Thread: Suspension of Disbelief

Suspension of Disbelief
by: Holly Wood
December 7, 2003

In English class, you’re taught to suspend your disbelief while reading fiction. “It’s the meaning,” they say, “not the details.” We’re conditioned to carry this suspension of disbelief with us off the bus and into our personal lives.
Well, I’ve tried that.

Go home tonight and find meaning in the news. Suspend your disbelief in the fact another eight or nine men and women, not too much older than you and I, will have died fighting a battle we cannot win.

I want you to think about every senior you know. Think about the promise, the potential, and above all, think about where they might be in the next ten years.
Now, think about them all lain out in caskets on the football field.

In the past six months of Iraqi occupation, 437 Americans have given the ultimate sacrifice, roughly the same amount of students in my graduating class.

These men and women come home to no ceremony. Your President has yet to attend a single funeral. Reporters are forbidden to photograph their caskets as they arrive home at the Dover Air Base.

Please suspend your disbelief no further.

The purpose of the Iraqi occupation has vacillated from finding weapons of mass destruction to ousting Saddam Hussein to Democratizing (and consequently Americanizing) Iraq. But the bottom line in all of this, according to Bush, has been to preserve freedom and Democracy wherever we go.

Right. Because he’s done such a great job of it here.

•First off, let’s nail down the actual definition of Democracy. Websters Dictionary defines Democracy as “Government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained and directly exercised by the people.” Yet, we have a President who more than half of the nation did not vote for. We have the archaic system of the Electoral College still in place to make sure that the popular vote is essentially obsolete.

•Six weeks after 9/11, the Bush Administration pushed through with the US Patriot Act. The Act gave unprecedented power to the government to monitor your internet logs, read your library records, browse your bank transactions, heck, even listen in on your phone calls. Best of all, the administration doesn’t even have to tell Congress as to what they do with all that information. The bill ignores habeas corpus and the fourth amendment and lets the administration throw any guy off the street into prison by labeling him a “threat to national security.” Yes, well Mr. Bush, if you don’t define it, the guy ringing the Salvation Army Christmas bell can be labeled a threat to national security.

•But all and all, the 10 man commission hesitantly assigned to investigate the 9/11 tragedy keeps uncovering bits and pieces of information only to be stonewalled by a red-faced administration threatening to subpoena any incriminating evidence that cries negligence on the part of the American government. I’m glad at least SOMEONE in America has a right to privacy nowadays.

•In a recent visit to Great Britain, President Bush actually attempted to have the rights of assembly and free speech of the British suspended for the duration of his Public Relations/Image Salvation itinerary in London. His administration realized that the American video cameras would capture the American President publicly mocked, egged, and burned in effigy by thousands of demonstrators.

•The Republican dominated Congress deregulated the media in May, 2003. What does this mean to you? Well, basically, the same handful of old, white men who control every newspaper, magazine, news station, radio station, etcetera, etcetera, can now own even more than they did before. If you believe the news today is in anyway bias, sensationalist, or incomplete in its coverage, you pretty much have this action to blame.

But of course, while Bush is peeing on our leg, his administration is calling it a delightful April shower. Worst of all, we’re ignorant enough to believe it.
I refuse to accept that this war was ever about “freeing” the Iraqi people as we, American citizens, have sat idly by as our rights have been trampled. Of course, it’s all in the name of ‘security,’ right?

I feel really secure knowing that my grandmother’s paying an extra $230 a month for medications that she could easily get for pennies a day had she been lucky enough to be born in Canada. Well, at least the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical conglomerates are secure and as long as the disgustingly rich are happy, that’s all that really matters.

I feel really secure knowing that Bush just signed a military defense bill just hitting the $401 billion mark, the highest it’s been since the Cold War. It’s even nice to know that the federal deficit is teetering at $374 billion. I guess that leaves about $3 for education and maybe the change in the White House sofa for Medicare. What luck.

But we’re liberating the Iraqi people! We’ve gauging out a foothold for democracy in the Middle East! *cough*ignoreafghanistan.*cough*

Right now, with the death tolls rising in a country most Americans still can’t point out on a map, Bush has finally decided to let the Iraqis have their own government! We trucked in a bunch of political exiles, sat them in a room for six months, and they still haven’t even come up with a Constitution. But that’s alright! You’re going to ignore the rights of women and minority tribes anyway, so what’s the point of putting out this sham of a document? All we really cared about in the aftermath was getting Bush’s cronies exclusive contracts to rebuild your fallen country. All we ask you to do is suspend your disbelief that this isn’t going to work.

awfully liberal?

I prefer...wonderfully liberal...

but to each his own, eh?