Dissident Voice

March 21 2003

A friend recently wrote that the story of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s demand that the ceremony at which he would accept an award for “Free Speech” be closed to the print and TV press, along with the parade of soon-to-be exposed lies our government uses to justify a First Strike against Iraq had her "scratching her head" in confusion.

I stopped scratching my head the other day at 9:15 PM.

You see, I've been a Sci-Fi fan since I was a kid. Last night, it hit me! Many Sci-Fi novels take their plots from Einstein's theories that allowed for alternative universes. Those plots, such as the TV series Sliders, posit that there could be a infinite number of alternative universes occupying the same space as ours, wherein every possible variance of daily life takes place.

If you chose a red blouse this morning, on an alternate universe you chose a blue one.

If you just missed getting hit by a car yesterday, on an alternative universe you were killed.

So, the only way what is currently happening to MY country makes any sense at all is if, one day, about 8 years ago, on one of these universes one of my parallel-persons woke to a normal day filled with humdrum news.

Unfortunately, an alternative doppelganger, which is who I now am, awoke to hear a strange news story that would, eventually, allow something as innocuous as a stained blue dress from the Gap to change the whole course of this crazy alternative universe in a myriad of ways, which, combined with election problems in Florida, would effect my current iteration in an unimaginable way.

So, I'm at peace now. I force myself to believe that this is all like a Twilight Zone episode that, with luck, I'll find a way out of. I'll find a breach in this Alice Through the Looking Glass universe and dive back into that other world where I'm proud to be American; where my country respects a Constitution and a Bill of Rights; where everyone has the right to council and can't be held without the government pressing charges; where discussions of torture center over watching the latest dumb reality show, not how much torture is appropriate for America to authorize; where education funds, Medicare, Social Security, VA and other "Human" services are not lessened to pay for both a First Strike war against Iraq, a country in no way tied to any attack on Americans, AND a tax cut for the richest amongst us; where after loosing hordes of young men in wars to affirm our basic freedoms, running from the war of independence that freed us to be a country separate from a British King (aided by those so-called "weasels", France) through a handful of small wars leading to WWI and WWII, American's would NEVER allow 19 fanatics with Home Depot box cutters to cause their fellow citizens to panic and give up those hard won freedoms and agree to support a megalomaniacal President on a Crusade that can only lead the globe on a spiral to Hell, and, yes, where Free Speech awards are not given out in the dark.

In some of those alternate universes, a person would be deemed crazy for saying they even believed such “other worlds” existed.

In my personal alternate universe, I'd go crazy if I couldn't hang on to that belief!

Jack Ballinger is a Vietnam Veteran, with a Bronze Star, 2 Air Medals, a Combat Infantryman’s Badge (CIB) and a bunch of other pretty military ribbons. “I was Honorably Discharged in 1971. Both of my grandfathers fought in WWI, and both my father and my father-in-law were Marines in WWII.” He can be contacted at: NYCHASpotlight@netscape.net