Not Just Cowards

George Bush could order the summary execution in the streets of anyone who looked sideways at a policeman, and his backers would applaud him for his genius and foresight, and those same people would claim that anyone who protested these summary executions clearly want the United States to be attacked again, wants Americans to die, and wants Islamic fundamentalists to conquer and control the United States.

Who has faith in America and Americans here? Those of us who believe we are a strong enough country to afford the risks that an open society offers in exchange for the rewards an open society provides or those who believe in torture chambers and spying on civilians? Those of us who believe that the President is bound to the constitution or those who dramatically and demagogically proclaim that America is the greatest country in the world and the constitution is inviolable as they endeavor to discover and implement ways to undermine that very constitution?

This is what pisses me off: they hate this country. They put on their flag shirts (and really, how is a flag fashioned into a shirt and sold for a hundred dollars less of a desecration than an honest protester burning it in an honest expression of dissent in a free country?), slap a yellow ribbon on their bumper, approve of an administration that purposely, steadily, works to undo two and a quarter centuries of separation of powers, to establish laws smacking of monarchy, to wreck the fence between church and state, to roll back civil liberties and women's rights, and then say I hate this country?

An old adage holds that one begins to resemble one's enemies, and in the fight against radical totalitarianism Bushco has chosen to use totalitarianism, and the people lining up in support of this erosion of American moral principle are those who claim to be most American. In their beliefs and actions they prove to be anti-American, anti-freedom, anti-openness, anti-religion. They are cowards, they are pussies. If they believed in this country like I believe in this country they wouldn't be destroying it to save it.