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We Americans once had a strong president who told us during the dark days of the Depression: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.
Now we have a frightening president who constantly tells us we must live in fear, that fear is our future, that fear is patriotic… that fear is now America. He even color codes it so we’ll know whether it’s a red-hot, super-scairdy fear day, or just a run-of-the-mill, orange-tinted fear day.
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In case that’s too subtle, you’ll be glad to know that Bush’s Department of Homeland Security has developed a public-service television commercial to bring fear down to a gut-wrenching, emotional level. This ad shows faces of worried children asking their mommies such questions as, “What if something happens, will you come get me?” Then a narrator warns viewers that every American family should get prepared for a terrorist attack. Finally the screen goes dark and the punchline appears in these worrisome words: “Everyone should have a plan.”
Welcome to Bush’s scary world.
The Bushites are using a non-stop fear campaign to impose the Anti-America on our “Land of the Free” – an unrecognizable America of supreme executive authority, constant surveillance of the people, secret government, suppression of dissent, and permanent war. As Bush himself put it in 2004, “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
He’s not the quickest bunny in the litter, is he? Unfortunately, it’s not a laughing matter. Top Bush-Cheney autocrats are doing more to trample America’s democratic values than our enemies can possibly do. It’s up to us to reassert and protect those values. More of us must speak out for them – more loudly, more frequently, more insistently. Remember: the opposite of courage is not cowardice. It’s conformity.
“There’s at least one conversation I won’t be having soon,” Austin American Statesman, August 11, 2007
“Ready for Terrorist Attack?” www.youtube.com