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Failed State America: Scenes from the Death Chamber
As old soldiers took the stage to glorify colonialist wars of aggression, atrocities past and present, the Democrats practiced their new talking points: Vote for John Kerry because he is a a decorated veteran who knows first-hand what it takes to impose America's will on rogue natives, a man of faith, a man who knows it's not so much what you say as how you say it, what you do as how you present it.
As the party elite party on in a city where the homeless have been safely locked away, those opposed to war crimes caged, America lies dying, an unrecognizable skeleton of a life ill-conceived and nefariously lived, blue foam of morphine oozing from the corners of her cracked lips, the family hovers at the bedside, whispering, they say she can hang on like this for a while, DNR, keep her comfortable, if only we'd known sooner, they might have been able to operate, well, we did know, you remember I told you that day she fell, she hadn't been looking right...
It is not my intention to tell anyone that they "should not" vote for Kerry. Or the short one.
That would be like telling someone in the latter stages of terminal lung cancer that they should not smoke a cigarette.
The United States is a failed state, with no legitimate government, it is run by a corporate designer version of Somalia-style warlords, whose purpose has nothing to do with the well-being of its citizens, and everything to do with stuffing a handful of already bulging profits with the sweat and blood of its own people, and the people of those countries it decides to seize, with multi-national sweat and blood, and the innocence of multi-national children.
There is no nation on earth whose people do not fear being invaded and overrun by US funded hordes of torturers and sexual predators, there is no mother who does not tremble at the thought that it could be her own child there in the "interrogation facility," providing a little R & R for America's brave gunmen.
America is feared and despised like the still-breathing corpse of the brute who raped your sister, you cannot feel pity, you can feel nothing but disgust and loathing, and the stench of his putrefication-in-life is a fetid promise that soon he will be no more.
A failed state, with no credible claim to sovereignty or nationhood, it is nothing more than a cadre of war profiteers who rule over a mass of serfs, who will live or die according to the grace and favor of the cadre.
Whether its figurehead is tall or short, literate and urbane or a neurological wreck living with challenges developmental and emotional does not matter to the next child to die, or wish he would, so that the ruling lords of Halliburton, or Heinz, or an optimist merger of Heinz-Halliburton can have more money than most American serfs can even conceive of.
As the glitterati and the politerati clink glasses and hobnob and pose for photos, those for whom a front porch is an impossible dream are neither deceived nor interested.
To those who crouch, weeping over the bodies of loved ones, in the ruined rubble of their humble homes, it does not make a bit of difference how war crimes are phrased or framed, what "face" is painted on them.
Those who scream, who still can make sounds, from the depths of the prisons and interrogation facilities, the cages and holes and undisclosed locations that dot the globe do not appreciate the nuanced quality of their torment, or the merits of an even-handed discussion of child rape.
America lies dying, and the neighbors gather, murmuring outside the death chamber, they do not enter,not out of respect, but revulsion, and while the family squabbles over the good china, someone slips in, and very quietly pulls the plug.
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