DCJFeb05

Volume 17

FEBRUARY 2005

17. 6: SLOUCHING TOWARDS FASCISM 2.27.2005

Almost the sure sign that our own democracy is in peril is the political drum beat that we must bring democracy to the rest of the world. This political evangelism is our mission, which we must pursue with a religious fervor to convert those political heathens of the Middle East.

George Bush took his new mantra on the road, to Europe, presumably to mend the huge rift he caused between his administration and Europeans. As never before, the people of Europe detest this American president and his policies – not America, mind you – but George Bush. More can be said of that later, but for the moment, the mantra: Bush's portrayal of himself as “Mr. Democracy,” not only because he helped bring about an Iraqi election that might result in another country under Islamic law, but because he thinks he can ram democracy down other country's throats and they will then make common cause with the USA (you know, like those democracies of France and Germany).

But who is George Bush to posture as the high priest of democracy? That might be called into reasonable question by the curiously un-democratic means by which he first gained his high office, and the tactics of purging voter roles and disqualifications of other voters that may well have made the difference in the recent election. Shouldn't Ukrainians be lecturing us about democracy? And his was a campaign that might well have been “won” by scapegoating cohorts that only wanted their equal rights, women who want to control their own bodies and homosexuals who wish to have their unions legally-sanctioned. Where is the democracy in that?

And where is the democracy in the use of some $97 million in government money being used to tout the administration's policies? Is it democratic to pay conservative columnist Armstrong Williams $240 thousand to promote “No Child Left Behind”? Or $21thousand for columnist Maggie Gallager to pump Bush's “Marriage Initiative.” To use our money to produce fake “news” stories to be aired by fake “news anchors” that promote the administrations policies? To credential “fake reporters” like “Jeff Gannon”(Guckert) to shill softball questions to Bush at the already highly-controlled press conferences? What's next, Nuremburg-like rallies of the faithful?

Not that there is a large chorus of voices calling such malfeasances into question. This is perhaps because there are consequences for challenging Mr. Democracy. Former Ambassador Joe Wilson and his CIA operative wife, Valerie Plame discovered that. Bush continues to stonewall the investigation into her being “outed” by someone in the White House. Reporters get shunted to the back of the room, rejected from Air Force One, or just plain ignored. At an even more sinister level there is the disturbing statistic that of the 54 journalists killed in Iraq, 11 were killed by American troops.

So does this mean that we are sliding toward fascism? Most of us don't feel much of it unless we piss off some airport security person. But then most “good Germans” didn't feel much difference in the early years of their Reich. If it is not too oxymoronic, it is a Friendly Fascism .

Of course, nothing brings on Friendly Fascism like that old standby, “the evil enemy” at the gates. History has shown that all sorts of peoples are willing to surrender their democracies and much more if you really scare the beans out of them. A tyrant who will save their butts is preferable to someone perceived as a duly-elected weakling. And so America's friendly fascism takes further form in the excesses of the Patriot Act II, detentions without charges, and a growing record of torture and other abuses of “suspects.” All now administered by a political crony whose job has been to legitimize the official use of torture.

A Republican-dominated Congress has approved spending on the Iraq war of hundreds of billions of dollars, and will be asked for over $80 billion more that was conveniently left out of the budget. They will likely comply, at the risk of “not supporting the troops.” America's equivalent of Krupp, Haliburton, has now been the recipient of over $96 billion of that. Then there is the new budget and Social Security shell games, medical, and education policies, ravaged to reduce the speed of a downward-spiraling deficit.

And where is the outrage, the clamor to save our own democracy? The legitimate press, what is left of it, is intimidated by the propaganda of being “liberal”. The insidiousness of friendly fascism is that all it needs is the right combination of elements, fear, and a putative leader who knows how to exploit it. When Bush recently met with Mr. Putin he deflected issues of difference by obliquely commenting that there was “more agreement than difference” between the two leaders. Sometimes some of the truth slips out.

________________________________________

17. 5: CIG-REGRETTES 2.21.2005

Reputedly chain-smoked by Deng Xiaoping, who died at age 93

Why did I do it!? After many abstemious years and I light-up like country singer who just lost his truck and his girl. Why!? I knew if I had just one, just one, Joe Camel's hump would be back on my back. Damn . . . damn . . . damn fool! I scolded myself as I crumpled the pack, knowing I'd just go out and buy another one. DAMN!!!

What I had crumpled turned out to be a paperback on my nightstand. I was relieved; it was just another cig-regrette nightmare.

That dream was a haunting reminder of years of failed attempts to kick the vexing habit of pleasure and peril. It was also a reminder that deep in the subconscious there lurks the memories of satisfying deep drags off the little white “friends” who celebrated with me why I was up, consoled me when I was down, and were there even when nobody else was.

It was my subconscious reminding me that something was missing from conversation over cappuccino, the interlude between dinner courses, and, how could one forget, aprés lovemaking. It was my subconscious telling me I was having cig-regrettes. It was my subconscious offering me a fantasy in which the Surgeon General announces: “Oops, we made a mistake. New research says ciggies pose no threat to your health.” I dreamed that cig-regrette a few nights ago, and awoke ready to rush out an buy a carton even if the sin taxes on it are more than my house payment.

Other cig-regrettes are almost paradoxical. Gone with my habit is the little game of provoking the fates, something that is quite easier to do when one is young and “immortal.” If the thrill of betting momentary pleasure against eternal regrets seems a bit overblown consider that such games are not played only by smokers. That piece of cheesecake, or hunk of pate; that last drink before driving home; doubling-down on your whole rent check; that one-night “un-protected” stand; they can all do you in as quickly or cruelly as the Marlboro Man or Virginia Slim. Smokers just need a special section to play in.

At a more conscious level is the social adjustment to being and “ex-smoker.” I'm still trying to sort out whether I associated more with smokers because they were more interesting, adventurous, or because hazy atmosphere made them seem so. I don't want to lose my interesting, smoking friends because each time they offer me a cigarette my refusal will remind them of their addiction. Or they might begin to shun me for fear of “second-handing” (shouldn't that be “second-lunging”) me. That qualifies as a collateral damage cig-regrette.

If these adjustments to being “clean” weren't enough, I fear becoming one of those whining health bigots, coughing and kvetching if anybody lights up in their zip code, or refusing to sleep in a hotel room that was once smoked in. Who wants to live longer if everybody you know shuns you like an insurance agent with flatulence? What's the use of good physical health if your social life is sick? If it turns out that prolonged abstention from smoking causes self-righteousness and hypocrisy in laboratory rats that's a big cig-regrette.

Finally, there is that mnemonic association of my smoking days with a time of innocence, a lost time before so many pleasurable things became unhealthful, when all smoking might do is “stunt your growth.” This is the cig-regrette of wistful ignorance. And so memory holds on to, even embellishes pleasant association with cigarettes: puffing along with Bogie and Becall on a summer night at the drive in; sitting around a table half the night with French friends, drinking wine, arguing politics, and filling ashtrays to the brim; sitting back and lighting up after finishing a great book; and other occasions on which an infusion of nicotine seemed to elevate the pleasure of the moment. I suppose much of this can be re-lived smoklessly, but it doesn't seem quite the same.

In the dreams where I am still a smoker one such memory haunts me for reasons I have yet to fathom. Nearly sixteen years ago my wife and teen-age daughters and I were traveling in Ireland. Arriving late on the ferry from Britain we were taking a train from Dublin in the wee hours. We shared our compartment with a plain Irish woman in her early thirties. She was plainly dressed in clothes that were showing signs of extended wear. She had no wedding band on hands that showed signs of hard work, maybe “service,” maybe factory work. She was as tired as we were, smiled a friendly smile, but quietly stared into the middle distance of what was perhaps a private dream.

I dozed for a few minutes and awoke to find her gone. As I made my way to the rest room there she was, rocking in the space between the cars. In fact, I was going there to sneak a cigarette, since Patty and the girls were on a crusade to get me to quit. As I passed the young woman she was extracting a cigarette from her purse. I quickly pulled out my hidden pack of a far superior brand from my jacket and said, “Would you like one of mine?” She smiled faintly and accepted one. I lit hers and then mine, and our eyes met briefly in that flash of flame and swirl of smoke of a hundred film noir scenes.

She inhaled deeply, arching her head back. Maybe because of her gaunt features the expression on her face reminded me of Bernini's “St. Theresa in Ecstasy” as she relaxed into a slightly-drugged state that seemed to ease more weariness than just that day's. I followed suit, enjoying the unexpressed and slightly illict bond with this stranger.

“One o' th' leetle playshures,” she lilted in a slightly cigarette-rasped brogue. It seemed a reference to a brief moment of narcosis in an otherwise hard and unfulfilled life. We shared perfunctory pleasantries and cigarettes and she disembarked at the next station.

It still puzzles me that my subconscious seems compelled to drag out that particular snippit of experience for me to review every so often. Maybe it wants me to wonder how that Irish woman is these days, or there is some other, recondite, purpose I've yet to figure out. But I think my subconscious has bigger cig-regrettes than I do, and it's using its dreamworks to dredge up some old memories as a pretext to sneak a smoke.

The cig-regrette dream returns with less frequency as the sober years pass, but I think that my subconscious will always be a smoker. Still, of all the kinds of regrets one can have in life, cig-regrettes are among the less painful, even in my dreams.

_____________________________________________

17. 4 BOARDING PASSES 2.13.2005

On an almost fully-booked international from Europe a few years ago I was having my usual trouble trying to sleep in my aisle coach seat on a 747. Added to my usual problems sleeping on planes was that fact that the male flight attendant responsible for my section of coach was probably the most vain, self-obsessed jerk I'd seen since I last saw one of those blow-dried news anchors on local newscasts.

That in itself, my sociological curiosity aside, would not have added to my sleeplessness. What did, however, was his habit of going to the lavatory, seemingly every 30 to 45 minutes, and dousing himself with the cheap aftershave the airline provides gratis on many international flights. So when Troy, let's call him Troy, because he reminded me of the actor Troy Donahue, with his well-coiffed blond hair and All-American good looks. When Troy ‘refreshed' himself and walked back down the aisle past my seat I would begin gagging and sneezing from the sickly-sweet aura of his aftershave. The very air around his head and shoulder seemed to be wavy, like heat rising off a New Mexico highway in summer. He reeked of the stuff.

OK, so at least he didn't smell ‘badly', one might say. But there's more. What probably bugged me more was that Troy comported himself with practiced movements and an attitude of ‘superiority' and aloofness, that announced something like: “you realize, of course, that I'm only doing this flight attendant thing because I'm between pictures just now.” If someone switched on their service light he would glide up with the sort of smile parents give to kids misbehaving in public and perfunctorily provide his services. He also never removed his uniform jacket, which allowed him to affect the position more of a Maitre ‘d, and set himself above his co-workers. Petty as it might sound, I wanted to smack him, just to bring him down a few notches.

As things turned out I didn't have to.

We were in that part of the flight when, several hours in, after the main meal service and the movie is over, the shades are all down, and the sleepers are sleeping—the ‘wee, small hours' of the flight—after Troy had made yet another refreshing trip to the lavatory, that disaster struck. It was during the ‘snack' meal service.

Three rows ahead of me, also on the aisle, slumbered one of those passengers we see on almost any long international flight. He, in this case, managed to encapsulate himself in a cocoon of near total sensory deprivation. Headphones on ears, neck pillow encasing his head, eye shades blocking out and rays of light, and blanket pulled up to his chin, only his nose, apparently insensitive to Troy's gagging aroma, functioned unimpeded. Let's call him Art, Art Slumberman will do nicely. I envied Art because he seemed like one of those lucky fliers who can get into a state of suspended animation, like in those space movies, and wake up fresh and ready to go after the rest of us are ready to scream “let me off this goddamned airplane!!” It was not a nice envy I had of Art.

It's a bit of a detour in the narrative, but my ‘nice' envy was reserved for the guy in the row behind me. Sometime during the ‘wee' flying hours what I took to be a few moments of turbulence in my weary daze appeared, under closer inspection, to be an initiation into the exclusive “Five-Mile High Club” in the darkened cabin. I've heard groans of anxiety during turbulence, but the utterances mixed with the hissing cabin vents were moans, not groans. In turbulence once can see all the heads in the cabin bobbing, or wagging from side to side; this ‘turbulence' was affecting only my seat!

It's a wonder to me how people can behave differently in the same situation. To some people, flying is such a terrifying experience that sex might be the last thing that would come to their minds, or unlikely to come to fulfillment if it did come to mind. There are those people who take the position that this flight might be their last, and what would they most prefer to do with the little time remaining to them? Still others dread the thought of being in a ‘compromising position' when the ‘end' comes.

I peeked through the space between the two seatbacks in my row. The cabin was quite dark, and the couple was bundled in two or more blankets. The arm rests had been raised, forming the three seats into an airborne love-seat. This arrangement is not unusual in under-booked flights, but typically this is done to stretch out for sleep. The ‘turbulence' and moaning continued for a while, apparently without the notice of anyone else, and convinced me of my suspicions in the rapid acceleration of ‘turbulence' prior to its abrupt conclusion.

That consummation was none too soon for the amorous couple; the cabin lights came on and some of the window shades were raised. Most people still slept, especially Art, but Troy was beginning to serve our rows our ‘snack' of nice hot quiches, whose aroma was swirling with Troy's cologne. It was evident that the cabin crew wanted to get the snack served and cleaned up in time for an earlier than scheduled arrival in LA. More window shades were raised as some of the first-time European visitors wanted their first glimpses of America from 36 thousand feet.

My attention, however, was on Troy, in particular his method for distributing the quiches. No serving cart for Troy; since his station was close to the serving bay of the plane he simply emerged from the bay with two quiches in each oven-mittened hand, dispensed them, and returned to the bay for more. This he did with an almost choreographed style, swirling and turning, and leaning, like some supremely-confident circus performer, or one of those prancing and posing new-style magicians.

Troy was serving three rows ahead of mine when disaster struck. He had served two of his four quiches and was in the process of turning to distribute the others when a mild real turbulence jolted the plane. Caught off balance he began to pirouette, struggling to keep one of the quiches from flying out of his hand. I could see that he was in trouble, for the first time that sort of smug expression he wore was replaced with that of a guy who has just caught a sensitive appendage in his zipper, and a mouth that wanted to scream “help!” or “gardyloo!” or something expletive. “Mr. Control” was out-of-control.

No matter, it would have been too late for Art anyway. Troy spun to keep his hand under the quiche that wanted to take off like a frisbee. In the process his hand brought it around with considerable force and plastered the quiche squarely on the sleeping face of Art Slumberman. It looked for all the world like one of those comic ‘pie-in-the-face' stunts; except that this was a steaming quiche lorraine and Art had no idea it was snack time.

Art launched himself from his seat like a missile, smacking his head on the bottom of the overhead storage bin and flopping back down in his seat half-dazed. Troy shrieked—no other way to describe that utterance—and flipped the other quiche into the air as he was reaching for Art's face. The second quiche landed harmlessly in the aisle beside my seat. But Art was sputtering and gasping as he tore off his eye-shades, flipping bits of quiche on nearby passengers. It was a good thing he was wearing them as the steaming quiche was very uncomfortable and might have caused serious harm.

Troy understood that as well, completely losing all that practiced ‘coolness' and alternately swabbing Art's face and then looking about to see who might have witnessed this event. Surprisingly few people had seemed to have noticed, but briefly Troy's eyes contacted mine and I could see the panicked look in them, and he returned to swabbing and apologizing to Art.

A few minutes later when Troy came by to clean up the quiche that had flopped face down by my seat I was going to ask him how Art, "the torts attorney in 34C,” was doing. But when I saw that the smug expression was gone, the eyes that had a pleading look, and the little piece of quiche lodged in the once perfect hair, all I could muster was: “I've been meaning to ask you the name of that cologne you're wearing.”

_____________________________________________

17. 3: THE PLAYWRIGHT AND THE PRESIDENT 2.12.2005

Arthur Miller died the day before Abraham Lincoln's birthday. Is coincidence alone any reason for reflection on the lives of these two men? There's the physical resemblance: both tall, big-boned, craggy-featured, un-handsome men. It's a bit of a stretch to say that they were both, in their respective ways, concerned with the human condition and human freedom. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation remains a work in progress not only in America, but in many other nations, and Miller's most renowned plays, Death of a Salesman and The Crucible , continue to be among the most universally-staged plays in the world.

Miller is back in the news, as a personality of moment, because of his death, after a long and illustrious career in letters, and, of course, because he was once also the husband of Marilyn Monroe. In some sense, an era seems to have passed, with the last of the triumvirs of the American stage, with O'Neill and Williams, now passed on. Yet his major plays seem more relevant than ever to the American condition. Willy Lohman, the self-deluded, insecure salesman seems ubiquitous in American society these days; in the deceived investors in stocks and pensions by corporate robbers and raiders, in the laid off manufacturing workers from outsourced jobs, and now the impending destruction of the Social Security system and other aspects of the social safety net. Lohman embraced the American Dream of success and wealth, but it eluded him. His tragedy is reflected everywhere in those Americans who voted for the rhetoric of a hollow promises wrapped in “absolute” values.

Likewise, The Crucible might well be regarded as a cautionary tale for America's post-911 paranoia. A poignant reminder that this country was founded by people who gave us the term “puritanical,” who after escaping religious persecution in Europe, proceeded to engage in witch hunts, kangaroo trials, and summary executions of their own people in a campaign of collective madness that has a disturbing resonance in the Patriot Act and our summary detentions and sometimes brutal interrogation practices, both in Iraq and at home. Much as it was in the 17 th Century it is power-hungry clerics who help fan the frenzy of fears of the “foreign devils” claimed to be murderously bent on destroying our sacrosanct way of life and moral values. Miller himself came under scrutiny by our most recent witch hunt, the HUAC hearings of the later 1940s at which he steadfastly refused to “name names.”

Lincoln, too, has become the focus of one dimension of the prevailing paranoia afflicting America. On the occasion of his birthday there has emerged a minor media crusade to “out” the great emancipator as a homosexual. Born of the “terror” that homosexuals are accused of committing to the sacred institution of the union between a man and a woman (and the 50 percent dissolution of the same), “Honest Abe,” whose own marriage was a troubled one, apparently often shared his bed with a male friend. That, for our prevailing witch hunters and protectors of red state moral values, is good enough to put him right between the likes of Tinkie Winkie and Sponge Bob, those evil purveyors of gay prurience.

Of course, as far as Miller is concerned, you can't get much better "straight" credentials than Marilyn Monroe.

__________________________________________________

17. 2: EMPORIO PRC 2.7.2005

A few years ago the last “Five and Dime” in San Diego closed its doors (it's now a Payless Shoe store). I loved five and dimes when I was a kid. (I doubt that there a re any left in New York either.) They had all sorts of things, sort of a “general s store where you could get a coffee pot, a ball of string, greeting cards, some scissors, everything but a computer. I loved the 5 & 10. The one in San Diego was run by a couple of elderly ladies who seemed as anachronistic as the business itself. Going in there was like passing through a time portal; I felt like I was carrying my baseball glove, wearing PF Keds sneakers, chewing double bubble gum and looking for a way to squander a quarter.

So I was thrilled when I discovered the Chinese counterpart to the 5 & 10 in my old Chinese neighborhood in Hong Kong in 1997. Situated under the flyover a block away from my building it is one of several stores from the People's Republic of China that do business in Hong Kong. I call it “Emporio PRC” because it is such a contrast with the various forms of capitalist merchandising elsewhere in Hong Kong. Just around the corner is the type of Hong Kong emporium that is more typical of merchandising all over Hong Kong, and increasingly, all over Asia—the flashy multi-storied “malls” that are warrens of shops, big and small that are the Asian version of spacious and horizontal American malls.

Outside Emporio PRC is a little strip of urban space alongside the road under the flyover that has been given some benches and tables and where the local old guys play cards or checkers and smoke. The smoking is a superfluous activity for respiratory destruction given the levels of hydrocarbons jammed into the air by the vehicles on the two levels of roadway and contained by the surrounding buildings. I could only sit and watch them for a few minutes before my eyes start watering and I begin gasping. That's when I retreated into the Emporio for relief and a bit of time travel.

What most attracts me to this store is that it is crammed with the products and merchandising atmosphere of The People's Republic of China's central planning, non-market-oriented production, and its concomitant counter-productive approach to sales. The store's offerings consist of what one might have encountered in the now extinct American “five and dime” of fifty years ago: a bit of household items like crockery, toasters, and older, percolator-style coffee pots, some men's and women's clothing in styles based on I Love Lucy re-runs, some fierce-looking Chinese booze, packaged food and loads of noodles, display cases and shelves full of Oriental medicines in boxes and bottles with (to me) completely undecipherable Chinese characters. Refreshingly, there's not a single international brand logo or product in the place.

The merchandising is also circa 1950s; dreary earth tones and the ubiquitous jade-shade wall paint that reminds me of pistachio ice cream. There are no “sale” signs in the store, no coupons, no “buy one, get one free” promotions, and of course, no wide selection of colors, sizes, styles, of anything.

The establishment is sort of “presided over” by a redundant sales staff who seem to have been selected on the basis of being able to wear an expression of someone undergoing a rectal examination. In contrast to “capitalistic” merchandising they are, save for the woman who operates the cash register, all men, whom I reckon to be between 55 and 65 (maybe those were prostate exams). They stand at their various stations, dressed in the fashions of the shop and not knowing quite what to do with themselves. One guy rearranges and folds towels on a table, another straightens boxes of medicines, on the second floor another dusts to coffee pots and tea makers. They go about their tasks with a deliberate lassitude that must come from years of practice in socialistic doldrums of the PRC.

Hong Kong people seem to avoid this place as though it were a dispensary of deadly bird flu. In all the times I visited the store I rarely saw another customer. Moreover, in those several times never did one of the sales staff ask if they could assist me. If one doesn't care for being pestered by over-solicitous sales people in eager “capitalistic” merchandising, this is definitely the store for them. The motto here is: we stand, we stare, we ignore.

I also like to frequent Emporio PRC because I am amused by the bureaucratized process of purchasing anything. When I selected a couple of kitchen towels (they had “good morning” printed on them in Chinese characters), the salesperson held onto them, filled out a slip of paper in duplicate and pointed to the cashier. The cashier took the paper, then my money, and “chopped” the paper “paid” and handed it back to me. I then returned to the sales person, handed over the paper, from which he tore off the bottom portion (the receipt) to hand to me with the towels. If you're in a hurry to get to the gym, or your SUV is double parked, this isn't the store for you.

I know that I am drawn to this place because I miss the “five and dimes” of my youth. But I think it is also the sheer contrast of this commercial anachronism, this museum of Maoist merchandising smack in the middle of the cowboy capitalism of Hong Kong that fascinates me. I have experienced somewhat the same thing in the “Friendship Stores” on the mainland. Ask to see or examine some merchandise, say an item in a display case, and they will fetch it with a visible reluctance, show it to you, and then with customary “take-it-or-leave-it” attitude, give you about ten seconds to make up your mind. There's no sales pitch, hard sell, bargaining, just “take-it-or-leave-it”. After all, the staff get no bonuses, no “salesperson of the month” parking spaces, or “salesperson of the year” Alaskan cruise. But even that appears to be changing in the atmosphere of ‘go-go' capitalism rampant in the PRC in recent years.

In 2000 I was again living in Hong Kong not far from Emporio PRC. But when I went there for a nostalgic visit to the old days of American capitalism and Chinese socialism it was gone, replaced by a clothing store emblazoned with “sale” signs. Seems the cruel and inexorable “laws” of economics respect no ideology, much less the comforts of nostalgia.

__________________________________________

17. 1: THE LOGIC OF PREEMPTION 2.1.2005

Alawi votes. Urbis Media

It would be unseemly to, let's say, wish for the Iraqi election to be a flop. You have to admire those people coming out to vote, walking, not riding in armored Humees or Bradleys, wearing flip-flops and not Kevlar vests, and risking their lives, not just having their ballot rejected for hanging chads. The Bush administration wants us to see this as vindication for all the lies and deaths up to this point (they aren't over by a long shot). Iraqis haven't had an open election for 50 years and they came out to vote for one of the 100 political parties they know next to nothing about, candidates without any platforms, for a 275 seat assembly that is supposed to create their new constitution, whatever that will be, in a “free and fair” election that is taking place under occupation by a foreign power that refuses to say if and when they will leave their country.

The Bushies have us in a tough position. A preempted position. They play the game better than anybody. Why? Because they have a callous disregard for the truth, that's why.

Preemption No, 1: They preempted any real opposition for opposition to going to war anywhere by calling their war a “war on terror.” It's not, but vote against giving Bush that power and you ride with Osama, man. (Osama who? Well don't ask Bush.)

Preemption No. 2: They preempted any opposition to their war by preempting the weapons inspection process. Let's face it, if Blix had found no weapons then where was the case (the initial one) for invasion.? How do they preempt that: just keep saying that they are there WMDs, but Saddam won't let us find them. So we gotta go in and get them because, even though he never threatened us with them, he is a danger to our security. See, you've been preempted.

Preemption No. 3: Once they get the troops in there you are preempted again. Say anything against the war and you are “not supporting the troops.” You may want to bring them home, but George needs them over there, and he needs some of them to die because that “proves” that there are terrorists there, even though our troops are the main attraction for terrorists that weren't there before. You've been preempted, again.

OK, you still with me? No? We then you're a red state moron; go to your Christian Monster Truck Rally and leave us alone!

Preemption No. 4. So the Bushies push for an election well before the country is ready for one. Having gotten Hamid Karzi installed as president of the nine blocks of Kabul and Afghanistan that aren't run by warlords, the Bushies have experience there (and in Ohio) of creating the illusion of democracy. So how are you going to gainsay those courageous Iraqis coming out and voting. You can't; you've been preempted !

So you have to say awkward, convoluted things like: “I support getting the terrorists who caused 911, but not invading Iraq. I support our troops, but not what they are doing over there. I praise the Iraqis for voting, but we shouldn't have invaded their country in the first place.” That's pre-empted people talk. You can't fight people who have a callous disregard for the truth with talk like that. You know, and they know, this whole thing is built on a lie, that two wrongs can make a right, that it's a shell game of cocked-up justifications for a war that has ruined our reputation internationally.

Preemption No. 5: But worst of all, the Iraqis (not just Saddam) were preempted. We've killed may 12 or 14 thousand of you people, wrecked some of your cities and infrastructure, and are shoving broomsticks up some of your detained butts. Sure, that's what Saddam used to do; but we're doing it for a good cause, and we'll leave someday. You can understand that can't you? You would have chosen that if you could have, right?

No? Well, it doesn't matter: YOU'VE BEEN PREEMPTED!

_________________________________________________