“I need a steam shovel, mamma, to keep away the dead
I need a dump truck, baby, to unload my head.”
-- Bob Dylan
The blankets are red, white, and blue. He runs his soft fingers over yr head and
coos in yr ear. He'll protect you, won't he? Even though he's the one who just got done telling you ghost stories after setting you in front of the evening news. He talked about the bogey man under yr bed and then told you he'd protect you. Trust him.
Over the past few months I've used reason and logic to try my damnedest to explain my political position. I've tried, even when I almost got hog stomped by a large Texan, to remain calm and use facts and figures to defend my position. Fuck that. It doesn't work. I used facts, figures, and logic to systematically demolish any argument Tom Problems could throw my way and he suddenly went deaf and began a twitching fit of sloganeering (“Flip flop! Flip flop! Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time! He said it! He… Ahh… <gurgle> Damn! Liberals!!”) We've become too polarized and that in itself should be a sign. So here we are. I've got a keyboard and half a drunk and Dylan on the stereo and maybe I'll just load it with lead and shoot out the fucking walls.
I got home tonight and turned on the television and saw that we have well over a thousand dead soldiers in Iraq so far. Yeah, they all volunteered and did their duty but I'll bet my sweet ass they weren't all brainwashed. I was in the goddamn army and I can tell you that, for most people, it's a job. It's not an honor, a privilege or a service. It's a job. They get disgruntled. Just like postal workers.
There is one reason to vote for George: Fear. There are bad people out there waiting to do bad things and he's the only one who can save us. Do you believe this? Do you? Christ, you're a moron. Unprecedented support, sympathy, and cooperation after 9/11 and even after we went into Afghanistan and what do we do? We shoot ourselves in the ass. Bush won this election (his first) because we're a nation of stubborn robots. We get an input of info that bolsters our rigid belief structures and we hold onto it no matter what contrary evidence we're presented with.
Iraq connected to terrorism? Wrong. And anyway, what about Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, South Yemen, etc.? Iraq with WMD's? Wrong. And what about Iran, and North Korea? Evil dictator? Fine, but there are many others. An Iraqi populace enslaved and slaughtered? No doubt, but, again, there are many others. What about the Sudan, for chrissake? Tens of thousands dying. Tens of thousands. We've officially called it genocide, but there are no Blackhawks over Darfur.
Bush is a rich kid who fell in with the right crowd and got lucky and he will never be my president. This is a nation run by men with beady eyes and big foreheads who don't give a two-fisted-jumpin-hairy-fuck about yr quality of life. George Bush has hinted that he is advised by his good Christian God. He lives by Christian principles no more than Jim Jones did and the Kool-Aid yr drinking is called FEAR. And it will get y to the same place as all those poor, stupid, bastards who rotted under an African sun.
I represent God too, you simple sons-o'-bitches. It is burning Ra and changing Luna. It is Horus and Kephra. It is Chaos Magic and sex and rock ‘n' roll. It is every fantasy that runs through yr head when yr daydreaming on the way to work.
It's okay. There's still time for you to repent, to rejoice. Or not. Just be afraid. George Bush will sing you a lullaby and hope you never wake up.
The author, Reverend Butch Lee, can be reached at .