These beliefs are such a given for these folks: that America can do no wrong, that our leaders know what they are doing, that following the president is patriotism, that we are the Lord's chosen people, etc.; that to contemplate otherwise is to shatter their entire belief system. To those of us who don't share these beliefs, they appear to be the obvious hallmarks of a rigid, brittle, fundamentalist orthodoxy that makes us no different from Iran or Saudi Arabia. Reactionary Christian fundamentalists and blind patriots appear to us to be completely missing out on the obvious: that the Constitution of the United States was supposed to be the strongest bulwark against religious tyranny -- or any tyranny of any kind for that matter. Instead we now have one party rule, a ruling family dating back to the rise of the Prescott/Bush financial-military dynasty in the 50's, and a crumbling economy and the loss of respect in the world to show for it.
But my purpose today is to pose a question to the proud patriots. I think of our involvement in WWII as the last time that our military was really needed. It was a war that we had no choice but to fight. Thanks to the sacrifices of our entire nation across the board, from manufacturers to the men who served in the armed forces -- and they sacrificed more lives than any American conflict before then -- America more or less saved the world. So, my question is, why are we not asking our citizenry to make any sacrifices? The war on terror really amounts to a war against those who fund terrorism, or provide training and safe harbor for terrorists -- primarily Saudi Arabia and Iran. The most effective way to choke the terrorists is to cut off their funding and safe harbor. The former is really easy to do: stop buying oil from states that support, directly or indirectly, terrorism.
This would require a huge national sacrifice but WE ARE AT WAR! Our soldiers are dying in Iraq, making the ultimate sacrifice, while the fat lazy American citizenry sits at home eating processed cheese products, losing the remote control in their folds of fat while they sit on the couch, engrossed in fantasies of ever larger petroleum burning products.
GM, Ford, and their parts suppliers are all on the verge of self-destructing. WWII is what made America the super power it is today, largely by shoring up our manufacturing industries. Now we have a chance to save them. Just as the Federal government more or less ordered all industries to produce products needed for the war effort. Check this out:
As war spread throughout Europe and Asia between 1939 and 1941, nowhere was the federal government's leadership more important than in the realm of "preparedness" -- the national project to ready for war by enlarging the military, strengthening certain allies such as Great Britain, and above all converting America's industrial base to produce armaments and other war materiel rather than civilian goods. "Conversion" was the key issue in American economic life in 1940-1942.
See this site for more details. Why not convert Ford, GM, Delphi, et al, to producing E-85 conversion kits for all vehicles? And why not force mega-agricorps to convert their corn operations to celluloid ethanol production? In other words, if we convert a vast majority of our transportation devices to burn something other than oil, than we can stop sending money to the states that sponsor terrorism and let them self-destruct on their own. We should be demanding real and dramatic sacrifices of ourselves and of industry.
It's amazing to me how timid the Democrats are in the lack of policy alternatives. Everyone is so afraid to take a stand, and in the meantime the country is crumbling apart. My hope is that one day we'll wake up, and gas will be $6 a gallon, everyone will freak out for 5 years, and we'll convert to some other fuel supply. Alternative energy IS NATIONAL SECURITY. Protecting our freedom means radically reducing our dependency on the regimes that seek to destroy us.
The Saudis have been throwing billions at the fundamentalist mullahs to blind the mullahs to the sickening depravity and corruption that is the House of Saud. With the loss of the US military's protection, the House of Saud would fall to an army of the lunatic fringe, taking Saudi oil fields off line for quite some time. The country would self-destruct, and all the crazies could happily blow themselves up to bits trying to get into the Mecca. And we wouldn't have to care because we wouldn't need them any more. We need to be as disengaged as possible from states that are being torn apart by the tension between modernity and fundamentalist reactionaries. It is the job of the people to rise above their religious oppressors -- or not. Sovereign nations have a right to self-determination. And what the neo-cons and their brethren don't understand is that these desert people have been ruled by an iron fist for centuries. You can't just show up and say, here, vote. And if we didn't need their oil, we wouldn't have to care.
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