FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY FROM JAHWEH BY GUN BARREL.
By Peter Fredson
At present this nation is as divided as it can get without actually recurring to civil war, political assassinations, or having military law with soldiers patrolling every street with heavy weapons at the ready. While we are still a long way from our troops spreading democracy and liberty in the U.S., as in Iraq, with cruise missiles, helicopter gun ships, night vision goggles, heavy armor, cannon and weaponry, our country is being engulfed in the deadly grip of Dominionist Neo-Con and Corporate fascism. And we do have jack-booted police, with clubs, gas, shields and heavy weapons preventing any demonstration that might embarrass the administration. There are plenty of demonstrations against the Bush regime, but the chances of any newspaper covering them are mighty slim.
The long history of our democracy and the yearning for civil peace has so far stifled any general call to arms or a coup-de-etat for regime change. There is a general complacency, or hope, that everything will turn out all right in the end. Most Americans are optimistic about the future, dimly seen. But the relentless quest of the True Believers for dominion, for total control, and the quest of the great corporate powers for monopoly, hegemony, and endless profits may soon develop active resistance.
The French Revolution was spawned by similar circumstances. The American Revolution and the Mexican Revolution put church and state back into equilibrium after the merciless combination of King and Church exploited humanity for centuries. We are today witnessing a resurgence of clerical and political tyranny similar to that imposed before the American Revolution. Perhaps History is repeating itself?
We are daily watching the executive branch give orders to Congress and to the Justice system, largely because the president believes he was chosen by God and therefore can do no wrong. We know that the entire Republican Party was captured by True Believers. Can anyone think of any legislation proposed by George II that Republicans did not approve overwhelmingly? Did any Republican senators warn George II that they would vote against him on any topic? On the contrary, George II was advised by legal wizards that he is above the law. Only the most avid supporters of Bush do not believe that the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib were initiated by the Bush executives.
He awards his most extreme sycophants with top appointments, and chastises his critics by relegating them to limbo. He is so unsure of his own merit that his sycophants have to introduce fake reporters to ask him easy questions that he can answer without his usual stammer, smirk, and deviousness. He has an imperial attitude toward secrecy that overwhelms anyone trying to get specific information on his programs.
He does not trust the American people and has imposed a reign of legal terror upon them in which he can arrest anyone at will, hold them without warrant, and abuse and torture them to obtain his ends. He can listen in on any private conversation, read any mail, look at any computer files, check out what books people have read. He has not hesitated to intrude his religious beliefs upon our legal system. He hypocritically declares that he wants no activist judges, but only those who will vote the way he wants them to vote. He does not hesitate to disrupt the legal process any time it varies from his beliefs and had his senate pass special legislation to by-pass normal judicial routes to accommodate hysterical True Believers who knew better than doctors how to treat vegetative states. His brother thought seriously of kidnapping a dying woman in order to accommodate True Believers.
Every time George II finds that administering the country is too “hard” he distracts people from his poor performance with some emotional issue, of personal choice, and exploits it for every dime and vote, wringing it out endlessly. His hold on people seems so precarious that he even had people sign oaths that they would be faithful to him, and his police would eject any critic of any kind without even a “by your leave.” He wanted the churches to give him lists of worshippers so he could use them as political cannon-fodder. He has subverted the media to the point where otherwise-decent reporters can no longer be objective.
This shows a desperate man, voracious for power, intolerant of any opinion than his own, having the compassion of an alligator. His political machination is a power-grab that masquerades as religion, and unites most superstitious True Believers behind him, in the belief that he may be a kind of messiah, because “He talks to God.” No reporter ever asks him what God answers, or if God ever answers, but that is beside the point when grabbing for power by exploiting religion.
He loves to consider himself a War-Time President, as it gives him more power, while his followers disregard the fact that the invasion and war of Iraq was achieved by misdirection and lies about non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction that offered “imminent danger to the U.S.” with unceasing rhetoric about “regime change” and “EVIL.”
To justify keeping the U.S. at war, he combined “peace” with “freedom” and “security” as in a commencement address to Concordia University students by saying, “America works for peace and freedom....For the sake of peace, for the sake of security, we stand for freedom.” In his inaugural address for his second term in 2005 he used the terms “Liberty” and “Freedom” until he wore them out.
Everyone disregarded that fact that his “Liberty, Freedom, and Democracy” meant having 160,000 troops destroying buildings in Iraq, shooting civilians at will, imposing puppets on a sovereign nation, and installing a permanent tyranny of airbases and embassies.
His spin doctors made it seem that people in Iraq, heroically fighting to get the Yankees out of their sovereign country, were all terrorists. The word “patriot” became “insurgent.”, sometimes even “Thug” or “Outlaw.”
But I imagine that King George during the American Revolution used somewhat the same language for the American rebels. The present George II does not even bother to count the civilian dead of Iraq, as they are simply heretical trash that are to be eradicated eventually by missionizing and crusading followers. The imperial will of George II is not to be contested. He and his corporate buddies intend to rule the world. After all, his finger IS near a button which if pushed can unleash all the horrors of civilization gone mad, and this is a mighty weapon with which to menace the entire world. Indeed this can make any old draft-dodger feel like Julius Caesar.
His followers are singularly devoted to him, giving all their effort, money and votes to achieve either their Apocalypse, or world domination. Nothing he does seems to evoke much criticism from True Believers. Certainly all of the thousands of evangelists are exulting with his attack on church and state and thanking him for letting them impose their beliefs on the entire nation in the form of pledges, commandments, icons, dogma and symbols. They have taken over much of the media and control the flow of information.
Fox News is a prime example of a TV propaganda station that is owned by a True Believer and his “newscasters” know that any deviation from the True Believer line will immediately cost them their jobs. Christian music and bookstores have taken over many distribution outlets. Prayer is daily advocated as the prime remedy for any ailment. Science is excoriated, while Bible quotations are offered as solutions to any problem. Education is dumbed-down to accommodate True Believers. Angels are seen everywhere, while images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary abound on fence-posts and even on tortillas. Con-artist faith-healers abound with no interference from government regulations. True Believers weep, blubber and chant over a “sacred” monument erected by an Alabama judge who wants everyone to acknowledge “his” God.
Democrats seem dazed and have mounted no effective attack against Right Wing tyranny, or they might be thought of as “anti-Jesus” and that would be political suicide in present day America. Few senators speak out against the growing fascist tendency, with Senator Robert Byrd an honorable exception. Even a Supreme Court judge remarked that the separation of Church and State was a bad metaphor and should be discarded.
What will happen when all the Supreme Court Judges have been appointed by George II? Can this country remain a democracy, or will it drift into theocracy with a fascist flavor? If we have no independent Congress or Supreme Court, but everything is commanded by the Executive Office, then why not go directly to Imperial rule?
After all, the Romans were efficient, even if they had to behave rudely with non-Romans. Imperialism might be a good solution to environmental problems today, where lions and tigers are disappearing, for lack of room and food, to revive the good old Roman Coliseum practice of feeding the animals with non-conformists.
Perhaps atheists, secularists, agnostics, humanists and their ilk could be given copies of Darwin and put naked in the arena against True Believers armed with crosses, heavy Bibles, and Ten Commandment Tablets, singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” That’ll teach ‘em!’
Posted on 03/30/2005 at 06:17 AM 
English 101
Peter I just don’t get it. You are using lots of big words and fancy writing that ends up just losing me as a reader. I am sorry but I can’t buy into your argument. I am a Freshman in college and this post would never fly in my English class. A requirement for a good argument is to back up your main points using examples and facts backed up by verifiable sources. With the way you are writing you seem to be asking the reader to just agree with you. A truly critical reader (even if the reader was in agreement with you) could never accept this on the grounds that is a poor argument lacking the above mentioned elements. I personally find nothing thought provoking and in fact I am shut off by what I see as a rant that you are force feeding me with. Give me something to bite on. I get lost in the sheer number of points you are attempting to make. Cut down the number of statements so that you can create a more palatable structured argument. Try working in a thesis, points to back up that thesis, and a recognizable conclusion. Until I can see some kind of coherent structure I will just pass right by your posts. I am not certainly not someone who is in a position to advise other people how to write. In my opinion the reader, just like the customer, is always right, and I wanted to let you know that I get lost in your writing. On the other hand I guess you can’t please everyone.