Reply #16: Other... [View All]

He'll still be there, but will no longer be known as vice president of the United States. His new title will be Reichsmarschall von Cheney, master of the homeland and chief enforcer for the Fourth Reich.

He'll still be there because of those two widely unreported executive orders -- National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20 -- which give BushCo the power to declare martial law and subsume the other two branches of government into the executive in an "emergency." And best of all, Bush himself has the sole power to define an event as an "emergency." Could be Katrina II; could be another staged terrorist attack; could be a riot in Harlem. Could be a peace march or anti-imperialism rally.

Could be just three black guys standing around a corner, lighting up a trash can to get a little heat on a miserable Philly winter night, talking about Malcolm X or Stokely Carmichael or W.E.B. DuBois. That kind of activity might spread to three more people, and a dozen more after that, which would certainly constitute a threat to lawful authority and, therefore, qualify as an "emergency" to a brain-dead little chickenshit sitting in an office that's way, way too big for him. And boom, there goes the country.

Constitution and Bill of Rights? History. Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act? The new law of the land.

Does a right wing coup announce itself any more explicitly than this? Is mass media so corrupt, inattentive, corporatized and useless that even a publicly available, detailed blueprint for locking down the country and ending the great democratic experiment goes unreported, unquestioned, unnoticed? Is it an accident that, if I want to know what's happening in my own country, I must seek out sources of information that originate anywhere but in the US? Is the internet the only place left where traditional news gathering and reporting are still practiced?

I sincerely hope that there's a particularly cozy corner of hell reserved for the editors, reporters, publishers, pundits, wingnut AM motormouths, producers, on-air "talent" and sponsors who create, legitimize, disseminate and pay for the non-stop stream of mindless drivel masquerading as information -- and that the hottest seat of all has Rupert Murdoch's name on it.


wp