Crawl Space

As much as I detest Bush&Co, I don’t consider them “fascists”. That’s because in my estimation they don’t measure up to some of finer points in the criteria which would qualify them as fascists. That of course, is the logic of my waking hours. In my dreams, I apparently see them differently.

A few weeks ago I awoke during the wee hours of the morning from a horrible nightmare. I was moving about in the crawlspace under a building which served as the HQ of some pretty awful people. And, this being a dream, I was able, in the weird way that dreams allow, to look into the room above me and see a gathering of officials dressed in Nazi uniforms. It was like a scene from a WW II movie — The Dirty Dozen comes to mind — except that somehow I knew that those men were not Germans at all, but rather officials of the Bush regime. Bushies in black, SS uniforms.

And there I was, under the floor directly below them, in a space such as you’ll find under almost any house that lacks a basement. The floor and the beams supporting it were only a couple of feet above the uneven dirt ground. Here and there were vertical props to hold the building up. So visibility was physically limited, even if there had been sufficient light. Despite the darkness, however, I could make out much of what was around me.

But I wasn’t alone in this crawlspace. The others were the black-uniformed guards of the officials in the room above. Apparently they’d been sent down to get me, and they had their pistols out, and were shooting as they crawled around in search of me.

Nevertheless, this game of hide-and-go-seek was not at all one-sided. I too had a pistol, a 9 mm Lugar. I was shooting it out with them, somehow holding my own, because, in the limited visibility of this situation, my adversaries couldn’t see where I was. Nor could they distinguish friend from foe in the murk. It was very confusing to them. So, as the shooting progressed, I was winning.

Meanwhile, the officials in the hall above me seemed even more confused than the guards they had sent to hunt me down. Even less than those in the crawlspace with me, they couldn’t tell which shots were fired by their own men and which were fired by me. I could clearly see their confusion, and I was heartened by it. After I knocked off the guards, I’d somehow be able to take them on as well. That seemed to be my plan.

Suddenly, there was a blast just above me as the black-uniformed people in the hall above blew a large hole in the floor. In a kind of out-of-body experience I found myself actually looking down from above as they grabbed for me, and I saw myself pinned down by part of the collapsed floor. And as I saw myself lying there trapped, the black-uniformed ones reached down to grab me.

It was an awful moment. Then, before anything could actually happen, I awoke. I peered at the clock. It was about 4 a.m.

It’s been some weeks now since I experienced that dream, but it was one that didn’t fade, and I remember it vividly. I can still see myself trapped by the fallen floor.

Interpreting that dream seems rather straightforward. Clearly, the crawlspace represents my standing in this society — at the very bottom, actually below the bottom. And the officials on the floor above me were neocons and functionaries of the Bush regime. The floor represents the US Constitution, which in past years protected us from being harmed by the people above.

The fact that they were willing to blow up a part of their own edifice in an effort to arrest or destroy me also seems significant. The Bushies are after all, willfully destroying our country as well as the Constitution. They don’t seem to care how much damage they do.

The fact that I was actually winning until they blew the floor open, suggests that as long as we have the protection of the Bill of Rights for our protection and as long as the Constitution functions the way it’s supposed to, we’re safe and can win — which was why the black-uniformed ones blew a hole in it.

But I do feel obliged to express my opinion that however things may look in a dream, I do firmly believe that there are some fine points of difference between the Bushies and the Nazis. Of course those differences do seem to be fading.

Daniel Borgström is a member of the KPFA Local Station Board Rescue Pacifica Caucus. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Kennedy years, and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and writes on various topics including travel, history, and struggles against corporate dominance.  He can be reached at danielfortyone@gmail.com Read other articles by Daniel, or visit Daniel's website.

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  1. Wes S said on August 6th, 2007 at 3:57pm #

    Times are different now then they were in 1930s. The Nazism is derived from National Socialism encompassing the nationalism. There are many US citizens that are too natinalistics, so the term Nazi would certainly apply. The 21st century might need the new term to descibe the criminal behaviour of the US. Fascism might not apply and we might need a different word that would describe the genocidal character of the US government.

  2. andrew b said on August 7th, 2007 at 5:28pm #

    unfortunately, until we come up with a new name for it, the world thinks of them as Americans.