Slouching towards Bethlehem: A heathen's view

Just when it looked like pop stars had ended poverty (to say nothing of good music) along comes that party-pooper Osama and his goons to bring us back to reality - and really real reality TV.

Which sounds like something Tony Blair said today, something to the effect that the goal of terrorists is to inflict terror, but we can’t let them terrorize us. My, Bush really is rubbing off on him.

Safety is a myth in an unsafe world. That’s why we have insurance policies. That’s why it does no good to become afraid instead of taking your head out of your ass and getting vigilant and learning about the nation and the world.

And I’m sorry if I sound glib, because I’m not trying to be -- my sarcasm masks an increased annoyance, impetulance, anger, frustration (pick your own damn adjective) that comes with a day like today, when humanity amplifies its stupidity. Sorry, Elvis Costello, let the angels wear your red shoes -- I can’t be amused and am back to being disgusted.

I can’t blame Blair for being articulate. He’s dealing with an equally inept with language enemy. Please, tell me exactly what the fuck it is these fundamentalists want?

I just watched Nightline (praise be Ted Koppel is still on the air at times like these, when the rest of the media gets all maudlin and amps up the fear factor). Three experts tried to explain it to dumb-ass me, and I am still not sure what the assholes want -- besides the virgins in heaven, if that’s even true. Cuz if it is, just move Guantanamo to Reno and be done with it.

What I got it there is a pit of justification from which come their excuses, and the bad guys wanting us out of Arab lands so they can set up some sort of Kingdom of a 14th Century Allah.

(And boy, does God/Allah/whatever have writer’s block, dontcha think? I mean he hasn’t come out with a new book in 2,000 years.)

For men who apparently want to go way, way back to the good old days, they sure like to get attention. Isn’t drawing attention to yourself, just for the sake of attention, some sort of sin, in any faith? Who knew radical Muslims had something in common with Paris Hilton?

And exactly how do they win a war on terrorism? Do they take over America? Do they get their own country?

Since most of the Middle East is desert, if they don’t want to have anything to do with us, once we figure out how not to burn fossil fuel, what do they do for income?

I read where Afghanis were praying at a shrine to Taliban martyrs and kissing American ass the next. In this looking glass world, it makes perfect sense. If the attacks hadn’t happened the West really wouldn’t give a shit about that ass backwards nation. So the martyrs brought the attention and maybe a sliver of hope of some sort of improvement.

Would we be paying this level of attention to the Middle East’s general fucked up-ness (where are so-called buddies harbor terrorists, oppress women and run dictatorships - not anything like that bastard Saddam, of course) if it weren’t for the cave dweller? (And man, don’t you wish he woulda got laid more when he was in school in England?)

I’m just rambling. That’s what you do on a day like today. It’s what the government has been doing , even in the wake of 9-11 - the most over-fucking used phrase ever.

But hey, we got a reporter in jail for not revealing her source for a story she never wrote. Meanwhile the weasel who wrote the piece in question - Robert Novak (who looks like Underdog’s nemesis Simon Bar Sinister) who outed a spy DURING WARTIME, apparently as a political favor to get back at her husband for speaking out against Bush’s justification for war - the WMDS, remember?

And the journalism club I belong to sends me an e-mail about this with the header that says DO SOMETHING, Darn It! Darn it?! And the mailing before it suggested we all stand for a moment of silence (perhaps inspired by that Jesus-wannabe Bono) in honor of our jailed camarade. For fuck’s sake! Journalists are such pussies.

We got a Patriot Act, where the government can secretly look at what library books you have checked out, but the same government has done little to protect most of the infrastructure, aside from the window dressing at airports.

We got reality TV shows and newspapers that worry about how unsafe it is to swim in retention ponds and rising housing prices, and gas heading toward $3 a gallon.

We got a war going on that costs $1 billion a week, where much of the work is outsourced.

We got celebrities, who at least brought attention to an issue WITHOUT A GODDAMN BOMB however naive they may be. But come on! I know you have to dumb things down for Empty Vee, but do they really think that if all debt were erased tomorrow for Africa, that would be the jump start the continent needs? Centuries of shit just washed away with money.

We got people who don’t like Western policies and don’t like the 21st century, and don’t like women, and don’t like gays and don’t like anyone who is different. Which is to say, how do you win a war on Ignorance, stupidity, superstition and greed?

And we humans seem to need an enemy -- there’s been nary a moment in my lifetime when it hasn’t been so.

And, like it or not, freedom comes with risks.

Angry American Tim McVeigh bombed a courthouse and there probably wasn’t any way to stop him.

In Elgin, Illinois, an average town if there ever was, a guy walked into a bar, shot more than a dozen people and killed two men. Not for political reasons. He was nuts.

The bar is still open. The courthouse is rebuilt.

Just be glad it's still hard to find plutonium.