Screw Freedom, America Wants Its Wubby

It's been made perfectly clear that a staggering number of Americans -- mostly Bush Apologists -- would prefer to have a powerful and omniscient government intruding upon their basic freedoms in order to smoke out the toe monsters lurking under their collective bed.

Until the last five years, I never pegged macho alpha-male Republicans for being cowards who would rather cave in to big government (which they claim to hate) than suffer the very slim chance that they'd be killed by a terrorist. At some point in time, right-wing Americans with their tough-talking rhetoric and itchy trigger fingers -- the guys with "These Colors Don't Run" slogans magnetized to the ass-end of their Hummers -- became infantilized.

Let's start with the odds. Several months ago, I wrote about the odds of being killed in a terrorist attack in America and compared those odds to other causes of death. It broke down as follows. According to Foreign Policy Magazine, your odds of dying in a terrorist attack are about 1 in 88,000. In comparison (from my pervious article):

"The odds of you being killed by simply falling down? 1 in 246. Line up 246 people. Run around shoving them over, and it's likely one of them will land on their brain and die. The odds you will someday attack and kill yourself -- with or without a shoe bomb? 1 in 121. There's a 1 in 7 chance you will die of cancer. Imagine if all the money spent on the war on terror was, instead, spent on curing the second biggest threat to your life. Just the billions of dollars LOST in Iraq could be enough to find a cure."

Certainly, terrorists are a threat. But are they a significant enough threat to force us to completely acquiesce and give up the freedoms and values for which America has allegedly stood? Bill Maher, Friday night, said that the terrorists who "hate us for our freedom" will need to find something else to hate us for. Recall that during the post-9/11 days when President Bush had the opportunity to create a new era of American democracy but didn't possess the charisma or vision to do so, the catchphrase of the day was, "[blank] or the terrorists win."

Right now, the terrorists are truly winning.

How could they not be? As soon as we were attacked by Bin Laden's underlings, policies were implemented by the Bush administration that empowered the government and its dominance over its subjects. You and me.

And now, if you call your buddy to tell him or her about something you read in the news about al-Qaeda, it's very likely that that call will be flagged by an NSA computer and correlated with other calls in which you've said, for example, "New York" and "[Mission Impossible III] bombed [at the box office]". Then one afternoon while you're at work, government agents under the Patriot Act (and whatever the hell else President Bush invented while fishing for mutant perch) break into your home without a warrant to finger through your shit. Your wife's under things. Your kid's toys. Your collection of rare Victorian erotica. Wait. Just me?

A few questions to ponder here. 1) How many computers routinely malfunction? My computer crashes or goes all spazzy about once a week. 2) Would you trust an uninvited human being -- nevermind their badge -- in your home without your permission? Here's a follow-up to the latter: ever hear about "officials" who, I don't know, steal things or tamper with things or plant evidence or who are generally crooked? I have. Try this link.

But it appears that despite what the Republican government pulls off, nearly half of America is cool with it. Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are cool with it. Why? Because they're cowards. Forget the aspect of their cowardice that prompted many of them to avoid the Viet Nam draft while presently supporting the notion of sending others to fight and die. The cowardice I'm talking about goes far beyond that aspect of their psychosis. The Bush Collective is so perpetually frightened by terrorism that it gladly will ignore the honorable traditions on which America was built.

How far will they continue to justify allowing the government to go in the name of fighting evildoers? Government collection of their medical records? Will they tolerate having to inform the government when they want to take a vacation? What about GPS implants? When does it end? Because, let's face it, the Bush administration and their apologists have shown an aptitude for defending any action, no matter how sinister, in the name of fighting terrorism. Any action. You name it, they have a justification for it.

The Bush PR team at Fox News likes to accuse their opponents of wanting to "cut and run" from Iraq. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be accused of cutting and running from Iraq than cutting and running from our basic constitutional rights -- rights which hundreds of thousands of Americans have died to defend; rights which are the foundation of our historical uniqueness as a nation.

Remember that episode of Seinfeld in which George is attending a birthday party and there's a fire in the kitchen? Classic episode. George throws all decency out the window and barrels out of the house knocking over clowns, children, and old ladies. Sure, George isn't the most heroic character in television history, but as soon as his life was seemingly in danger, everything flew out the window. All over a relatively insignificant--

BOO! FIRE!

Just wanted to see how high the Bush Republicans reading this would jump. Or how quickly they'd hand over their constitutional rights. If you'd like to turn over your freedom to the government because you're a-scared, you can contact the White House here. I'm sure they'd be thrilled to hear about your willingness to submit to their mighty grip.