What appeared to America and the world as devastation and tragedy five years ago was something entirely different to the Right Wing Medusa who in our nation's despair saw only the most golden of opportunities.
As the ruins of 9/11 still smoldered, they launched a propoganda campaign of misinformation, half-truths mixed together with complete distortion that would have made Goebbels proud. Using fear as a weapon, the Medusa has terrorized our country into its greatest crisis since the Civil War.
This is not a theory or a rant, but the opportunity to ask yourself a simple question:
Are we safer now?
Are we safer now than we were on September 10, 2001?
The answer is no.
Our financial security has been destroyed by the tax cuts to the wealthiest of the wealthy. The cabal of rich white men that put Bush and Company in the White House, has gotten paid back not in spades, but in cold hard cash. When three men, Bob Perry, Harold Simmons and T. Boone Pickens, gave close to $10,000,000 to sink John Kerry's campaign with Swift Boat lies, it was Exhibit A in how the Medusa plays the game. These are successful businessmen who analyzed the potential return on their investment and wrote the checks. They know you have to spend money to make money and spend they did.
Our climate security has been horribly damaged by an administration that has wasted perhaps the six most critical years in our existence but not only ignoring global warming but encouraging and in some cases subsidizing the actions that accelerate it.
Our physical security is threatened by a world wide rage against our country, our stupidity, our arrogance and our failure to handle the basic task of securing and rebuilding Afghanistan. Opium production is at record heights in that country - it remains a war zone. It is to our shame. Iraq is nothing more than the folly of toy soldiers, a military and foreign policy disaster that is contributing to the end of our Superpower era.
Our intellectual security is threatened by a decline in our schools and in the basic intellect of our young. SAT scores plunged again. We're not leaving a child behind - we're leaving an entire generation in the dust of a crumbling educational system.
Our emotional security has been fractured by an administration that can only continue to hold power if we live in fear. From well planned terror alerts to constant terror arrests that never seem to get prosecuted, the pulse points of panic are pushed from above.
The planes of 9/11 were manna from heaven to the Republican Medusa who was waiting - with its puppet king in the White House - for the moment it could finalize its vision and feast upon the cycle of money to power to corruption to money to power to corruption.
As the World Trade Center became a funeral pyre complete with the burning corpses of husbands and wives, sons and daughters, our fellow Americans slowly being incinerated, George Bush climbed on top of that pyre and bullhorn in hand, he launched a plan that is horrifying in that rarely in history have so many been deceived by so few for the benefit of the minority.
Just as with the last mass deception of a country, its morals and its peoples, this massive hoodwinking of America has occurred because of appeasement of evil.
Our "Democratic Leaders" have appeased the Republican Medusa, because like Europeans of the 1930's, they are either unwilling or unable to recognize the evil of an enemy that lives not on distant shores but within our own borders.
Are we safer now?
The greatest threat to America comes not from a man in robe in a cave on the other side of the world, but from the Republican Medusa and its reign of terror here in our country. They have created a tyranny of the smallest of minorities, where all we stand for as a nation is being destroyed in the name of patriotism. The Medusa laughs as it waves the flag high paying no attention or care as the flag itself disintegrates in the wind.
Those watch are in one of two camps. The resistance or the appeasers. There is no gray and white on our world today. You need to either stand and fight what is happening in our country or you stand and appease the evil that is destroying it.
Far too many of our leaders are doing a pretty damm good job of standing around and living in the past. Meekly protesting or occasionally challenging but overall following in the footsteps of Chamberlain. And sadly, even though the Republicans like to wave the Bible with the flag, the good book holds no hope for the meek.
The meek won't inherit the earth.
The meek will get cheated out of elections.
The meek will see their rights trampled.
The meek will be standing by as the national forests are timbered by Republican contributors.
The meek will have to answer the questions of future generations and will collectively face the indictment of history - just as Neville Chamberlain died a broken man when the world's fate still lay in the balance, so shall the Democratic Leaders of today who aided and abetted the Medusa be defined and haunted by the horror they helped create.
It happens because smart decent men simply can not comprehend the inhumanity man is capable of. Good has a hard time recognizing evil. Evil takes no quarter with the good. Men like Bill Clinton came to power in a different era and the lessons he learned are of a bygone time. The Republicans he campaigned against have been replaced by a mutant strain of right wing neo-conservatism that will lead us not to Nirvana but ruin.
Are we safer now?
No, but the facts are becoming so indisputable that even the best public relations, advertising and marketing can't hide the decline in our country now. This gives us hope.
We watched in horror as our fellow Americans suffered and died on the Bayou during Katrina. And yet, our Democratic Leaders failed to understand that the Republican Administration really simply did not care. Poor black people dying is not on their radar screen. IIt wasn't a failure of FEMA - it was a failure of morals. Our fellow Americans drowing in a toxic blend of chemicals and feces was a PR issue to be managed only when it appeared to potentially impact their hold on power. And we let them.
There are no WMD in Iraq. We weren't greeted as liberators. We are in a sand quagmire of epic proportions and the first cry to depart from Iraq was found in the voice of Howard Dean in 2003. What happened to Howard Dean? He was ridiculed and destroyed by ineptitude within his campaign true but also by a concentrated orchestrated smear to portray him as a 'lunatic.' He stood up first and was shouted down. And we let them.
And the war in the Middle East is about to expand - not contract. The use of the Nazi and Third Reich analogies by Republicans, the "Islamic fascist' talking point, the fact that the leader of Iran bears a distant resemblance to Adolf Hitler helpfully plays into a grand scheme of an attack on Iran. This October, be forewarned and let it be no surprise.
Syria is also a potential target now that Republican attack groups like "Vets For Freedom" a Republican 527 supporting Joe Lieberman are complaining that Bush is not escalating the war in the Middle East fast enough? They push Bush to bomb Syria .Insanity and unbridled power leaves little room for hope.
Are we safer now?
If you still doubt the presence of the Medusa, and its true aims, let me be frank. Just as Adolph Hitler laid out his plans for the world to see in "Mein Kampf", so too have the Medusa's goals become clear for all to see.
Eliminate the social welfare programs such as Social Security that have helped our less fortunate over the decades. Strike down Medicare and Medicaid. Let the weakest and most defenseless among us suffer and die. They even want to reduce student loans for college. Insanity.
Tear down the barrier between church and state and turn this land into a Christian country. How a Jew or a Muslim could ever vote for a Republican is absolutely beyond comprehension.
Destroy the concept of personal privacy, through wiretapping, the end of choice and more.
Make public land and assets the domain of private companies who will profit through their destruction.
Let the resistance begin.
The online community doesn't have the conditioned fear the mainstream world and press has. Somewhat sheltered by the anonymity of the blogosphere, across the country, men and women are fighting back all day, and all night. Groups like MoveOn are fighting and fighting hard.
But where in God's name is our Winston Churchill? Who will stand up to the bully? Who will sucker punch before he is sucker punched? Who? A few have started to swing and we should salute them.
John Kerry and Russ Feingold first brought the withdrawal timetable to the country and they too were mocked, not just by the Medusa but by their own party - but both men have continued to fight. John Kerry stood up and delivered a five step plan last Saturday in Boston. Read it here. It's simple, smart and strong.
Max Cleland is rolling across this country, campaigning and fighting back - he too a victim of this pychosis that gripped the country post 9/11. A true war hero was defeated by a man named Saxby who got out of Vietnam because of a gimpy knee becase the war hero was weak on national security. And to our everlasting shame, we let them.
Jim Webb in Virginia. Here's a man who wrote the script on Iraq in 2003. Quagmire? Civil War? No way out. He called it. And yet he's running against a guy who showed courage under a horse at a dude ranch while Webb was in Vietnam and you guessed it - Allen's running on a "I support the troops" platform. Fight for Webb.
Joe Sestak. Patrick Murphy. Tammy Duckworth. Chris Carney - they lead a group of veterans who are running for Congress having served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They know the true realities. And The Patriot Project is working to defend them because no veteran will ever be destroyed like Max Cleland and John Kerry were. It must never happen again.
John Murtha is standing up and taking the flak like the war hero he is.
Wes Clark, a man who actually won a war, is standing tall and truly fighting for the troops.
Richard Holbrooke, a statesmen who has faced fire in more than one battle, is speaking out.
And here's where the facts collide with fiction. This is where the ad campaign and marketing theory runs into trouble in the marketplace. These men and women, all veterans, are all Democrats.
On the other side, we have the Brigade of the Fake. Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, not a veteran in the bunch. Perhaps we've learned by now that we shouldn't play with toy soldiers.
Truth is fighting fiction. Good is fighting evil. It is black and white, but can Johnny read?
Are we safer now?
The guantlet is thrown. The cards are on the table.
Will this be our finest hour or will this be our Munich?