Counterbias: Brokeback Nation

Brokeback Nation
When did we become so wimpy that we'd surrender our Constitutional rights for some illusory "security"? How did we get to be so gay?

January 27 2006
Counterbias.com
STEVE HOROWITZ

Observe the president closely when he gives his State of the Union speech next week.

Watch as he licks his lips and flexes his jaw resolutely. See how he grips the podium with shoulders squared, hips cocked confidently, his weight shifting from one leg to the other in a poor imitation of John Wayne.

And think: He's so butch!

Like Ronald Reagan, like The Duke himself, Bush is a chickenhawk Republican who glorifies war but declined to expose himself to the actual perils of combat. Yet, somehow, much of the nation goes all lightheaded at the prospect of facing our terrorist tormentors without his watchful eye on the playground.

Is he that convincing in his macho pretensions? Or are we that effeminate that we think he's the tough guy we need in the White House at this perilous hour?

Not that this hour is all that perilous. To be sure, we lost 3,000 people on 9/11, and saw the lives of many husbands, wives, parents, children, brothers and sisters ruined. But that was one day in a 230-year-long history. And because of that one day, we've shown ourselves willing to accept Bush's lies and ineptitude, willing to give up hard-won personal freedoms, in the hope that this proven incompetent will protect us from the monsters under the bed -- our chief reason for believing he will being that he tells us so.

That is so gay.

Once, we were a nation that held off the mightiest, scariest military powers on earth: the British, Spanish, Germans, Japanese and Soviets. But in 2001 our wrists went limp over some fanatic Muslims in dank Afghan caves, clearing the way for a chickenhawk like Bush to beat John Kerry, a genuine war hero, in the last election.

And how much safer are we?

It's been more than four years since 9/11, and the national threat level is a constant orange: "Elevated --Significant risk of terrorist attacks." Nearly 2,500 Americans -- a Pearl Harbor's worth -- have died in Afghanistan and Iraq avenging our martyred 3,000. The bully bin Laden is releasing more videos than Eminem. And the best the Bush administration can say for itself is that it least it's listening to our phone calls, as it tries to ease our fears with word games.

From the AP on Monday:

Bush said that allowing the NSA to monitor the international phone calls and e-mails of Americans with suspected ties to terrorists can hardly be considered "domestic spying."

"It's what I would call a terrorist surveillance program," Bush said at Kansas State University. "If they're making a phone call in the United States, it seems like to me we want to know why."

Left unexplained was how we know for sure who the terrorists are. Are we supposed to just trust the judgment of the Bush administration? That's the scenario the framers of the Constitution feared most. And why the government needs court approval to eavesdrop on even the most ruthless organized crime figures, who are responsible for much more death and destruction than terrorists.

Any prosecutor who came into court with unauthorized recordings of mafia dons and said, "If they're making a phone call, it seems like to me we want to know why" would get laughed out of court, as much for the stupidity of his argument as for the embarrassing inability of an important government official not to talk like a backwoods moonshiner.

And this is the guy we trust to protect us in his big, strong arms? George Bush has been screwing us for four years, and all we can do is grimace stoically till he's done? God help us.

I wish we could quit him.