|
Читайте также: |
WB/QWM 20 19 18 17 16 15 14
FOR AL HIRYELA
It's amazing I won. I was running against peace, prosperity, and incumbency.
‑GEORGE W. BUSH, JUNE 14, 2001, speaking to Swedish Prime Minister Goran Perrson, unaware that a live television camera was still rolling
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION xi
ONE A Very American Coup 1
TWO Dear George 29
THREE Dow Wow Wow 47
FOUR Kill Whitey 56
FIVE Idiot Nation 85
SIX Nice Planet Nobody Home 119
SEVEN The End of Men 142
EIGHT We're Number One! 163
NINE One Big Happy Prison 195
TEN Democrats, DOA 209
ELEVEN The People's Prayer 229
EPILOGUE Tallahassee Hi‑Ho 236
NOTES AND SOURCES 257
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 275
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 279
INTRODUCTION
THERE ARE THOSE who say it all started to unravel the night of November 7, 2 000, when Jeb Bush gave his brother George Jr. an early Christmas present‑the state of Florida.
For others, those upon whom a decade's fortune had smiled, the turning point came when the Dow had its biggest annual loss in almost twenty years.
For most, though, the day the music died came the night we were told Pluto was no longer a planet, and life as we knew it was as distant as the look in the new "President's" eyes.
Wherever you choose to pinpoint the exact moment when it all crumbled before your eyes, it matters not. The only thing that matters is that we, collectively, as Americans, all know that someone has pulled the plug on our all‑night binge. The American Century? That's over. Welcome to your Century 21 Nightmare!
A man no one elected sits in the White House.
California can't find enough electricity to operate its juicers, or execute its inmates.
It's cheaper to FedEx yourself across town than to drive there.
Russia and China have signed a new pact-‑just when we'd dismantled the last of the fallout shelters.
Dot‑coms have turned into Not‑coms, making the NASDAQ as safe a bet as a backroom. craps game in Reno.
The past two years have seen the most layoffs since the worst years of the Reagan Renaissance devastated the country.
You stand a better chance of dating Katherine Harris or Tom DeLay than of making your Northwest connection in Detroit on a sunny day.
What's that you say? You want to talk to a real human being in "customer service"? HA HA HA! Press "4" and kiss the rest of your day good‑bye.
Oh, and aren't you lucky! You're working two jobs, and so is your wife, and you've got little Jimmy working down at McDonald's, too, so you can afford that new home on the tree‑lined street with neatly trimmed lawns and little white picket fences, and‑look, there goes Spot to greet Grandpa as he pulls into the drive way!‑‑and next month you're going to make the last payment on that student loan you've had for the past twenty years, but then... SUDDENLY, your company has announced it's moving to Mexico‑without you! Your wife's employer has decided she's no longer needed because the new "human resources" consultant believes that one person can easily do the jobs of three, and little Jimmy has come down with an unknown illness from something he ate out of the McNugget fryer, and your HMO says they won't cover little Jimmy's operation but they'll be happy to treat him as an outpatient if you're willing to drive to Tijuana twice a week because, well, they've built a new outpatient clinic just across the border, thanks to free trade, which may or may not be responsible for the worm found in Jimmy's half‑eaten McNugget‑‑oh, sorry, the collection agency just called and they'd like your new Celica back because you've missed a payment! Hey, maybe when you go to Tijuana and drop Jimmy off you can head down the street and reapply for your old job, where all the "associates" are given their own outhouse and fed a free breakfast burrito when they arrive at work at five o'clock every morning.
Pardon me if I was dreaming, but weren't things looking up just a year or so ago? Weren't we supposed to be living through
the "largest economic expansion in history"? Hadn't the government ended fifty‑five years of operating in the red and finally boasted a "cash surplus" large enough to fix every road, bridge, and tooth in America? Air and water pollution were at their lowest levels in decades, crime was at a record low, teen pregnancies had dropped out of sight, and more kids were graduating from high school and college than ever before. Old people lived longer, you could call Katmandu for 12 cents a minute, and the Internet was bringing all the world (save the two billion or so who live without electricity) closer together. Palestinians broke bread with Israelis, Catholics shared a pint with Protestants in Northern Ireland. Yes, life was getting a whole lot better‑and we all felt it. People were friendlier, strangers on the street would give you the time of day, and Regis made the questions easier so we could have more millionaires.
Then something happened.
Investors lost millions in the stock market. Crime went up for the first time in a decade. Job losses skyrocketed. American icons like Montgomery Ward and TWA vanished. Suddenly we were 2.5 million barrels short of oil‑every day! Israelis started killing Palestinians again, and Palestinians returned the favor. By mid2 00 1, thirty‑seven countries were at war around the world. China became our new enemy‑again. The United Nations kicked us off their Human Rights Commission, and the European Union attacked us for unilaterally violating the ABM treaty by reintroducing "Star Wars." It was hard, damn hard, to find a good movie; millions stopped watching network television; and every radio station you tuned in sounded the same‑like crap.
In short, all of a sudden everything sucked. Whether it's the shaky economy, depleted energy supplies, elusive world peace, no job security, no health care, or the simple unusable ballot we were given to pick a President, it has become maddeningly clear to most Americans that nothing seems to work. Firestone tires don't work, and the Ford Explorers that ride atop them don't work
either‑which means you don't work at all because you're dead and decapitated and lying in a ditch outside the Dunkin' Donuts.
911 doesn't work. 411 doesn't work. Cell phones don't work, and when they do, it's some asshole having an argument with his broker at the table next to you while you're trying to eat dinner.
Freedom of choice is a thing of the past. We're down to six media companies, six airlines, two and a half carmakers, and one radio conglomerate. Everything you will ever need is at WalMart. You can choose between two political parties that sound alike, vote alike, and are funded alike by the same exact wealthy donors. You can choose to wear nondescript pastels and keep your mouth shut, or you can choose to wear a Marilyn Manson T‑shirt and get kicked out of school. Britney or Christina, WB; or UPN, Florida or Texas‑there ain't no friggin' difference, folks, it's all the same, it's all the same, it's all the same....
How did all this happen? Three little words:
Stupid White Men.
Think about it: the Bush boys, who took the slender inheritance of Poppy's political mind (not to mention charisma) and spread it even thinner among themselves. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Spencer Abraham, and the other old shills Bush revived to prop him up. The CEOs of the Fortune 500; the wizards behind Hollywood and five‑hundred‑channel TV; hell, the average Joe who sees 15 mpg on his new‑car sticker and thinks "not bad!" as the ozone clouds part above his head.
That's right, the whole planet is being overrun‑and I'm convinced it's starting to fight back. One day last February in Chicago the temperature hit 70 degrees, and what happened? Everyone was, like, Wow, this is great! People were walking around in shorts, and the beach along Lake Michigan was filled with sunbathers. "Boy, I love this weather," said one lady to me on the street.
You love this? Let me ask you‑if the sun suddenly rose at midnight tonight, would you say, "Oh, wow, this is beautiful! I love it! More daylight!"
No, of course you wouldn't. You'd be freaking out on a level that has never been measured. You would be screaming bloody murder that the Earth was spinning out of control, heading toward the sun at a million miles a second. I doubt anyone would be running to the beach to catch any of those bonus rays. Of course, maybe it's not that bad: maybe someone just launched a thousand warheads on Milwaukee, and that's the bright light you're seeing to the north as nuclear fission interacts with vacant boarded‑up breweries. Either way, you'd be ripping through so many Hail Marys and God Have Mercies you might just knock ten years off your sentence to purgatory.
So why on earth do we think a 70‑degree day in the coldest month of the year, in one of the coldest cities in America, is something to crow about? We ought to be demanding action from our representatives, and swift retribution against those responsible for these climate changes. This isn't right, folks: something is terribly wrong. And if you don't believe me, ask that dead infected cow you're drowning in A‑1. He knew the answer, but we killed him before we could moo it out of him.
But let's not worry about Mother Earth‑she's lasted through much worse. Let the tree‑huggers lose their sleep over it‑we're too damn busy trying to make money!
Ali, money. The sweet stench of success. A couple years ago I was talking to a guy in a bar who happened to be a stockbroker. He asked me about my "investments." I told him I didn't have any, that I don't own a single share of stock. He was stunned.
"You mean you don't have a portfolio where you keep your money? "
"I don't think it's a good idea to keep your money in portfolios," I replied, "or in a briefcase, or even under the futon. I save what little I can in a place called a 'bank,' where I have what the old‑timers call a 'savings account.' "
He was not amused. "You're just screwing yourself," he said. "And you're being irresponsible. I remember reading you made a
lot of money from your first film, right? Do you know how much you'd have today if you'd invested it in the stock market ten years ago? Probably about thirty mil."
Thirty million? Dollars? Coulda been mine? Agggghhhh!!! What was I thinking?
Suddenly I got very queasy, and it felt like all my principles and beliefs were about to end up on my shoes. I excused myself and went outside.
Some time after this event, the stockbroker guy got hold of my home address and started sending me weekly "market updates" and other propaganda in the hope that I'd give him my kid's college fund to gamble with on the Strip known as Wall Street.
Well, the "Investment Opportunities" flyers have stopped coming. In the past eighteen months, Microsoft has gone from $120 to $40, Dell from $50 to $16, and Pets.com and its cute little sock puppet have gone to puppy heaven. The NASDAQ has lost nearly 40 percent of its value, and average Americans, snookered into the madness of playing the market with their meager savings, have lost billions. Any thoughts of "early retirement" we may have entertained are out the window; we'll be lucky if they let us cut back to forty hours a week when we're eighty‑two, or incontinent, whichever comes first.
Actually, not all of us. There are almost fifty‑six thousand new millionaires in the country‑and they've, made out like bandits. They made their money because they already had a goodly sum to begin with and then invested it in companies that got rich by throwing people out of work, exploiting children and the poor in other countries, and receiving big reductions in their taxes. For them greed wasn't good, it was mandatory. In fact, they were so good at creating a climate of greed that the word itself went out of style. Now it's called SUCCESS! and, yes, it comes with its own punctuation. Soon virtually no one questioned all this gluttony as wrong or obscene; it became such a part of our daily life that when this character from Texas got greedy and took an election
he didn't win, we stood back and gave it to him‑he wasn't being greedy, after all, just being smart. just as corporate agriculture's dicey schemes to corrupt the genetic makeup of your corn flakes aren't insane or greedy‑that's progress. Just as the guy next door who wants the biggest SUV ever built isn't being greedy‑he just wants more torque, baby!
This Stupid White Virus is so powerful it has even infected ringers like Colin Powell, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice. And it's created a deep funk‑a grand, national funk you can feel wherever you go. It has permeated us so profoundly I wonder if we'll ever recover.
Of course, we're all trying hard to forget about the moment when this ugly cultural shift hit critical mass and the Forces of Evil took over. I know what it is, you know what it is, even an idiot like Brit Hume knows what it is. It's that damn stolen election. Stolen, hijacked, abducted, and ripped from the very hands and hearts of the American people. There is absolutely NO DISPUTE over who got the most votes, and there's little question now about the shenanigans that took place in Florida; yet he who won is not the man we see playing Wiffle ball on the South Lawn this afternoon.
Yes, we're all telling ourselves nothing all that bad really happened‑get over it, we've been told‑but the events of those thirty‑six days shook us hard, knocked the wind out of us, and wedged something deep in our national craw. Nothing‑short of one big national Heimlich maneuver can save us now. We're stumbling around blue in the face, wondering if relief will come in time. Will I have my job next year? What will happen to my retirement fund? Do ice cubes count as a food group.
YOU DO NOT COUNT! It's a tough lesson to learn. And tougher still to discover that all the stuff you've always been told to do‑vote, obey the law, recycle your wine‑cooler bottles doesn't really matter, either. You might as well pull the shades and take the phone off the hook, because you and your fellow Ameri
cans have just been declared irrelevant. Your services as a citizen, we regret to inform you, are no longer required.
So confusion reigns, and the seismic tremors of national frustration are starting to rumble beneath our feet. The grumbling isn't subsiding, it's growing each day. Eight months after the election, deep into 2001, a Fox News poll announced that nearly 60 percent of the American public had NOT gotten over how Bush took the White House‑that we're still "angry." That's a long time to harbor aggressive ill will toward our Leader. A mood that swings out of control like this‑with no prompting from refined sugar or Oprah‑is a mood that can alter history. Millions of Americans, from all points on the political spectrum, are feeling off‑balance, unsure, upset, unglued. The rest are in prison.
The common view in the heartland is that the ship of state is running on fumes, and no one's at the wheel; after all, the designated driver wasn't designated by anyone‑and he's a self‑confessed drunk driver to boot.
Hard‑core Republicans are desperately hoping that Big Dick Cheney can survive half a dozen more heart attacks and last long enough to oversee the raping and pillaging of everything west of Wichita. What they don't realize is that he's already put the rest of the country into cardiac arrest. Meanwhile, he and his gang are double‑timing it to dismantle as much of the environment, the Constitution, and the evidence in Tallahassee as they can before the EMS unit called Election 2002 arrives.
And if there's one thing I'm certain of, there's a triage a‑comin'. The American public will be turning off the life support system on this administration faster than you can say "Jack Splat Kevorkian."
So hack away, Ms. Norton‑last I heard, trees grow back! Bombs away, Mr. Rumsfeld and General Powell‑we're all out of Sergeant McVeighs for you to pin medals on! Drill away, Mr. Abraham‑we'll have you parking those big gas hogs at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club before you know it!
Soon, like good Saint Jeffords of Vermont, the elephants will
be jumping from the sinking ship. The rest of us will just sit back and enjoy the show while contemplating how to make next month's house payment, and where to take cover as the remains of Antonin Scalia rain down upon us like a cold shower in January. Hey, dammit‑wait! IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO RAIN IN JANUARY!
So the panic builds. The media can turn and look the other way if they want, and the pundits can keep trying to sell their lies by repeating them so often that they start seeming true. But we millions of Americans aren't going to fall for the deception. The stock market isn't just going through a "natural cycle." There's nothing beneficial about "genetically enhanced beef." The bank doesn't want to "work with you" to help you catch up. And the cable guy isn't coming "between 8 A.M. and 5 PM."‑or any other time, for that matter. It's all a bunch of hooey, from top to bottom, and as soon as they recognize we're onto them, the sooner we'll get our country back.
Today I took my year‑old car, with less than 4,000 miles on it, into the repair shop at the dealership where I bought it. Why? Seems that every other time I go to start the car, it won't start. I've replaced the starter, the battery, the fuse, the computer chip. But none of that has solved the problem.
When I told the service manager all this, he looked at me with a witheringly vacant stare. "Oh, these new Beetles‑‑they don't start unless you drive them every day."
I thought for sure I must have heard him wrong‑‑after all, he was speaking perfect English. So I asked him again what the problem was.
"You see," he said, shaking his head in pity, "these VWs are run by a computer system, and if the computer hasn't read any activity‑namely, you turning it on and driving it every day or so‑then the computer assumes the battery is dead or something, and just shuts down the whole car. Is there any way you or someone you know can go down to the garage and start it once a day?"
I didn't know what to say. "If you don't start the car every day, it will die"‑‑what is this,1901? Am I being arrogant to expect that a car I spent $20,000 on is supposed to start whenever I put the key in the ignition? There aren't many sure things left in the world these days: the sun still sets in the west, the Pope still says Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, Strom Thurmond still comes back to life whenever there's an ex‑First Lady around to grope. I would have thought I could cling to at least this one last article of faith: a brand‑new car always starts‑‑period!
"Like ninety‑five percent of the customers you've sold these new Beetles to," I said, "I live in Manhattan. Do you know anybody in Manhattan who drives their car every day?"
"Yes, sir, we understand. Nobody in the city drives a car every day. They use the subways! I don't know why they even sell these cars in the city. It's really a shame. Have you tried writing to Volkswagen? Is there a kid on your block you can get to start it for a few minutes every day or so?"
So I'm stuck with a car that doesn't run, in a country where nothing works, everything sucks, and it's every man, woman, and state‑tested child for themselves. Survival of the richest‑no more lifeboats for you, or you, or you!
There's got to be a better way...
Дата добавления: 2015-09-11; просмотров: 28 | Поможем написать вашу работу | Нарушение авторских прав |