use the great equalizer of political thought (the Internet) to help redirect the course of our cheapened political system of governance, permanently.

Fred Soto is an Attorney and Entrepreneur from the Silicon Valley.
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