Talk about nuts!

Thankfully, Garry South, “a top strategist for [former] Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom,” is on to Brown’s seditious psychosis:

“California Democrats need to ponder very seriously the prospect of putting up a candidate for governor who comes with reams of radio-show rantings like Brown,” he states, sagely adding that “Republicans will put tens of millions of dollars behind making him look like a conspiracy-spouting fringe lunatic to the average voter.”

Good on them! And thank goodness they have tons of money at their disposal, too, which, if scary Jerry had had his way, would have been a vital tool long removed from the political process, thereby denying freedom-loving corporations their constitutional right to buy as many congressmembers, er, as much access as possible. For here’s Brown from his radical radio days waxing wacky about campaign reform: “The way politics is organized… money buys power, even though as a principle, that is condemned.”

“Money buys power”? Well, duh! It also buys patchouli oil, lava lamps and Internet porn (uh, so I’ve heard), and isn’t it interesting how he doesn’t rail against those.

As a dissident DJ, Brown also bashed another beloved American institution: institutions (as in, correctional), knocking locking up druggies and throwing away the key:

“Here’s the real scam. The drug war is one of the games to get more convictions and prisoners. There’s a lot of chemicals out there and when certain ones are made illegal, they become a huge profit opportunity and bring violence, crime and more people to imprison.”

So, let me get this straight: Instead of spending bazillions on eons-long prison sentences for adults partaking of intoxicants in the privacy of their homes, activity that causes irrevocable damage to our society, you know, um, somehow, what would Brown have wildly suggested? Legalize drugs, tax them and then blow the dough on school construction and highway maintenance? Earth to Jerry: if we’d wanted to live like namby-pamby socialists, we’d never have revolted against France. Get a clue!

Further cementing his criminal-coddling credentials, here’s Baby-‘Em Brown’s death penalty lowdown: “The great danger of humane punishment is that people will come to accept state murder as something sanitary. I don’t think bureaucracy should ever be entrusted with that kind of power.”

Now, I’m sure liberals would insist we ask the 138 people exonerated from death row in the U.S. since 1973 what they think about capital punishment, even though their bias would be obvious. Fine, whatever; but it still doesn’t change this unalterable fact: nobody kills anybody when they’re dead. (Yes, tree huggers, ‘tis true there have been at least eight people executed in recent years even though it was determined a little too late — oops! — they were almost assuredly innocent but, hey, what are you, perfect?)

But the thing that galls me most about Jerry Brown is the Marxist nature of his on-the-record anti-corporatism, for who else but a closet commie would blame Big Business for our great nation’s woes? Everyone knows that banks, insurance companies, the pharmaceuticals industry, weapons manufacturers and other corporate mega-entities have never had anything but our country’s best interests at heart, and anyone who reads ulterior motives into their God-given right to fully service us, check it, provide us full services, is truly an America-hater of the first order.

Personally, I’m couldn’t be happier to donate my tax dollars to help save critically-needed financial institutions in exchange for the privilege of using credit cards with perfectly reasonable 29.99% interest rates. I’m proud as a patriotic peacock to continue supporting the ever-burgeoning defense industry and its half-dozen or however many wars it is they’ve got going now, ‘cause one never knows when the next Iraqi or Afghani — or even the first — will attack us from hating the freedoms we used to have. I’m all for making taxpayer-subsidized health insurance mandatory for every American, and for do-gooders who complain it’s nothing but a backdoor windfall for soulless HMOs and marvel at the chutzpah of fining or even jailing fellow citizens too poor to comply, I’ve only one question: where’s your famous bleeding heart compassion when it comes to shareholders and CEOs, huh? They’re human, too, you know. (Probably.)

Fortunately, time wounds all heels or at least tempers their views, and moderation is apparently what’s happened to Jerry Brown’s extremist ideas from his far-out radio daze. The Bee makes it clear that Brown, in his undeclared desire to regain the governorship, has ratcheted his rebellious rhetoric way down.

That’s fine by me, ‘cause one thing’s for sure: if old Governor Moonbeam’s retro ravings ever came to pass, we’d no doubt have an America that looked radically different from how it looks today.

And who would want that?

But they’d had a second child recently, so I visited their tiny apartment to offer congratulations. It was the polite thing to do. (That, and Mom threatened to cut me from the will if I didn’t.)

Dolton sat on a rent-a-sofa in his cramped front room, cradling his newborn daughter.

“I’m so happy for you two,” I lied. Dolton toiled at three part-time jobs; none provided benefits. My sister is disabled and can’t work. They’ve had everything from appliances to vehicles repossessed. Sooo… what to do?

Have another kid! Sigh.

“Dolton, Jr., just loves his new baby sister,” my brother-in-law said, gesturing to his ten-year-old nearby. “Don’t you, little Dolt?”

My nephew winced. The kid was no dummy. Someday I’d have to ask Apolitica who the real father was.

“So,” I ventured, “what’s the new one’s name?”

“Dimina.”

“You mean,” I said, gasping, “she’s going to be… a little Dim?”

“You got it!” Dolt said, beaming.

And some people never will, I thought, glancing towards Apolitica. She dashed into the kitchen. Coward.

From the rent-a-tube in the corner, Bill O’Liely railed against healthcare reform.

“Obama and his damn socialism!” Dolton fumed. “He and that commie Congress’ll bleed America dry.”

It took me a moment to roll my tongue back into my mouth. Finally, I managed: “It’s especially tragic given how well our economy had, thus far, survived two needless wars, tax cuts for the mega-rich and trillions shoveled to criminals who sabotaged the economy.”

“Spew actual facts if you want,” Dolt growled, “but if Obamacare passes, mark my word: soon there’ll be a hammer-and-pickle on every flag.”

The only pickle I could visualize was the one my sister and her husband were in. They’d just received the bill from the county hospital for Dimina’s birth and, without healthcare, bankruptcy was imminent.

“Dolt,” I said, “you slave away and yet you’re still destitute, and now your medical bills will break you. How could you possibly be against affordable healthcare for you, your family and 47 million other uncovered Americans?”

“Because,” he spat, “socialized medicine is un-American!”

Dimina wailed. I could relate.

“Don’t buy the lie,” I pleaded. “Polls show a huge majority of Americans want healthcare for all, and most also know that single-payer is the only real solution. Which, incidentally, is not socialized medicine, but socialized insurance.”

“I’m against socializing. Period.”

Well, so was I — at least with my brother-in-law. Inexplicably, I pressed forward. Why did lemmings come to mind?

“Don’t get hung up on pejoratives,” I urged, thinking of all the ways the extreme right has sullied once-perfectly respectable terms in recent years.

“Then how’re we supposed to buy food that doesn’t rot?”

“Excuse me?”

“Without pejoratives, food spoils. Everybody knows that,” Dolton declared triumphantly.

“I believe,” I said slowly as I wondered what I’d ever had against disinheritance, “you may be thinking of preservatives, which is what they’ll be dipping my brain in in a few hours after I donate my body to science immediately after leaving your place.”

“Ha!” he snorted. “There won’t be any donating needed once you liberals get your death panels in place.”

“They already exist.”

“Huh?”

“Death panels. They already exist. Except they’re usually called ‘insurance companies.’”

“Whaddya mean?” Dolt asked, seemingly genuinely perplexed. (Well, OK, so he always seemed genuinely perplexed.)

“C’mon, Dolt,” I said, “surely even you can see those vultures spare no effort denying as many claims as possible which, once they’re done inventing exclusions and ‘pre-exiting conditions,’ translates into untold real suffering and, not infrequently, death.”

“Hnh,” Dolt snorted. “Why do you lefties hate the free market so much?”

“You mean the ‘free market’ that the insurance companies rig with millions of dollars in bribes, sorry, campaign contributions, and industry-written legislation that best serve, hmm, let’s see, the insurance companies?”

“There you go again with your precious details,” Dolt sneered. “Listen, Mark, government-run healthcare will put an industry out of business, and that’s about as hippo-pinkie as it gets.”

“Then you should love the bogus Baucus bill. Mandatory insurance for everyone, and fines for non-conformers? How delightful — for the insurance companies.”

My brother-in-law was silent. He’d either died, or was thinking. (Barring precedent, it had to be the former.) Cautiously, I continued:

“Dolt, let me ask you something: Are you more interested in the well-being of insurance companies, or tens of millions of your fellow citizens? Because here’s the deal: the sole function of the former is to further line the pockets of shareholders and CEOs by skimming up to thirty percent of a money pool that, were it to populate a single-payer system, could nearly all be applied toward providing excellent health coverage for every American.”

“I don’t want the government choosing my doctor!” he cried.

I wondered how I could’ve missed the moment I crossed into the parallel universe.

“Dolton,” I said quietly, “you don’t have a doctor.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

I simply had to find out where the next Masochists Anonymous meeting was. Solidly cementing my qualifications for membership, I ventured on:

“Listen, Dolt, under single-payer, government simply handles the billing. Period. Current private investors are bought out, then hospitals become non-profit and receive annual payments for expansion and operational expenses. The government owns nothing, thereby debunking that ‘socialized medicine’ hooey. And, you choose your own physician.”

“I’m sure,” Dolton snarled, “doctors and nurses will love working for peanuts, which is all that’ll be left once the government starts handling all the dough in your fallopian world.”

Being in a fallopian world sounded pretty utopian at the moment.

“Hardly. Having the paperwork done by just one not-for-profit entity with low overhead — Medicare only spends about three percent on administration — instead of by numerous profit-sucking, bottom line corporations, not only frees up enough money to provide affordable, quality universal healthcare but also ensures doctors and nurses are well-compensated. It’s a no-brainer [thus making it right up your alley, I didn’t say].”

Dimina squalled. My sister came in swiftly and whisked her up. “She’s been running a fever,” Apolitica explained worriedly as she hurried to the bathroom.

“Yeah, she’s been feeling pretty crummy lately,” Dolt said, looking a little far off. (I mean, more than usual.) He was obviously concerned. I had to admit: for all his faults, Dolton was a loving father.

From the TV, xenophobia burbled: beware medical services-stealing immigrants, warned Glen Blecch.

“Handouts to illegals goes a long way toward making this country sick!” Dolt parroted.

I had to admit this, too: my brother-in-law was a bonehead.

“No,” I sighed, “what really makes this country sick is its sickness, in every way. We Americans pay by far the most for healthcare, yet rank miserably down the list in every major healthiness indicator. And as far as the expediency of denying medical services to undocumented aliens, you might want to think twice about that the next time you read about a tuberculosis outbreak in a farm labor camp or a meat-packing plant.”

“I don’t read.”

Imagine my shock.

“I don’t need the liberal media telling me how lucky we are to have a Marxist president making America more communist everyday,” he ranted. “What happened to good old American self-sufficiency? Why do people think the government owes them handouts? How come — ”

“Dolt!” It was Apolitica, entering from the hallway, carrying her bawling daughter. “Dimina’s temperature has shot up to 106. I told you we should have taken her in yesterday. We have to go the emergency room NOW!”

“But…baby — we can’t even pay the other bill we have.”

“NOW!” Apolitica repeated, already out the door with her ailing infant.

Dolton snatched his keys from the rent-a-table. “How did this happen?” he moaned.

Was there a rent-a-mirror around?

Maybe it’s just me.

Then again, maybe not. Everywhere I go, the sense of impending doom about what’s happening in (and to) our country is palpable. ‘Course, there’s hope: just look at how the country’s come together over the national healthcare issue. With fellowship like that, how long can it be before we’re all debating excitedly ‘round city-sized bonfires, our animated dialogue punctuated by periodic AK47 bursts designed to drive (hollow) points home?

You know we’re firmly ensconced in bizarro world when America’s rulers can prosecute illegal warfare, torture people, shred the Constitution, steal us blind, out secret agents, strong-arm massive corporate welfare and let an entire city drown, yet it’s not until affordable universal healthcare is (ostensibly) proposed that that is the moment herds of screaming, puerile, manipulated-to-the-max neo-brownshirts decide their beloved America — the one that’s only truly ever existed in John Wayne movies, by the way — is under socialistic siege, subsequently demonstrating their suddenly-uncontainable umbrage by throwing big-time, small-minded pissy fits at faux town hall meetings.

The brandishing of firearms outside such events is an especially nice touch. I can only guess what would have happened at an anti-war march had any of us toted an assault rifle. Prior to a U.S. government-sponsored Frankenfoods conference here in Sacramento six years back, our scared witless shitty council (“Remember Seattle!” they were warned constantly by cops and funds-bearing feds) hastily passed a raft of anti-constitutional local ordinances, one of which authorized the arrest of any persons in town (like, say, dissenters, maybe?) found with dirtballs in their pockets.

That’s what I said: dirtballs in people’s pockets.

Speaking of Congress, I’m now convinced a poll could show 137% of Americans strongly favoring something and yet if their desire didn’t happen to coincide with the wishes of Big Business (as, you know, it so often does), then once again out would pop the corporatocracy’s jump-puppets — also known in some circles as “representatives” and “senators” — to engage in so many contortions explaining why they couldn’t give us what we wanted they’d make Russian gymnasts proud. My suggestion? Replace them with Russian gymnasts. We still wouldn’t get what we wanted but at least the back flips would be more expertly done.

Impotence is another thing that’s got me, uh, down. (No, not that kind of impotence — not that I would even know what that’s like. Ever. OK, mostly. All right, then, fine, but at least I still have my memories. Er…what was I saying?) And not that you’ve ever asked yourself this question, but: Just what the hell are we supposed to do to change things?

Vote? (For those who deem this a viable solution, please see jump-puppets reference.)

Protest? Please don’t tell my longtime activist girlfriend this, but while she and I are out there standing on the street corner with seventeen other diehards holding signs and hooting and hollering against the latest outrage, I often feel like the powers-that-be are laughing at us, mocking us. Ignoring us. (Imagine how much worse it would be if they really were!) Actually, I’m not sure which is more deflating: Bush declaring us a focus group, or Obama proving it.

Another bummer is seeing the classic tactics of misdirection and scapegoating being employed to perfection. Sure, the great unwashed (and unemployed) expressed righteous anger when the corporatists in charge tanked the global economy only to be given no-strings-attached trillions more, but their nastiest vitriol has nonetheless been loosed on folks who are blameless (but far more accessible): those fortunate enough to still have jobs and/or houses, including relatives, neighbors and (former) friends.

I should know: I work for California’s teacher licensing agency (no doubt created by Marxist infiltrators who decided our state’s educators should be, well, educated; can you imagine?). Collectively, my fellow (unionized) government employees and I are now public enemy numero uno, personally responsible for everything from massive budget deficits to women with loose morals (actually, that’s one I wouldn’t mind taking credit for… if only I could remember how to go about it). We’re being furloughed three days monthly at fourteen percent less pay but that still isn’t enough: our pitchfork-bearing detractors want all of our heads, regardless the disastrous impact on public services.

That cackling you hear is from the über-corporatists who know full well that envy is a terrible thing to waste and thus play on this natural human frailty to convince millions that if their houses have burned down, the solution is not to go after who set them afire in the first place but demand that others run out and torch theirs, too.

Normally, I’d wrap things up here with some pithy suggestion, but I’m afraid I’m plain pithed off, uh, out. However, I will say, upon further reflection, there actually may be some merit to that whole setting-things-ablaze idea.

Especially if the flash point were centered, you know, somewhere on Wall Street.

First: It’s not really federal. Nor are there reserves. (Not many, anyway.) It is a system, however. (Well, a scam, actually, but those behind the 1913 Federal Reserve Act that birthed the Fed bypassed that identifier, for some reason.)

And, prey (that’s you), who backed the act?

Oh, just everyday folks with names like Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and Rothschild who, a century ago, joined forces to saddle the U.S. with a central bank that, naturally, they’d control, in turn giving them control over the country’s money supply.

Alas! If only our nation’s framers had been smart enough to anticipate a ploy like this and thus guard against it in the Constitution.

Um, turns out they were. Fresh off the colonies’ disastrous experiences with non-stop printing presses churning out worthless currency both before and during the revolution, the founding fathers made sure to constitutionally preclude both Congress and the states from issuing “bills of credit.” In other words, paper money. Silver and/or gold-backed coinage was to be the name of the game.

Creating the Fed, which comprises twelve private banks spread regionally throughout the U.S., was an end run around that, with the sleight-of-hand working this way: Congress authorizes interest-bearing IOUs (bonds and notes) to be sold to the Fed, which in turn gives Congress oodles of paper money created from thin air and backed by nothing, an amazing alchemical process authorized by, well, Congress.

Though a dozen banks are involved in the con, er, system, the head bank is and always has been the Fed’s New York branch. (Isn’t it a remarkable coincidence it was mainly the obscenely wealthy Big Apple banking interests that pushed the Fed’s creation in the first place?)

It’s obvious what’s in it for the bankers, but how about Congress? Well, our “representatives” get money whenever they want for whatever they want. This comes in handy for buying votes back home, uh, I mean, for serving their constituents, like agribusiness, Big Pharma, weapons manufacturers, etc. Oh, and also those in the banking industry who, if they screw up the economy by being greedy little pigheads, can be duly punished by being given trillions more faux dough scot-free by, who else?, Congress.

Let’s hope this never happens.

Interest off bonds isn’t the only perk for the Fed (or bankers in general). But don’t even get me started on fractional-reserve banking. Otherwise I’d have to tell you how a few folks with a soft spot for things like usury will get a charter, start a bank, take deposits and then start loaning “money” at a nine-to-one ratio based on the total of those deposits (now redefined as “reserves,” ninety percent of which are dubbed “excess” and thus, abracadabra, available for lending). That’s right: they’re now loaning dollars that don’t exist. A few strokes on the ol’ keyboard and, voila, instant money!

It gets better. Once those loans are repaid and come back to the bank as deposits in other accounts, then that money is used as the basis to issue more nine-to-one loans. And so on. Can you say “pyramid scheme,” boys and girls? This is why what bankers fear most are bank runs, when lots of customers at one time are audacious enough to actually demand their account balances in cash, money that is nowhere to be found because the vast majority of it exists only in electronic ledgers. This is the very moment the magic of making money from nothing disappears — shazam! — and the locks and chains on bank doors materialize — sa-lam! — overnight.

Of course, those who created the Fed devised an ingenious way to guard against runs. It’s called the “lender of last resort.” Know who that is? It’s you!

This brainstorm was one of the main reasons for establishing the Fed in the first place. The rich and powerful bankers, tired of pesky competition from other banks and the distasteful specter of having to pay for good avarice gone bad, decided it would be much better to institutionalize an ironclad way to protect their profits. It took a few years and some political chicanery, but with a complicit president and a duped Congress (oh why does this sound so familiar?), they finally hit the jackpot by legislatively securing the mechanism by which they could place the taxpayer squarely on the hook, I’m sorry, more strongly underpin the economy.

Aren’t you thrilled to know you’re the one lending fabulously wealthy individuals even more money to tank the economy and put you out of a job? Just asking.

But how, exactly, during these times when things are a little tight and you’re considering the pragmatism of fattening up Fido, do you lend any money at all, let alone trillions? Why, through the insidious tax called inflation, of course. See, once the government, hand-in-hand with the Fed, goes nuts and sells bonds by the trainloads thereby resulting in untold un-backed dollars being pumped into the economy, inflation kicks in and the less those dollars are worth. If this is not apparent now, perhaps it will come to mind the next time you hook the oxen up to your cash-laden trailer to go buy a loaf of bread.

So, if the dollar has nothing to support it (and it doesn’t), just what keeps this fiat money afloat? Two things: a) our unshakeable, bedrock confidence in it (uh-huh) and b) because we have to. “Legal tender” laws ensure, under threat of imprisonment, that we’ll use dollars whether we like it or not.

When the government does something like this (puts money into circulation without backing), it’s called “monetary policy.” If we do it, it’s called “counterfeiting.”

OK, that’s enough misery for now. Who needs more gloom and doom anyway, especially these dire days? There is one possible silver lining, however, to the disaster that is our current economy: If enough pain manifests, perhaps a clamor will arise to throw the Fed and its worthless, debt-based system out on its money-changing ear, thereby precipitating a return to real money, backed by gold and silver, as codified by this country’s founders. A long shot, true, but stranger things have happened. For instance, who ever thought the Bush administration would actually leave the White House? (Now if we could just get Dick Cheney to go back to his home planet…)

Beginning after the May 1969 civil uprising in Córdoba and lasting until 1983, an estimated 30,000 Argentines became desaparecidos, citizens “disappeared” by right-wing dictatorships that ruled Argentina with stinging cruelty. Of particular barbaric note were the “death flights” which entailed flinging Argentines from aircraft to plummet thousands of feet into the Atlantic Ocean or the Río de la Plata, the immense river abutting Buenos Aires.

Today, Buenos Aires hums, a terrific city full of warm people, grand architecture, wondrous food. Oh, and non-stop energy, too, especially evident every weekend night, starting around one o’clock in the morning and lasting well into the next day.

This all-night singing, shouting and laughing prompted me to ponder — pondering that typically started every weekend night somewhere around, oh, one o’clock in the morning.

I drowsily considered: Was such exuberance a natural celebratory reaction, subconscious or otherwise, to having survived unfathomable horror, a response supercharged even further by a deep-seated psychological desire to drive a figurative thumb into the eyes of the monsters who terrorized their country for fifteen hellish years, or…

Do they just really like to party?

Actually, many of the revelers weren’t even born when darkness blanketed their nation, so none of them could possibly remember it. Still, Argentina itself is beginning to speak, if yet only in whispers.

Sporadic graffiti in Buenos Aires ensure the victims aren’t forgotten. Sidewalk plaques fronting at least three buildings in town mark where and when abductions took place, listing the names of innocents ripped violently from their homes and lives inside.

Then there’s the Parque de la Memoria, Argentina’s first official memorial recognizing the nightmare. Dedicated in 2007, the 31-acre site sits beside the Río de la Plata whose silvery brown waters still conceal the bones of many desaparecidos.

I visited the park on a perfect South American spring day. Large banners, attached to a fence inside, bore black-and-white photographic portraits of hundreds of the repression’s victims. A date, static and ominous, sat below each name. Standing before the grainy images, I announced quietly, as an Argentine friend had suggested, “Presente,” then walked to the memorial nearby.

Four long walls form a giant zigzag (”designed as a gash, an open wound…,” says the park’s Web site) that angles symbolically toward the river. Victims’ names and ages are engraved here, grouped by year of disappearance. Most were in their teens, twenties or thirties when they were stolen to be tortured and killed. The oldest age I saw: 77. The youngest? Five months.

You can never get those evildoers too soon.

A park guide, Iván, told me the walls hold 9,000 names. Only 21,000 more to go. Enough space has been left to memorialize these unknowns — if identification is ever made. Not an easy task, for various reasons.

Some survivors fled Argentina, taking their awful knowledge with them. Reprisal fears have silenced others, while others silence themselves because they approved of the governments’ actions. In yet other instances, some citizens with pertinent information, especially those in small provincial towns, may never have heard of the national commission formed in 1983 to investigate and report on the abuses (which it did to a shocked Argentina in 1984). Or, if so, they’ve little interest in divulging information to any government, be it military or otherwise, given the track records.

The most horrifying reason that some desaparecidos will remain unidentified: Some entire families were erased by the state.

The cut runs so deep that even Argentines unaffected personally by the brutality have been reluctant to discuss it. Change is occurring, however. Though Argentina still has “a long way to walk,” Iván noted that some primary and secondary schools now teach about the repression. Other factors for the shift include the passage of time, “the fact that (people in the military) are starting to be judged for what they did…” and the open-mindedness of both Kirchner administrations (those of former president Néstor and current president Cristina Fernández), all hopeful developments supporting Iván’s assertion that Argentines finally are “losing their fear and…starting to talk openly about this. We have movies, TV shows…and now we have a Memory Park.”

Even after visiting the memorial, it was still impossible truly comprehending Argentina’s horror. Nothing approaching that magnitude, for example, has ever happened in the United States. But — what about outside its borders? What of those America has tortured and “disappeared” in places like Guantánamo Bay, Iraq and elsewhere? Does it really matter these were not neighbors or relatives, as was the case in Argentina? All humans deserve to live unmolested, no matter what resources they stand atop.

President-elect Barack Obama’s watchword is change. Well, as a U.S. citizen, here’s some change I could believe in: a full and open airing of the current administration’s militaristic misdeeds, followed by the appropriate prosecution of those responsible for same.

For as another weekend night in Buenos Aires would unfold alive with laughter and song, the message was (very loud and) clear: despite the pain, Argentina, by confronting its hideous legacy, had at last begun its recovery process. Conversely, America’s spirit remains sickened, poisoned by senseless war and the intolerable abuse of others. Perhaps only when we Americans fearlessly address the toxic actions of our own government can our nation’s soul also begin to heal, thereby making it possible for us, too, to celebrate unfettered our place in the sun.

Even if it’s at somewhere around, oh, one in the morning.

And, well, here I am, visiting the grand city of Buenos Aires, and just in time, too, to catch on Argentine TV the long, sad faces of investment banker after investment banker insisting a $700 billion giveaway to America’s richest was what must be done, had to be done, to save the U.S. economy. And here I also am just in time to see Congress members predictably scream there’d be a bailout over their dead bodies (hmm…) before they just as predictably rubber stamped that puppy.

Speaking of dogs, they love them here in Buenos Aires, a huge plus from where I stand although I do have to be careful where I step since the city’s residents aren’t keen on picking up their beloved pets’ end products which, for some reason, reminds me all over again of the bailout, a ghastly amount of steaming hot Fed fiat money steam shoveled to, and benefiting only, the avaricious jackals who gleefully stacked the deck of America’s house-of-cards economy as high as possible before even the lackiest of lackeys could no longer deny the flimsiness of the laughably-named “free market.”

They’re utterly shameless, these animals, still lecturing us on the marvelous benefits of unregulated capitalism ’cause, you know, it’s so good for us. Here’s World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy (per Reuters): “The current hurricane that has hit the financial markets must not distract the international community from pursuing greater economic integration and openness…”

Why mustn’t it? Well, because, as he so thankfully informs us, “[i]n a financial crisis and at a time of economic distress, in particular at a time of soaring food prices, what impoverished consumers desperately need is to see their purchasing power enhanced and not reduced.”

Touching, eh? His true concern lies with impoverished consumers.

And if you believe that, I’ve got some lovely mortgage-backed securities I’d like to show you.

At least history buffs are in luck these dismal days, since we’ve just witnessed the most balls-out, audacious looting of a society’s resources ever. In broad daylight, too, with hideous, rammed-through, in-the-bag legislation passed by a Congress so contemptuous of their in-name-only constituents that there they were, splashed all over the front page of the Buenos Aires Herald, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and a knot of others from their bipartisan den of thieves, laughing and grinning so wildly after having passed this monumental pile of dog shit (it’s one of today’s themes) that it looked like they’d all just taken a huge hit of nitrous oxide.

Well, we’ve all just taken something huge, too, but none of us are laughing and it really hurts to sit down.

I find it interesting being in Argentina during our collective buggering since Argentines know a thing or several billion about battered asse(t)s. Their country suffered a total economic meltdown at the beginning of this decade that kicked their formerly relatively well-off large middle class flush in its breadwinning breadbasket. However, a silver lining emerged: The crisis led to the country defaulting on, and then getting out from under, its crushing debt “owed” to both the (D.C.-based) World Bank and International Monetary Fund, a couple of truly fine organizations for those who think neo-feudalism has a lot going for it.

In 2006, Argentina paid off all loans to the predatory entities. A sizeable part of the assistance came from Hugo Chávez, who bought Argentina bonds. (Just a hunch, but something tells me that’s not going to happen in our case.)

Though the catalysts are different, we’re in for the same ride. Don’t even think it’ll end with the $700 billion. Free market leeches don’t stop. They won’t stop. They can’t stop. It’s in their (cold) blood; they are addicts, they got a (Dow) jones goin’ on. And like addicts, they will steal every dollar they can to feed their habits, and then come back for more.

And also like addicts, they (gasp) lie, too! Here’s Fannie Mae’s former CEO, Daniel Mudd (per Charles Duhigg of the International Herald Tribune):

“Almost no one expected what was coming. It’s not fair to blame us for not predicting the unthinkable.”

And no one thought planes might be flown into buildings, either. Jesus! Is this guy kidding? Anyone smarter than broccoli knew the bloodbath was imminent. Admittedly, this would leave out brilliant sorts like, say, George W. Bush, but he’s never really been in charge anyway (just act Dick Cheney, if you can find him), so he doesn’t count.

Who does count (our looted dough) are the vultures that have ripped us off blind for years via their puppet boy president with dandy little revenue-generating items like two senseless wars, insane tax cuts, the Medicare/Big Pharma drug ripoff, no-bid contracts…

But that’s kid stuff compared to this grand gambit, a deliberately manufactured crisis that starts the kill for keeps. The scheme to starve the government beast to feed the fascist monster stands naked now in all its power-grabbing, future-stealing glory. Say goodbye to Social Security. Say goodbye to Medicare. Say goodbye to infrastructure repair. Say goodbye to public education, whatever shreds of it remain. With their incessant mantra about the wonders of privatization, the moneychangers have done their unlevel best for years now to condition the populace for the biggest wealth-transferring heist of all-time, and every ilk to follow.

I will say that except for a few broccoli-brained Americans (my apologies for twice now disparaging a fine vegetable), it does seem most of our fellow citizens are hip to, and mightily pissed about, the reaming just administered. But — no matter. Too bad. Tough luck. Oh well. The parasites in charge couldn’t care less about our pathetic moral victory. With secret scorn, they lecture us with the best damn fake concern you’ll ever see that if we don’t assume the no-time-for-lubrication position right this instant and take what’s good for us, the “system will fail.”

Well, guess what? It’s failing now. Since March alone, we’ve been strong-armed for over a trillion bucks of funny money (the $700 billion theft, $85 billion to AIG, $200 billion to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and $29 billion worth of “help” to J. P. Morgan & Co. to buy Bear Stearns) and its only effect and that of other certain larceny to come (other than further enriching produce-nothing vipers) will be to delay the inevitable, thus ensuring our pain cuts even deeper. More banks will fail, more savings will be stolen, more companies will go bust, more pensions will disappear, and unemployment, inflation and homelessness will skyrocket.

The only questions are: How profusely will we bleed, and how long will the hemorrhaging last?

Does Argentina’s experience offer guidance? Since its 2002 default, its annual growth rate has averaged over eight percent, and a visitor to the center of bustling Buenos Aires would see few hints of the nation’s recent horrors. Nonetheless, most Argentines would tell you their country is not the same, having taken a gigantic hit from which it may never fully recover. On the positive side, as a whole, South America’s collective social services-suffocating IMF debt, per YES! magazine, has nosedived from $42.9 billion in 2004 to $108 million in 2007.

Can any of this help us better survive our own country’s current palm-greased slide into hell, or assist in predicting what may rise from the ashes? Who knows? What is known, however, is that the reversal of fortunes hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Meeting with Argentina President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner the other day here in Buenos Aires, Chile President Michelle Bachelet, per the Buenos Aires Herald, noted:

“I find it ironic that countries that used to tell us what to do (on the economic front) should now be facing a crisis (of such proportions). Anyway, our countries (Latin America) are strong enough to (stand up for themselves) and fight the crisis off.”

Bully for you, señoras presidentes, and a hard-earned touch of touché, too. With our current meltdown fomented by the same species of wealth-sucking vampires who happily bled most of your continent to within an inch of its life, the U.S.A.’s payback bitch has, indeed, arrived. (I knew I could squeeze in another dog reference.)

Just one question, por favor: Might either of you have a hankie handy?

So far be it from me, at a time like this, to ignorantly chime in with unhelpful negativity about the $700 billion plan by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson to fund the government purchase of oodles of “toxic debt” from companies that shoulda known better, even if its cost, when added to previous bailouts of $29 billion (Bear Stearns), $200 billion (Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) and $85 billion (AIG), shoves the total tab for the American taxpayer past a trillion dollars for 2008 alone. (The silver lining: there are only three months left!)

I take solace in knowing it’s for the good of the country, and am comforted by Bush’s assurance that our government is “responding with unprecedented measures,” although my more pessimistic friends (like, I think, all of them) say that’s exactly what worries them.

I’m also encouraged by the honesty Paulson displayed the other day when he told the Senate Banking Committee: “When you ask about taxpayers being on the hook: Guess what, they’re already on the hook. They got put on the hook by the system we have…”

Well, even I know we’re on the hook. We’ve always been on the hook.

The “system” to which Paulson refers could only be the Federal Reserve System, birthed in 1913 by the Federal Reserve Act, legislation driven by a few fabulously wealthy banking families/interests seeking to monopolize riches and power (who can blame them, really?) but not enamored with the yucky mess that sometimes occurs with good bets gone bad. (Personally, I’m enamored with Good Girls Gone Wild, but I regress, whenever possible.) Thus, the act’s backers made sure the American taxpayer was designated as what is known as the “lender of last resort,” which is financial-speak for “hook-ee,” which I suppose, then, would make those responsible for our current mess “hookers.” (Which sounds about right, if you know what I mean.)

In other words, for 95 years now, all taxpayer fleecings, I’m sorry, government bailouts, have been legal.

I know that makes me feel better.

Now, another concern I’ve heard voiced, in addition to the familiar ones about saving the private sector’s bacon at public expense, is that loading the economy with a trillion-plus bucks made from thin air (a really neat Fed trick) will help goose inflation and push the dollar lower n’ the IQ of Bush/John McCain/Sarah Palin. (Pick one, or even all three; it won’t affect the cumulative much.) But, really, who cares? If that dough comes a cropper, the Fed can always print more!

Because, here’s the deal: Our country is in deep trouble and we must act now; we can’t afford to waste time on silly things like discussing facts. (Or on establishing oversight either, as Paulson demands his proposed bailout be free of review “by any court of law or any administrative agency.”)

Again, I don’t understand how any of the above squares with the long-avowed GOP belief in free market principles, nor do I purport to comprehend the benefits that such massive bailouts will provide all, er, some, uh, a handful of Americans. I only know that people like Paulson and the rest of the folks privy to how our economy truly works are doing all they can to make sure tons of our money ends up right where they want it to.

Hmm. So maybe I really do get it in the end.

As do we all.

“We Americans are either too incapable, or too dysfunctional, to help ourselves right now. Like drug addicts or the mentally ill who refuse treatment, we need our friends to intervene. So remember us as we were in our better moments, and take action to save us — and the world — from ourselves.”

Wimpy-sounding, eh? I thought so, too. And I should know, since I wrote something similar three years ago in a piece called, interestingly enough, “Dear Fellow Citizens of the World…” Addressing our “non-American brothers and sisters,” I said:

“[D]o not enable the U.S., for you know that wantonly destructive alcoholic relative who absolutely refused to get help until everyone in your family finally cut off all avenues of assistance? Well, just try thinking of America that way; you know, sort of like a big version of your drunken, out-of-control Aunt Lurline, except with a few more aircraft carriers and nuclear warheads and a pathological urge to use them every so often.”

This isn’t to point out I scooped the esteemed Wolf (though I guess I just now have). Rather, it’s to assert that the long-cherished self-image we Americans have of being self-sufficient, mega-brave world-savers is dead as a goose (step). Given, especially, our inability/unwillingness to stop the criminal Bush regime, we’ve forfeited all claims to having the right stuff. Sure, we have a lot of right-wing stuff, but that’s kinda not the same.

When did we change? Did we change? Believers in the righteous American typically cite the heroics of U.S. soldiers during World War II. Whether that really was the “good war,” I’ll defer. I do know, however, that when, years ago, I peered up at the bluffs overlooking Normandy’s Omaha Beach and saw remnants of the German guns right there, it was nearly impossible comprehending anyone surviving D-Day. Thousands didn’t, but more kept coming anyway until a beachhead was forged, the beginning of the end for Hitler and the Nazis.

So, yeah, that took some guts.

Contrast that with the video I saw recently of an American troop in Iraq calmly firing on a taxi, apparently after his buddies had just shot up another vehicle. The narrating soldier breathlessly counts at least five “kills,” gloating: “Yeah, that’s how we do things in the sniper world.” A background voice yells, “Fuck you, Haji!” Granted, I don’t know the incident’s specific context, but I certainly know the overall one: the war is illegal. Therefore, regardless the “provocation,” every person in Iraq who has been killed by a U.S. soldier, or died as a result of the occupation/invasion, has been murdered — with the blood squarely traceable to America’s hands.

So now, we just spill guts.

Nonetheless, I’m sure if you look really, really hard, you may find some folks who consider those troops, and tons more like ‘em, to be real Americans, cut from the same cloth as the super-patriot archetype so frequently portrayed and firmly established decades ago by John Wayne. I wonder, though, how many of them would know Wayne never served in the military, receiving not one but two deferments during World War II.

In other words, his persona was an illusion. And so, apparently, is the one we Americans have collectively assigned ourselves since childhood, that of liberty’s uncompromising defender who, upon sensing the slightest hint of mortal danger to the Constitution, would, along with a nation full of equally-aroused fellow citizens, do whatever necessary to right the ship.

Don’t look now, but that ship has sunk.

Where were we, the people, as it foundered? Certainly, some fought desperately to save it, but it wasn’t enough as myriad others — paralyzed by fear, anesthetized by American Idol, cowed by a metastasizing police state, divided by media demagogues or busy at the mall — remained immobile. Or, worse, taunted those who wouldn’t.

We Americans can proclaim our toughness all we want, but action speaks louder than, well, inaction. We are inert, impotent. Thus, whether via “targeted government-led sanctions against the U.S. by civilized countries,” as Wolf suggests, or a nation-sized noogie vigorously applied by fed-up lands until Uncle Sam cries uncle, we need assistance reclaiming America from its ruling thugs.

It’s bizarre thinking one need no longer wonder how Hitler could have methodically installed the murderous machinery that fueled his insane fascism while Germans just stood by and watched, a madness that America, and others, finally helped stop.

Now, can the world stop ours?

Clearly, socialistic schemes like this are a direct threat to the American way of life, for who else but an anti-democratic, manipulative low-life like Chávez would give people something for nothing just because it’s, like, the right thing to do? Please! Everyone in a free country, or America even, knows people improve their lousy little lives only when they start taking personal responsibility seriously. If Costa Ricans want better eyesight, then instead of lazin’ around under pineapple trees all day long they oughtta go to medical school and learn how to operate on their own damn selves. When I get a splinter you think I whine and say: “Oh, please, please, please, Mr. Dictator, fly me to your decrepit little country and take my sliver out, free of charge?” NO! I go to the country club and ask one of my doctor friends there to remove it, just like everyone else.

The article again: “Under (the program), Venezuelan doctors travel to Costa Rica to examine (Costa Ricans) with eye trouble. Patients with cataracts or pterygium — a benign growth on the eye — qualify for a trip to Venezuela.” An opthamologist explains that “cataracts and pterygium are common in Costa Rica, in part because of the strong sun.”

This is exactly my point about taking charge of one’s own life. Hey, Einstein-itos, here’s a thought: Stay outta el sol! Didja ever think about only going out at night? Or working graveyard? Or working period? Just like I would do if, you know, mummy hadn’t left me that sizeable trust fund.

There’s more: “The Venezuelan government pays for the charter airplane, the surgery and housing and food during the patients’ 10-day stay in Venezuela. (Costa Ricans) need only pay the $26 Costa Rican airport tax.”

Hmph. If Helpin’ Hugo were really sincere, he’d eat that departure tax, too. Whassa matter, Huey, keepin’ some el dough-o for yourself-o for a bunch o’ new red camisos, or maybe more copies of that Venezuelan constitution your nannified citizens just love to sit around and read? You’d never catch industrious Americans doing that, no sir-ree, not even back when we had a constitution.

My favorite: “Each patient also receives a goodie bag with pajamas, underwear, slippers, deodorant, soap, shampoo and talcum powder.”

Goodie bag?? How low can Chávez go? Even lower, apparently, than last winter’s tawdry little stunt, when, according to former Massachusetts Congressman Joe Kennedy* whose non-profit corporation provides energy assistance to 250,000 poor people in fifteen U.S. states and the District of Columbia, Chávez was the only one among every “oil company…, OPEC nation and…major crude oil exporter in the world” contacted by Kennedy to respond — by discounting $100 million worth of heating oil.*

So, what do we get this year? That’s right, the oldest trick of the tyrant trade: free toiletries.

Monster!

Poorly-sighted Costa Ricans benefiting from Chávez’ largesse may be blind to his true commie colors, but not so Venezuela’s neighbor. Seems a laptop found in the jungle last March proved irrefutably Chávez had given FARC revolutionaries, I mean, terrorists, $300 million to fight the death squad-supporting, check it, American-friendly government of Colombia. Sure, it turned out later the story was utterly fabricated but, still, it doesn’t diminish how damning it would’ve been if it had been true.

Doe-eyed Chávez supporters even unbelievably paint the silver-tongued despot as some sort of peacemaker, citing his indispensable assistance last January in getting FARC to release two long-held hostages. Well, if Hugo’s such a miracle worker let’s see him mediate my divorce. Which, come to think of it, reminds me of at least one person FARC can keep in the jungle for several years, or until the statue of limitations on spousal abuse expires, whichever comes last. (My attorney tells me that was a joke. OK.)

Chavez is shameless when it comes to advancing his subversive agenda of compassion and fair play. Articulate, funny, charismatic, innovative, popular, intelligent — hell, if we’d wanted someone like that directing our policies, you think we’d have elected George W. Bush, even though we didn’t?

Twice?

And let’s not forget impressionable American kids who might read about Chávez’ “good” deeds — that is, if they could read. Do you want them thinking it’s acceptable for the leader of a nation with eleven percent of our oil to squander revenues from same on wild extravagances like, say, free education and universal health care, as if people are actually entitled to those things? Remember: Dealings, not “feelings” (yecch!), make America the great corporation, er, country it is today.

Free eye care for Costa Ricans, cheap heating oil for Americans, peacemaking efforts in Colombia — unchecked, Chávez’ leftist namby-pambyism squarely targets that greatest of American values, the profit motive. Kill that and you’ve killed profit — and that, people, is as un-American as it gets.

Copyright © 2008 Mark Drolette. All rights reserved.

* As reported by Maria Bartiromo.

* * This article was published originally in the free weekly Because People Matter, Sacramento, CA

“How so?” I asked my longtime friend. “There’s tons of stuff to riff on. What about those photos of Bush appearing blotto drunk at the Olympics?”

“Hmph. That’d be like sending up Hitler’s breezy side.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s severe.”

“So are Bush and his murderous cohorts. They savage the world and burn the Constitution, yet what do we get? Sanctimonious editorials about John Edwards’ peccadillo. Please!”

“Well,” I said, playing devil’s advocate, “the media did condemn Larry Craig for his airport restroom follies.”

“Yeah, but most of that outrage missed the boat by focusing on how Craig floats his. Who cares how rocks are gotten off? No, his and ilk’s real transgression is the hypocritical vote-getting anti-gay agenda they cynically press, until, you know, one of them gets caught with his pants down.”

“Ha! At least you can still turn a phrase,” I chuckled.

“Yeah, well, that and signing a loyalty oath’ll get me a cup of swill at a Halliburton-built detention facility. One thing’s for sure: I’ll end up in one sooner rather than later if I write what I’m really thinking.”

“What’s that?”

He furtively scanned the café and then whispered: “I want us to lose. Big-time.”

“Huh?”

“Whatever next all-forsaken place the American imperialist war machine decides to pulverize into a fine radioactive dust — whether Iran or the oil-rich plains of the planet Gruptar — I want the U.S to get its ass kicked.”

I gasped. “You realize what you’re saying, right?”

“That more U.S. soldiers would have to die for that to happen?” he said, sadly. “Yeah, I get it. But their fates, and those of untold others, were sealed by the jingoistic bloodlust of millions of American yahoos who mindlessly exhorted Bushco’s slaughter in Iraq from the trumped-up beginning. Sure, the public’s hinky now but that’s mainly because gas prices rocket ever skyward. No, not until America suffers an undisputed, all-out, thoroughly humiliating military defeat is there a chance its global rampage will finally be abated. ‘Course, there might not be a human left alive after such a confrontation but that’s another matter.”

“Wow, that’s not very funny,” I said.

“Nor are a million dead innocents or the transformation of the cradle of civilization into a toxic waste dump. Or that such madness hardly dents the myopic American collective psyche, the same appalling apathy that now allows Vietnam to be retroactively recast as a righteous cause that should have been doggedly pursued until the freedom-bestowing U.S. military could ultimately produce an honorable victory that, in truth, could only exist in the reptilian brains of Bush and his neocon masters, an Orwellian reworking of history that first gained traction during the 2004 faux presidential campaign and steamrolls today with the glorification of the GOP’s standard-bearing buffoon, John ‘Drop ‘Em If Ya Got ‘Em’ McCain, as some untouchable hero.”

“I get all that. But what about the grieving families of U.S. military dead?”

“I feel bad for them, sure. But,” said Kram as he carefully looked around again, “here’s the bloody bottom line: anyone stupid and savage enough to join the military now to willingly participate in one mammoth war crime deserves everything he gets.”

“Man, I hate to see you like this,” I replied. “Plus, that sort of talk could result in your property being confiscated, as per Bush’s July 17, 2007, executive order, for ‘threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq, or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.’”

“Why do you think I’m wearing this fake beard?”

“I was wondering about that,” I replied. “But isn’t the wig a bit much?”

“All in preparation, my friend.”

“For what?”

“Undercover research on my new book, inspired, interestingly enough, by the aforementioned Craig: As America Goes Down the Toilet, a Between-the-Stalls Peek at Gay-Bashing Fascists Who Do the Same in Same.”

I laughed. “A bit unwieldy, perhaps, but it’s great to see you’ve not left the funny business altogether.”

Kram smiled. “No, I guess not. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to Google the floor plan for the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.”

“Whatever for?”

“That’s where the GOP holds its convention next week. The men’s room there should be a gold mine.”

Dolton was seated opposite me at my parents’ golden wedding anniversary celebration. Why, oh why, hadn’t they gotten divorced at some point?

Teeth gritted, I plunged. “What makes you think there’ll be one?”

“Told ya!” he cackled to my sister Apolitica as he jabbed her, hard, in the ribs. As much as I loved her, she’d forfeited all potential sympathy years back with two words: “I do.”

Her beloved was just warming up.

“I suppose now, Mark, you’re gonna lecture us about rigged voting. Hey, little Dolt,” he snorted to my unfortunate ten-year-old nephew sitting beside him, “seen yer uncle’s tinfoil hat lyin’ around anywhere?”

“Though America’s fixed elections are certainly a worthy topic,” I replied evenly, “I’m not talking about that. I’m referring to all the executive orders and legislation your heroes in the White House have put in place that make it a cinch, if they so choose, to declare martial law, lock up dissenters and thus dispense with even faux balloting.”

He looked puzzled. “Who’d wanna vote for their enemies?”

“What?”

“‘Foe balloting.’ That makes no sense.”

He had me there. I flashed my sister a quick look but she was already slinking away, dragging a bewildered Dolton, Jr., behind her while I calculated the odds of successfully performing hari-kari with a cocktail weenie pick.

“Besides just being plain crazy,” Dolt pressed, “there’s an obvious problem with your hallucination: There’s nowhere to house thousands of traitors. Oh, excuse me: ‘dissenters,’” he snickered.

“Try again,” I replied. “In January 2006, Halliburton’s then-subsidiary KBR was handed a $385 million government contract to, per a crowing press release, build ‘temporary detention and processing’ facilities… ‘in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.’”

“Good!” he exclaimed. “That’ll make those terrorists think twice about rushing the border.”

“You mean the hordes of Canadians breathlessly poised to overrun America with their deadly hockey sticks?”

“Hockey sticks??” he gasped, horrified. “They really will stop at nothing!”

Or, perhaps I could choke myself with a dinner roll.

“Look, Dolt, don’t you get it?” I asked pointlessly. “Forget the ‘emergency influx of immigrants’ ruse. What’s this ‘rapid development of new programs’? The swift incarceration of thousands of Americans protesting the imposition of martial law, perhaps?”

“Man!” he guffawed. “You’re even more paranoid than I thought.”

“I wish I were imagining things. Unfortunately, horrors like domestic detention facilities are but one verifiable piece of an all-encompassing, all-intrusive system Bushco has methodically installed to take unchallenged control of America instantly.”

“Name another.”

“OK. You like your co-worker Ahmed, right?”

“He’s not bad, I guess — you know, for an Iraqi. I even loaned him five bucks the other day,” Dolt beamed, proud of his hefty contribution toward cultural tolerance.

“Then you’d better hope his views of what the Bushies are doing to his country are in line with theirs. Otherwise, under Dubya’s executive order of July 17, 2007, your and Apolitica’s property is ripe for confiscating if those five dollars are construed in any way as ‘financial… support for’… ‘an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq, or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.’”

“Damn,” he mumbled. “I knew he looked shifty.”

“That’s your concern? Ahmed’s suddenly suspect appearance, rather than an insanely vague executive order?”

Dolt glared. “Your anti-Americanism, Mark, blinds you to seeing that anyone could be a terrorist. You just never know and, unfortunately, there’s no machine that can look into people’s hearts.”

“How ’bout under their clothes?”

“Huh?”

“In June, the Transportation Security Administration installed body scanner devices in ten major U.S. airports that produce, essentially, naked photographs of travelers.”

He brightened. “Maybe I should call and apply as a scanner operator, heh-heh.”

“Knock yourself out. Just pray TSA hasn’t out-sourced its call center to, say, India, because under the new FISA bill, any message you send to, or receive from, overseas is fair game for the government, warrant or probable cause be damned. I’ll bet Apolitica would love to hear that tape played in court.”

He looked around quickly. “Well, um, they, uh — so what?” he stammered. “No one can be arrested for what they’re thinking.”

“If the pending Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act becomes law, banish that thought from your mind, as well as many others.” I refrained from noting he had a clear leg up on the process. “This bill is thought-crime codified, establishing a national commission to provide ‘legislative recommendations’ for stopping those peskily ubiquitous homegrown terrorists from, among other things, ‘developing and spreading within the United States’… ‘the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs.’”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Not much, I guess, other than it’s so broadly and absurdly written that anyone at a demonstration, for example, could be deemed a terrorist.”

“You mean,” he said, smiling slowly, “like all those ones you’ve attended? I think I’ll call my senator tomorrow to push that bill. Unlike certain America haters I know, I believe in doing everything possible to defeat evildoers.”

“Why wait? Why not instead ask your boss if he’s one of the 23,000 FBI-deputized private industry members of ‘InfraGard’ who, according to Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive, preferentially ‘receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does…’ If so, then maybe you, too, could attend InfraGard meetings like that at which one participant reported he and others were told by Homeland Security and the FBI that ‘when — not if — martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted.’ Does that not get your attention?”

“Absolutely! It sounds like an even better gig than eyeballing nudie shots of airline passengers, uh, I mean, performing confidential inspections in the name of national security. OK, you two, let’s go!” he said to my sister and nephew returning to the table.

“You’re leaving?” Apparently, there was a God.

“Sorry to ruin your day, but I gotta help my boss install a new grill over at The Sloppy Burger.”

Hmm. “Hey, Dolt, do you think after you two hook that thing up, you’ll eventually end up cooking burgers on it?”

“Boy, you are nutty,” he smirked. “Of course! Why would anyone go to all the trouble to put something in place and then not use it?”

Indeed.

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.

— Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

I’d sit in front of the TV for hours, welded to my recliner, mindlessly clicking through channels. My then-wife occupied the couch, reading. Yes, it was quite the life.

Politics-wise, I was fuming, frequently decrying, well, everything. But if asked to expound, I could only sputter and shake. I could not debate intelligently. I was not informed.

Then, near decade’s beginning, the world changed — forever. The Giants blew a 5-0 lead in the sixth game of the World Series and dropped the finale the next day. (Whoops, sorry. Wrong trauma.)

Then: 9/11. I bought an American flag and, like a true patriot, hung it proudly on my wall at work. When we bombed Afghanistan, I was all for it.

But not long afterward, my head nearly spun from my neck when I heard Bush swear Saddam Hussein was the real problem. This was so monumentally absurd it vaporized my ennui. I began to dig.

I read, in a letter to the editor, of the Project for the New American Century. Disbelieving at first, I horrifyingly discovered PNAC’s arrogant nutball members were serious about their imperialistic ambitions, and I reeled, heartsick, as I saw White House policy meticulously following their plans.

What, personally, could I do to stop this sure train wreck in the offing? After all, I was a patriot. My country needed me!

I researched, read and researched some more. I went to rallies. Demonstrations. I marched, stood on street corners and held signs. I went to town hall meetings, attended talks, signed petitions. I pleaded with people, argued with co-workers. I fired off impassioned e-mails to my representatives.

I began writing facts-packed essays for the Internet, eventually becoming a freelancer for “hard” publications. Meanwhile, missiles flew into Baghdad.

The flag came down from my cubicle wall.

The Constitution’s deliberate dismantling continued. Though far from a fan, I joined the anybody-but-Bush crowd and issued bubbly columns promoting John Kerry.

My chirpiness evaporated on November 2, 2004, when I saw an(other) “election” stolen. Without fair balloting, America was doomed. I fantasized about leaving it. Impossible: I was married, had a mortgage, blah, blah, blah…

March 2005: I caught a break. Divorce was requested by my aforementioned then-wife (the third, and hopefully last, in a series; yes, my slow learning encompasses several categories). We sold the house. Suddenly, I was unencumbered and had the means to flee. I chose Costa Rica. Now, here I am.

During my move’s three-year run-up, I occasionally wrote of my intentions. Flak came from all sides. Some questioned my patriotism.

That’s OK. I question it, too. After seeing love-of-country soullessly manipulated by war-profiteering “leaders” loyal only to their bottom lines, I’ve had my fill of flag-waving.

I’ve also been chided for not staying and fighting, or for “only” writing in protest. OK, I’ll bite: What perfect form should resistance take? Aye, but there’s the rub, for my detractors invariably prove as clueless as I when it comes to offering the bulls-eye plan by which we shall “take our country back.”

Absent, then, a surefire solution to save our republic, how about in this benighted interim we all do what we can? Frankly, I view America’s demise as inevitable. But, hey, I could be wrong (and hope to hell I am). One can never predict the ripples any single effort may generate.

I write. It’s what I do best. (Watch it, buster.) I can do it just as well from outside the U.S. as within. Besides, what’s my alternative: not write? Or try to be something I’m not, like an organizer or a leader or (more fantastic yet) a decent husband? If, for some, writin’ ain’t fightin’, so be it, but I well remember it was a letter to the editor that provided my first illumination.

Perhaps, then, in some miniscule way, my offering, as imperfect as it surely is, can be the crack that lets the light in for someone else.

“FREEDOM HAS A TASTE THOSE WHO HAVEN’T FOUGHT FOR IT WILL NEVER KNOW.”

I had to guess:

Butterscotch? Chocolate? Banana? (My favorite! Gimme two scoops of freedom, please, with liberal — sorry — lots of sprinkles.)

OK, so maybe the guy knows better, considering his he-man vehicle also sported military insignia and here I was, a lowly peace lover who, really, should have been thankful just to occupy the same world he and his military kin have helped make safe for, you know, virulent anti-Americanism.

Don’t misread me. While I’m not keen on the military, I am on the Constitution, and one thing it says (or said, before it was cut into iddy widdy pieces) is that it was, in part, “ordain[ed] and establish[ed]” to “provide for the common defense…”

Anymore, however, with neo-imperialism all the rape, er, rage, America’s $1.4 trillion military outlay (for fiscal year 2009, per War Resisters League) isn’t about common defense; rather, it’s uncommonly offensive.

Ditto the bumper sticker, with its smug implication that only soldier types truly understand what liberty means, thereby leaving us oblivious civilians to wonder what the fightin’s really all about. The least we can do, then, I suppose, in our wimpy naiveté, is — all together now! — “support the troops.”

Here’s an idea: How about supporting them by not senselessly sending them a-warring to begin with? One couldn’t have found a larger group pleading that very case than we millions who desperately protested the Iraq disaster before it commenced. Every assertion of ours has long been proven true. Yet we’re the ones who don’t get it?

Contrast this up-front awareness with the eighty-five percent of U.S. troops in Iraq who, when polled in February 2006 (Zogby International), still believed Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11, and tell me who knows what. Funny how the so-in-tune military, possessing the unique skinny on the flavor of freedom, makes no effort to dissuade its very own from “fighting for it” under utterly false pretenses.

Then again, if I were the self-aggrandizing collective goon for the Halliburtons, Lockheed Martins and Exxons of the world, why would I? What’s prosecuting one gigantic war crime when it means continued bazillions for your own never-ending expansion, especially when all that’s required to placate your corporate masters is to gleefully blow shit up (and murder myriad innocents, too, but: so?) just so they can rebuild it? (Or better yet, get no-bid contracts to not rebuild it?)

And if you can perpetuate the whole lethal deal by belaboring the surefire glorious warrior shtick, well, carry on, pilgrim. Only commies (yawn) would dare denigrate the sacred U.S. military.

Still, for argument’s sake, let’s say the bumper sticker owner and his uniformed buddies are solely qualified to know the taste of freedom. Even so, in light of a mega-bloated military slavishly servile to a coterie of neocon whackjobs obsessed with cementing ever-greater global corporate profits and implementing more anti-constitutional horrors like the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (goodbye, habeas corpus!)¹ and the still-pending Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (hello, thought-crime!), I can certainly tell you how the lack of freedom is flavored.

It’s bitter — and extremely hard to swallow.

1. In a sign that miracles really do exist, the Supreme Court restored the writ of habeas corpus on June 12, 2008, after this article was written.

We were stared at. We were flipped off. Some yahoo leaning out his window spat at us something unintelligible but assuredly inane. (You know, sorta like what you’d hear at a Bush press conference.)

It was a lonely feeling opposing the war then. One almost had to whisper to ascertain if others likewise reviled the surefire fiasco-in-the-making since, the week of the invasion, eighty percent of Americans drooled over “shock-and-awe.”

So now, as I head north again, this time to start my new life in Costa Rica (yes, I know Central America’s the other direction: I’m visiting family near Seattle first; sheesh!), two-thirds of Americans say they’re against the war.

But as a famous reptile once said: So? Our opinions matter not. Admittedly, ruling class trivialization of the desires of the great unwashed is nothing new. However, whereas Marie Antoinette took an entire four words to sum up her contempt for her benighted subjects, Dick Cheney named that ‘tude in but one.

Give the creature his due: His monosyllabic dismissal of what the American citizenry (now) thinks of his and his imperialism-loving buddies’ stinking war succinctly expresses the neocon mindset. Like any in-charge bunch, they’re wholly impressed with themselves: they’re the ones with the smarts, they’re the ones with the balls, they’re the forward thinkers before whom we rabble should gratefully prostrate ourselves for being saved from silly ideas like, say, giving peace a chance.

It’s almost too much for me to bear. Sorry: it is too much for me to bear. Thus, my decision in May 2005 to flee and now — finally — after a methodical three-year process, I bid good riddance to living under a fascistic government as surreally soulless as it is innately insane.

Friends say, “You must be excited!”

Not really. Tired is more like it. It’s been a lot of grinding. I assume excited comes later.

Really, though, what I mainly am is sad. Sad I felt compelled to leave my native country after it became painfully clear my opinion (read: “vote”) made zero impact on the whole rotten shebang.

What renders me most melancholy, however, arises from the most personal: While I am powerless over what Bushco does, it is entirely my choice to leave those dearest to me. Being the fine stunted adult I am, I find accepting sole responsibility for causing pain (especially mine) rather distasteful.

I am willingly leaving many friends, most of whom I may never see again.

I am deliberately leaving my hometown, a lovely place I like very much.

I am intentionally leaving my girlfriend, a woman with whom I’ve shared a relationship so unexpectedly delicious, I’ve been careful not to ruin it by proposing. (I’ve had three marriages. And three divorces. Conclusion: It was time for Plan B.) She plans to visit me but — will we drift apart? Living 3,000 miles from one another can have that effect.

An excruciating parting blow came on March 11, when I had to say farewell to my beloved golden retriever, Doctor, forever. He’d fended off skin tumors for years, but they’d finally gone inside and done their hideous work. Now my beautiful boy is going with me to Costa Rica — in a box. Already, I’m planning a summer return to Sacramento to take his surviving older sister, Carolina, who continues living with my ex, for more walkies.

Some things I can’t say goodbye to for good just yet.

“It’s brave what you’re doing,” friends also say.

That’s kind, but I don’t feel brave. What I do feel is wildly lucky to be able to leave a country whose actions disgust me, weirdly fortunate my aforementioned then-wife opened the door to all this when she declared our moribund marriage officially dead. Weeks later, we sold our house at market’s peak. My half of the ridiculously high proceeds allowed me to buy property in Costa Rica, where I obtained legal residency with ease and had a house built not with ease (a long story, but it’s in the book; actually, it is the book).

I also don’t feel courageous because, rather than retiring outright as I’d originally planned, I instead took a one-year leave of absence from work, providing a) me with more options (including retiring anyway in twelve months) and b) America with enough time for its next appointed president, after the end of the current quadrennial dogma-and-phony show, to heroically rescue the Constitution from being totally annihilated by the country’s democracy-hating corporate masters. (It’s possible “b” is a tad overly optimistic.)

So, brave? Hardly. I caught some breaks, made a decision and carried it through.

Costa Rica has its problems, for sure. But what it doesn’t have is a military, nor has it had for almost six decades. The effect on Costa Ricans of long foregoing an army to free up funds for other things, like health care and education, is palpable.

Critics assert Costa Rica might wish to prioritize other items, like, say, infrastructure upkeep. Potholes, some capable of swallowing cars whole, are ubiquitous and could arguably be the national symbol.

I see it differently. A government unable or unwilling to make even basic repairs is also less likely to be concerned with tracking my every move, one reason I feel noticeably freer in Costa Rica than I do in the States. I relish being allowed to just be, a sense of liberty I’ve not experienced in America for far too long.

For me, then, I can’t not go.

But that still doesn’t make it easy.

Sometime in the near future (if we’re lucky), the Senate will pass the long-needed “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act” (VRHTPA). Happily, the bill breezed through the House on a 404-06 vote and, once it clears Congress’ upper chamber, will be signed into law by our brave president. (No, not Dick Cheney; the other guy.)

Vital to national security, VRHTPA will help eliminate terrorism from fomenting here in our hollowed homeland. How? By stopping domestic evil-doers right where terrorism begins: in the mind.

Predictably, rubber-spined liberals will cry this is George Orwell’s “thought-crime” come true. Come on! Alarmist thinking like this is dangerous. Truth be told, it’s downright criminal.

Please, dear reader: Ignore those who hysterically insist the terrorism threat to America is grossly overblown, that it’s a cynical ploy by the military-industrial/energy/corporate media complex that truly runs our government to induce tattletale paranoia. Then?

Turn those suspicious bastards in.

Evocative of the days of super-patriot Joe McCarthy, VRHTPA provides America with an indispensable resource: a national investigating commission. (Sure, Joe ruined lives needlessly and died in disgrace but revisionist namby-pambies gloss over the effectiveness of infusing the citizenry with knee-shaking fear. Remember: a jumpy nation is a talkative nation.) This commission is authorized to gather data about domestic terrorist threats however it sees fit, including by scouring the country, left and right.

And the left is right where it should start, too, beginning with those six representatives who voted “no.” Sorry, but this is no time for elitist politicians and their anti-American independent thinking.

We’ve known since 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 (my best Rudy Giuliani impersonation) that anyone could be a terrorist, demanding our ever-watchfulness. Take my neighbor (especially if you’re from Homeland Security; leave the reward under the “Welcome: You’re Under Surveillance” mat). I happen to know that Tim — I mean, “Abdul” — reads Howard Zinn and, most disturbing, watches Keith Olbermann, who’s particularly insidious the way he brainwashes viewers with facts. As soon as that commission establishes a hotline for snitches, er, citizens, Abdul is toast, and then maybe that deadbeat’ll think twice before stiffing me for another twenty bucks (not that that, you know, has anything to do with anything).

Chicken little leftists also wail that VRHTPA assaults free speech, asserting it’s so broadly written it will stifle much-needed political debate for fear of being thrown into a Halliburton-constructed hoosegow. Hmph! You decide: VRHTPA defines “violent radicalization” as “the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.”

Really, now: how much clearer could it be?

I, too, believe in First Amendment rights, even for those whose stupid views I respectfully disagree with, but, jeez, can’t they shut up about it already? These ingrates don’t care that by using the civil liberties our brave soldiers and uncounted mercenaries are killing thousands in Iraq to protect, they’re playing right into the terrorists’ hands, the very ones who hate us for the freedoms we used to have.

Look, until the never-ending war on terrorism ends, it’s every American’s constitutional duty to unequivocally support our president’s policies, no matter how hare-brained. To nitpickers who note the Constitution actually empowers Americans to do the opposite — i.e., keep a tireless collective eye on their government — I say: Who cares? Anymore, we can’t afford to be hamstrung by a bunch of laws, especially ones that were, what, written years ago by some dead guys? (Although, in fairness, they were alive at the time, I think.)

It’s obvious: We either fight them over there, or fight us over here. Since we’re much closer to ourselves, we’ll save billions in travel expenses alone. VRHTPA makes it easy for every American, young or old, to become personally involved in fighting the scourge of terrorism.

In other words, do try this at home.

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard such a brutal sentiment expressed (if, that is, I did). Having it uttered by folks long dedicated to non-violence, however, reveals an immense well of rage and hopelessness born from wearying struggle against unrelenting tyranny.

For what else but tyranny, by theft, can one call $2.4 trillion (per the Congressional Budget Office) to fund the profiteers’ wet dream wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Do you know how much that is? It’s one billion dollars times 2400. In other words, about the same number of grammatical gaffes one can expect from a George W. Bush press conference. (OK, so 2.4 trillion’s not that high, but it’s still misincomprehensible.)

And to think a tax on tea helped foment rebellion against our first King George. (Maybe what’s needed to fire us up is a levy on venti nonfat frappacrappos.)

Or what else but tyranny, by terror, is it when our government gleefully authorizes torture while Congress, bizarrely, debates its definition? The topic is torture, for cryin’ out loud (which, by the way, waterboarding is great at preventing). Just what, exactly, is there to discuss? I sincerely doubt Patrick Henry went to his grave thinking: “Damn! ‘Give me stress positions or give me death’ would have been so much pithier.”

Occasionally, as I wax nostalgic about the good old days when we had a Constitution, I wonder how the Founding Fathers would view today’s treatment of their blood-birthed document that once came in pretty handy before the Bush administration decided it was overly bothersome because it was just, like, so legal and stuff.

The odds, though, of a second American revolution, followed by a good old-fashioned bloody purge, are practically nil, at least for the foreseeable future.

Why? (Thanks for asking.)

Because there would be a second (un)civil war first, that’s why. Lest we forget, while many lefties have long (and ill-advisedly) rejected the right-to-bear-arms clause of the Second Amendment, other types, not a few of whom can be found in the hills in camouflage and munching on tasty muskrat (don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it), have for years been a-stockpilin’ and a-shootin’ and generally a-preparin’ for that wonderfully glorious day the bullets start flyin’ for keeps.

But it wouldn’t be our current non-representational guvmint they’d go after first, no way, Billy Ray. A long-fantasized target of another kind would have manifested at long last, for it would finally be open season on all them Jesus-spurning, latte-sipping, tree-hugging, abortion-loving, sex-having America haters.

Plus, can you imagine mad-as-hell lefties taking to the streets anyway, ill-shod for the task at hand, or foot, in their Birkenstocks, wildly waving firearms with which they were wildly unfamiliar? If they didn’t fill themselves full of holes first, they’d be instant sitting ducks for those who actually know where a trigger is located, thereby providing an even easier score than a hummer in the men’s room at a GOP convention.

So, while jarring to hear devoted but fed-up peace lovers suggesting linin’ ‘em up and mowin’ ‘em down may have its place (if, um, you know, such a suggestion has actually been made), the reality is that Americans’ modern-day oppressors are probably safe from being ripped limb from limb by Grandmothers for Pieces, at least for now.

And maybe, for our own humanity’s sake, that’s a good thing. (Or, uh, not.)

(Published originally in the Sacramento News & Review.)

“President Bush’s choice for attorney general [Michael Mukasey] told senators…the Constitution does not prevent the president from wiretapping suspected terrorists without a court order.”

Wow. That’s quite the claim, dontcha think, considering the Fourth Amendment kind of implies — you know, in an unequivocal, iron-clad, irrefutable implying sort of way — that wiretapping without a search warrant is, well, gosh, just so darn unconstitutional. (If confirmation’s needed, I suggest consulting any fifth grade American history class.)

Then again, maybe Mukasey’s never read that far. Maybe he lost interest in the Constitution and put it aside after getting bored by the Third Amendment: “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

Admittedly, the Third is rather musty, especially since perpetual war has rendered moot that bothersome “time of peace” clause. Plus, there’s no mention in it whatsoever of Blackwater or private security contractors. Or “mercenaries” (which is just as well since that term is just so, you know, accurate).

Hmph. Maybe the Founding Fathers weren’t so bright, after all.

As long as we’re discussing things constitutional, I’m reminded of what George W. Bush averred when both Republicans and Democrats, in an inexplicable fit of crafting legislation that would actually benefit Americans, proposed to expand the federally-funded S-CHIP health insurance program that covers poor kids. The price tag, roughly equivalent to what Dubya’s weapons industry pals skim from the cauldron of death known as Iraq every four months, was simply too much for the original compassionate conservative to bear as he grimly warned the bill (which he vetoed) could lead to “government-run health care for every American.”

Yeah? And?

The Constitution actually weighs in on this. Right at its beginning, too, where it says it was “ordain[ed] and establish[ed]” to, among other things, “promote the general welfare.”

Seems to me it’s kinda hard to beat guaranteed health care for promoting the populace’s general welfare.

I’m tellin’ ya, it’s gotten pretty wacky around here, this crazy little place we call America . Mukasey states the Fourth Amendment doesn’t mean what it says, Dick Cheney claims the vice presidency doesn’t belong to the executive branch (remember that one? another hoot!), millions of sick kids can go to hell and we’re told our civil liberties must be abolished so we can save them. Sheesh. Next thing you know, Dubya’ll be telling us something totally bizarre like — well, just to use a ridiculous example — like Iran is poised to touch off World War III, what with its 10,000 nuclear warheads to America ’s zero and all. (Uh, I may need to recheck those figures.)

Upon further reflection, though, and despite my initial guffaw, I must admit Mukasey and his ilk are actually correct: the Constitution doesn’t preclude warrant-less searches.

Because it no longer exists.

I know: a lot of people don’t see it that way. To them, America still looks the same. They can still go further into debt ordering utterly useless crap from QVC on seventeen different channels and the rapture’s still right around the corner, just like it’s been for 2,000 years. Plus, they’ve never been thrown in jail.

Yet.

And no one they know has suddenly gone missing.

Yet.

But appearances can be deceiving. (Except, like, in Dubya’s case. Think back to when you first saw him. Didn’t you just know?)

‘Cause here’s the skinny, my friends: if you think you have any liberties left, stop that right now. The sooner you get used to the fact you are rights-less, the faster you’ll settle into your cell at that spankin’ new detention facility, one of several the government contracted with Halliburton in January 2006 to have built in the U.S. “in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants…” (Uh, right.)

Still not convinced your constitutional protections are deader’n critical thinking at a born-again revival?

OK, then: How about Bush’s Executive Order of July 17, 2007, in which he states the assets of any individual can be blocked for “threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq, or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people…”

What does that mean, exactly? Good question. Maybe your lawyer can get clarification following your arrest for traitorously attending last week’s anti-war protest.

Except, whoops! Thanks to your new designation as an unlawful enemy combatant courtesy of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, you’re not entitled to any stinkin’ explanation, since habeas corpus is now simply a corpus.

What’s that, you say? You’re not an unlawful enemy combatant? Well, I guess you can appeal that to Bush himself, since he’s got the power to deem you just that.

Good luck!

So it goes in today’s America , where funny business is the (dis)order of the day.

Except, this time? I’m not laughing.

Check this thirty-six worder from page A3 of the September 29 San Francisco Chronicle:

“Petroleum for Pyongyang: President Bush Friday authorized the first U.S. shipment of heavy fuel oil to North Korea in five years, a reward to Pyongyang for moving forward with its agreement to end its nuclear programs.”

That’s it, in its entirety. Its brevity, however, belies its true voluminous content. ‘Cause:

Isn’t North Korea, like Iraq and Iran, a charter member of Bush’s “Axis of Evil”?

And isn’t North Korea, unlike Iraq and Iran, the only one of the three to possess nuclear weapons?

Well gosh, that’s odd. Because why, then, did Bushco engage in (successful) diplomacy with North Korea while Iraq lay in ruin and Iran sits next in the crosshairs?

What on earth could be the difference? (The more accurate query would be: “What in the earth could be the difference?”)

For Bush supporters in the audience, the ones who still insist Iraq’s obliteration is about spreading freedom n’ democracy and killing anyone who resists such beneficence, let me spell it out for you (don’t panic, it’s only three letters): o-i-l.

Come on, even Alan Greenspan said as much. Uh, until he didn’t, that is. (It’s not nice to fool with motherf*****s.)

But, just as transpired before we plundered oil-rich Iraq, we’re now told we must pummel oil-rich Iran, even as lip service is paid to giving peace a chance.

And right on cue, bellicosity rises to muffle such phony calls for diplomacy as Dick Cheney and his pinheaded PNAC pals paint Iran as a grave danger, salivating over the day they can bust its chops and loot its resources.

Calculatingly chiming in with a blustery salvo is the revoltin’ John Bolton, long-time pit bull of the American far right (so far right, in fact, he’s disdainful of those damn feel-good neocons and their “excessively Wilsonian views about the benefits of democracy.” Ouch.)

Bolton declared recently in Great Britain (as reported by Ros Taylor of The Guardian UK) that talking with Iran was useless and “he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country.”

Naturally, this saddens him. “I don’t think the use of military force is an attractive option,” he laments, no doubt sponging away tears that’d make a caiman proud, “but I would tell you I don’t know what the alternative is.”

Mmm… sanity?

To his credit, it’s not like he hasn’t considered alternatives: “The US once had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back.”

Yeah, those were the days. Especially when you look at how great that sort of thing worked out in, well, Iran.

Obediently, Bolton invokes the name of the current designated Greatest Threat to American Security Today, intoning “that any strike should be followed by an attempt to remove the ‘source of the problem,’ Mr. [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad.”

Ah, Ahmadinejad. I will admit his recent controversial appearance at Columbia University did leave me wondering why a mad dictator who has no regard for human rights, authorizes torture, is directly responsible for thousands of deaths, has brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation and is a narcissistic loony so ego-ridden his utterly undeserved self-importance blinds him to seeing he’s little more than a mouthpiece for his country’s real policymakers is, indeed, regularly afforded public pulpits from which to spew his fundamentalist religion-based lunacy.

But enough about Bush.

True, Ahmadinejad makes Borat look like Guest of the Year and does have particular difficulty with “H” words (e.g., “Holocaust” and “homosexuals”), but, come now: this fool is America’s biggest fear? Personally, I’m a lot more worried about the latest shipment of lead-based dishware from China.

The fact remains: If Iran weren’t awash with oil, neither Ahmadinejad nor his nation would be even a blip on the greedmeisters’ screen.

Just as I found it an ironic hoot — in a sardonic sort of way — that Saddam Hussein beat Dubya hands-down in the honesty department when it came to Iraq’s (lack of) WMD, so, too, do I give credit to the admittedly unsavory Ahmadinejad for asking at Columbia an entirely legitimate question of America:

“If you have created the fifth generation of atomic bombs and are testing them already, what position are you in to question the peaceful purposes of other people who want nuclear power?”

Whether Iran’s nuclear ambitions are entirely peaceful is open to debate. But let’s say Iran does want to develop the bomb.

Well, then, still: By what logic can the U.S. have ten thousand nuclear warheads and Israel, a non-signatory to the nuclear anti-proliferation treaty (which, by the way, bears Iran’s endorsement), two to three hundred, and yet Iran — with zero — is the bad actor?

Because we’re the good guys? Hmm…you may want to ask Iraqis their view of that. (Though a response may be slow in forthcoming from the million-plus slaughtered since the invasion.) And given that Cheney and gang are insanely gung-ho on actually nuking Iran, a country that’s not threatened America one iota, where doth the evil truly dwell?

Bolton and ilk’s broadsides notwithstanding, however, Iran’s nuclear intentions are becoming moot anyway. The bogyeman Iranian-produced mushroom cloud over Peoria has repeatedly been run up the flagpole of American opinion, yet that puppy just hasn’t flown. So now it’s all about how Iran is killing our freedom-fightin’ soldier boys by providing those ubiquitously handy “insurgents” mega-deadly weapons.

But the reason matters not. Barring a miracle, Iran will almost assuredly be attacked and any excuse will do, no matter how far-flung. Hell, next thing you know, Ahmadinejad will be the new Hitler for stealing rattles from babies. (Though he could end up a new American hero if they’re lead-based ones from China.)

About the only thing that could stop this latest round of Bushian madness is if Iran’s oil magically disappeared overnight, even if the very next day fifty shiny new nukes rolled through Tehran on full military display.

If such a fantastic scenario did occur, I’d not be surprised to read this tiny item a few months later:

“Toys from Tehran: The White House, recognizing Iran’s commitment to stop increasing its nuclear stockpile while also seeking to punish China, lifted sanctions yesterday against the importation of playthings from the Middle Eastern nation. Dishware, too.”

A typical response to this loaded query (a reply too often accompanied by a gratuitous snarky aside about President Cheney’s plan to nuke Iran in the next seven minutes) goes like this:

“What makes you think it’s gonna end?”

And this is the optimistic version.

Well, “Fie!” say I. Any gloomy Gus can write about how terrible things are and how much worse things will get, but aren’t there other possible scenarios, too, even shiny, happy perky ones? Of course there are! Now, I’ll admit, things may be a tad dicey at the moment, but just as sure as Iraq is well on the IED-laden road to freedom and democracy — you know, just like we have here — there are any number of post-Bushian possibilities for America, and none of which, mind you, include the cynical projection of living in a society under constant secret surveillance, stripped of civil liberties, pulsating with fear, run by corporations, perpetually at war and in which rigged elections preclude prospect for any real change.

Thank goodness, too, ‘cause think how awful that would be!

Without further ado, then, I present other possible future outcomes that might lie in ambush, er, store for our beloved America:

    * Costa Rica, deciding to make an exception just this once, temporarily suspends its fifty-eight-year-old constitutional ban against a standing military and drafts an army. Cleverly timing its surprise invasion of the United States to occur while most citizens are home watching American Idol, the fed-up but inherently docile Central American nation bloodlessly ousts the Bush administration overnight. Within weeks, the occupying Costa Ricans’ natural tranquilo approach to life precipitates a genuine friendliness and true appreciation for peace that spreads throughout the U.S.

Americans are perplexed.

    * Rupert Murdoch buys the Constitution, announcing he intends to “spiffy it up a bit” before featuring it on his Fox network in America’s newest reality show (for what he cryptically calls “America’s newest reality”). Proposed title: From Makeover to Takeover. He returns the document two days later, however, after discovering it’s been shredded.

    * Rupert Murdoch simply buys America and then features it in a show about how the liberal media control America. (Submit your own script here. Just make sure it includes plenty of lies, tired Jane Fonda jokes and blaming of everything from sun spots to mango blight on any Clinton, be it Hillary, Bill or George.)

    * Confirming rumors long considered laughable, it turns out America’s “leaders” really are reptilian shape-shifters, shockingly revealed when Condi Rice’s shifting mechanism prematurely and publicly misfires and she slurps up three youngsters with a long forked tongue in front of startled onlookers at a new U.S.-funded pre-school in Nairobi, Kenya.

    Horrified to learn the cold-blooded animals running their country really are cold-blooded animals, Americans react violently. PETA objects. The revolution falters. Americans, not particularly noted for being committed though many should be, soon accept being governed by giant green lizards. Many secretly thank their lucky stars (and bars) the creatures aren’t black, thus exposing the seamy soft white underbelly of American society: reptilianism, which sounds a lot like Republicanism, which should’ve been a tip-off to the enormous scale(s) of the whole charade long ago.

    * The entire country, groaning under the collective weight of a populace with a thirty-two percent obesity rate, sinks beneath the ground, never to be seen again. The Earth burps happily.

And my favorite:

    * A completely unexpected fascination with the French suddenly grips Americans. A cry for strikingly realistic re-enactments of events in France’s history, particularly from the exciting 1790s, sweeps the nation. The U.S. guillotine industry, moribund for centuries, rejoices; orders are at an all-time high. Many of our fellow citizens unequivocally disdain the device, however, calling it “too humane” and opting instead for rusty spiked bludgeons and draw-and-quarter chains.

    Then, with 300 million seething Americans feverishly finalizing preparations for the country’s first ever “Storming the Bastards Day,” an amazing thing happens: having done the math, every member of the Bush administration and Congress (with the exceptions of Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee and Ron Paul) tenders his or her resignation, every American troop is withdrawn immediately from Iraq and Afghanistan, all 700-plus U.S. military bases around the globe are shut down, peace reigns in America and the San Francisco Giants win the World Series. Admittedly, this is far-fetched (it was the part about the Giants, wasn’t it?), but it’s nice to dream, don’t you think?

    (Especially after a long dark nightmare.)

Veteran agent: Thank God the Democrats rolled over on that wiretapping bill and gave the president what he wanted, eh, kid?

Rookie agent: Sir?

Veteran: Warrants, kid — no more warrants! Who needs ’em, anyway?

Rookie: Uh, aren’t warrants before wiretaps a right guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment?

Veteran: Amendment, aschmendment! Warrants are nuthin’ but goddamned pieces of paper, keeping us from protecting America against those who seek to harm it. And son?

Rookie: Yes, sir?

Veteran: I suggest you tone it down a bit. You’re beginning to sound like one of those ACLU freaks.

The wiretap monitor weakly crackles and hisses.

Veteran: Hold it, kid. A call’s comin’ in from London. To Sacramento, looks like.

Rookie: I didn’t know we were monitoring London, sir.

Veteran: We’re not, but what difference does that make? Never forget: Terrorists can be anywhere, and anyone can be a terrorist. In our business of minding the business of others, once you understand that, you’re home free.

Rookie: (under his breath) “Free” isn’t the first word that comes to mind.

Veteran: Shh! Here comes the call…

The monitor continues to crackle. A cultured voice with a British accent speaks.

Brit: I do say, people love you, Arnie, and …

The monitor sputters.

Rookie: What are they saying, sir? I can’t make it out through all the static.

Veteran: They’re saying they love his army! Hot damn, we found us some terrorists!

Rookie: But, sir, are you cert– ?

Veteran: Quiet! Listen. There’s more.

The monitor continues to fade in and out. A second voice, this one with a heavy Teutonic accent, is heard.

Teuton: Ya, I love dem, too, Chuck, uh-speshuhly all da girls, heh-heh. Ya know, da ones wit’ da big bazoombas.

The monitor makes noises that sound like “glrrble” and “sprack.”

Veteran: Bazoombas! Must be some powerful new weapon.

Rookie: Powerful, yes, indeed, sir. New, not so much. (Pause) Sir, I’m looking at the electronic screen here on our recently-installed Discussion-Activated Finder of Terrorists –

Veteran: That’s DAFT, boy.

Rookie: Yes, sir, that it is. Anyway, the screen here indicates that this call is originating in Buckingham Palace and being placed to the state Capitol in Sacramento. It appears these two aren’t terrorists at all, sir: They’re England’s Prince Charles and California Governor Arnold –

Veteran: I don’t give a hoot if they’re subversive peaceniks like Mohammed Gandhi himself, we’re –

Rookie: That’s Mahatma, sir.

Veteran: Whatever. Frankly, son, you worry me. Don’t you know America is at war with monsters who threaten our liberties and we must use every tool we can to stop them?

Rookie: Yes, sir. I guess I just don’t understand how we can save our liberties by eliminating them.

Veteran (eyes narrowed): Tell me, boy: what do you think of Jane Fonda?

The monitor continues popping and hissing. The British voice is heard, again.

Brit: I was just telling Camilla over tea –

Veteran: Holy H-bomb! “Camilla”! Isn’t that the name of that Soprano fella’s wife? For the love of God, these terrorists will stop at nothing. Now they’re hooking up with gangsters!

Rookie: Forgive me, sir, but I do believe you mean “Carmela,” and The Sopranos was just a TV show, one that’s off the air now.

Veteran: Always with the details! Whose side are you on, anyway, kid? Wait — I hear something else.

The monitor makes a noise that sounds like a cat coughing up a large fur ball.

Teuton: I suh-gest you use oil for da muscles, Chah-ley. Vait till you see how it makes alla your big guns shine so dat da girls.

The Teutonic voice is interrupted by a loud “screeee.”

Veteran: Oil! Allah! Big guns! That seals it. We got us some terrorists here.

Rookie: Really, sir, but with all due respect, you’re accusing an English prince and the governor of California — a Republican no less — of being terrorists. Don’t you think this whole thing has gotten out of hand?

Veteran: Veteran: Impossible! Like I was telling Mom just the other day at the detention center: in a time of war, no one can be trusted. Plus, I gotta say son, all your unpatriotic whining about the Constitution is exactly the sort of loose talk that aids terrorists

Rookie: (exasperated) You’re telling me Al Qaeda won’t budge from their caves until they’re inspired by everyday conversation here in America, thereby implying that somehow they hear everything we say?

Veteran: It ain’t just Al Qaeda.

There is a loud and persistent knock at the door.

Rookie: Who could that be? It’s the middle of the night.

Veteran: That’s right, son. That’s when they always come.

Rookie: Wha– ? Who?

The door is kicked open. Two beefy men wearing Blackwater security uniforms enter, guns drawn.

Veteran: Take ’im away, boys!

Rookie: But, but –

Veteran: Don’t say I didn’t warn ya, kid. You never know who might be listening. Which, after all, is the whole point.

Fade to black.

(published originally in the Sacramento News & Review)