Mary Pitt: Who Knew?!?

How could we ever have been so stupid? There we were, looking optimistically forward to the twenty-first century, enjoying peace and prosperity, educating our children, cherishing our handicapped and elderly relatives, and going through our lives without a care in the world. Sure, there was a lot of flack about whether or not our President may have been having an affair with an ambitious floozy who was star-struck by proximity to power but, so what? The man was doing a great job as President and, since we were steeped in the idea of tolerance for those who may be a bit different, we were able to accept that with equanimity. It really wasn't any of our business, being a matter between him and his wife.

The schools were underfunded but most children were graduating knowing how to read and write and understanding, after a fashion, the history of our nation and the freedoms to which they were entitled. Those parents who cared were able to teach the family religion with the help of local churches and to impress their own ethics and philosophy upon the young, enquiring minds. We attended, or not, the church of our choice, confident in the love of God and convinced of His promise to keep us in peace and safety. How proudly we hailed the stars and the stripes as they paraded before us in celebrations! We were the land of the free and the home of the brave, the bulwark against any nation that may want to disrupt the peace of the world and, with the help of the members of the United Nations, we had done so many times.

We lived in peace with our neighbors locally, too, being convinced that a different skin color was an indication not of inferiority but of the differences in ancestry. We were all Americans. weren't we? We watched in amusement as the transvestite gays marched in the St. Patrick's Day parade, secretly admiring their willingness to make fools of themselves for their "cause", but never relating it to the two nice men who shared the house on the corner. Both of them worked but, when they were home, they were good neighbors, lending their lawnmower when ours broke down and quite willing to help with food drives and re-cycling. And those two women over in the apartment complex didn't raise an eyebrow. With their work, neither required an apartment by herself and having a roommate was an economic measure.

How could we know that those brown people wanted to kill us? Who knew the evil that lurked in their hearts? And the same-sex couples that we liked so much were going to teach our kids to be "homos", whether or not we approved! And those guys that we hired and trained to run the Russkis out of Afghanistan? They hated us and wanted to kill us all! They hated our freedom, and so did our neighbors with different skin color, whether they came from Afghanistan, Turkey, India, or one of the nations in the "Axis of Evil"! They should all be arrested and locked up indefinitely for fear that they would strike when we least expected it!

Now we know that the whole world is out to destroy us, except, perhaps for our friends, the Israelis, and, maybe, the little countries that joined in our coalition when we decided to invade Irag and "depose" Saddam. Saddam Hussein, the evil dictator, had Weapons of Mass Destruction and he wanted to destroy us! He also (maybe) assisted Osama bin Laden in the evil strike against our World Trade Center and, despite over a decade of a blockades, no-fly zones, and inspectors, he had managed to manufacture and store tons and tons and tons of atomic weapons, deadly rockets, and germ warfare devices with which to blow our wonderful democracy from the face of the earth! Now the ungrateful folks whom we had "freed" are being mean and fighting against the very government that we are trying to establish for them. We must give them democracy if we have to bomb every one of them off the face of the earth!

And then, there was the fact the the very God we had worshipped all our lives was the wrong one! The "real" God was one that wanted us to kill those who don't agree with our faith! That included all Muslims, Buddhists, Shintoists, Wiccans, and everybody else who didn't follow one of the televangelists who shouted the bad news at us endlessly from the tube. The "real" God wants us to conquer the entire Middle East and give it to the Israelis so he can hasten the end of the world and sweep up in the rapture all the "born again" Christians, leaving the rest of us to suffer for a thousand years before we die and go to hell. If you can't wrap your mind around that, you're DOOMED!

Now that we're well on our way to bringing democracy to Iraq, even if we have to kill them all to accomplish it, there is time to turn our attention to all the thinking errors about our domestic condition. Most of the Constitution having already been disposed of by "executive order' and the Patriot Act, the only thing left is to amend it so that the evil homosexuals can never be allowed to marry or even to form "domestic partnerships" in order to live peacefully in monogamous relationships and legally to care for each other. And, oh, yes, we most get rid of the evil provisions that require a person to be a native-born American to run for President and the totally unnecessary amendment that prevents a President from serving more that two terms, allowing us to set up a dictatorship if the "majority" decide to do so. We were so stupid that we really thought that the provisions of law and the Constitution under which we had survived for over two centuries would continue to meet our needs!

Now we learn that our Social Security system is in deep doo-doo! It will be bankrupt by 2018, unless the "representatives of the people" allow for repayment of the money that has been "borrowed" from the fund for over fifty years, plus interest, in which case it cannot afford to maintain the present level of benefits any longer than, say 2043! Something must be done NOW in order to bring this imminent crash under control! We must not wait until it is necessary for the government to have to pay back the money because it may be needed for more tax cuts for the wealthy so they can keep donating money to political campaigns and paying for a big bash at every inauguration. How could we have been so selfish? "Pay as you go" was a fallacy and national deficits are no big problem. Our grandkids can take care of that by paying it back with depreciated dollars after the crash!

And our "free" elections? Fuggidaboudit! We'll use electronic voting machines that don't have a paper ballot. That way, if we slip up and vote wrong, it can be corrected without our even bothering about it, assuring that the right candidates are elected so that people who are smarter than we are can be sure we make no more mistakes like, for instance, electing too many Democrats to office. We all now know that Democrats are nothing more than wussies who can't stand on their hind legs without holding their forepaws in an attitude of supplication, begging for forgiveness from the omniscient Republicans for having been dumb enough to oppose their programs. As a party, they slap down and denigrate any among them who dare to question the wisdom of engaging in pre-emptive wars, cutting funds for education, health care, and welfare assistance, allowing the trade deficit to grow by "fair trade" treaties and the encouragement of "off-shoring" our jobs, and ignoring the plight of the poor, disabled, and elderly. These "progressives" are smart people who truly have our welfare at heart, but they are wrong, wrong, wrong! They do not deserve our support.

All of us who are considered to be on the "left" need to wake up and learn from our "betters", those who are smart enough to take power over our national legacy, and to change it for the better. We must accept the fact that all the things that have been passed down from our forebears about ethics, honesty, and faith no longer apply. We must bow to the judgement that a democratic government can only function under total capitalism and concern for the poor, the young, and the aged is counter-productive. An elected majority MAY do anything necessary to maintain power, even to "outing" the identity of under-cover agents to punish a family member or hiring media personalities to advocate for their programs. A President MAY overpower long-standing laws regarding arrest and detention, negate rules regarding transparency of government and the efficacy of the will of the people. And toture IS permissable so long as we are the ones who are doing it. To do less is not only un-patriotic but also un-Christian!

Perhaps all of us who are not yet ready to become members of the Neo-Conservatives or the "religious right" should go into seclusion while we purge our minds of any ideas of civil rights or the moral behaviors which we were taught in our youth. We must alternate readings of selected parts of the Old Testament with stints of watching Fox News until we become firmly convinced that God wants us to vanquish all who are not His followers, according to the Jewish Law, that our sons are dying in a worthwhile cause according to His plan, and we are predestined to rule the world. We must not stop until we firmly believe that George W. Bush was chosen by God and instructed in His will in order to protect us and our glorious freedom. It will not be easy because we were so wrong for all those many years. But, who knew?

Mary Pitt is a septuagenarian Kansan who is self-employed and active in the political arena. Her concerns are her four-generation family and the continuance of the United States as a democracy with a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people". Comments and criticism may be addressed to mpitt@cox.net .

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