[Mb-civic] The Bush Zone (with Apologies to Rod Serling)

[Michael Butler]

    The Bush Zone (with Apologies to Rod Serling)
    By John Cory 
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective/Satire

     Friday 14 January 2005
 There is a fifth realm beyond known reality. It is a realm as vast as space
and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground of haze and shadow,
between science and superstition, and it lies at the pit of man's fears.
This is the realm of the unimaginable. It is an area we call "The Bush
Zone."

    Meet Mr. and Mrs. America, faithful believers in the one true nation.
They arise each morning and stand before the mirror reciting their daily
mantra: "It's a grand old flag! Leader of the free world! We're no. 1!"
Their iconic reflection smiles back, a warm and homemade apple pie image of
the best of everything, the best medical care, the most powerful military,
and the best political system of any country in the world. The mirror never
lies.

     But this morning, Mr. And Mrs. America, discover a warped mirror that
casts a disturbing and twisted funhouse reflection of their former selves.
Daily slogans are powerless against this distorted likeness, and all that
they once held sacred now ripples across the glass in a deformed and
misshapen wave of elongated ugliness. Mr. And Mrs. America just stepped
through the looking glass and into the Bush Zone.

     Submitted for your consideration: citizens of the wealthiest country in
the world seek salvation via the free-market system. They organize bake
sales and eBay auctions to raise money for medical therapy not covered by
their profit-driven corporate HMOs, only to discover that some of that money
is also needed to purchase body armor the Pentagon failed to provide to
their sons and daughters in Iraq. War is never cheap, but always profitable
in the Bush Zone.

     Further submitted for your consideration: a President insists on free
elections in his combat arena despite the risk to life and limb for Iraqis,
even as his own political party strains the boundaries of legality and
decency to suppress the vote of Americans at home. Democracy is only for the
righteous few required to guide the many along the sacred path of destiny
and empire in the Bush Zone.

     This is Alberto Gonzales, lawyer on his way up, salt of the earth,
minority makes good story. He is, as you have perceived, a purveyor of
partisan loyalty, one of a breed who substitutes smiles for substance, venom
for value, and noise for nobility. His skill is the ability to turn the
objectionable into the tolerable, the illegal into legal, and define it all
with the phonetics of patriotism. Mr. Gonzales sits before his inquisitors,
speaking in tongues while saying nothing. He has no fear because he knows
Democrats are willing ghosts without power in the Bush Zone.

     Picture of a campaign paid for by $600 million dollars of private
funds, a cacophonous symphony of slander, mendacious media, and clanging
garbage cans of innuendo and falsehood. The prize? A lavish gala held at the
picturesque white house residence of the owners of America. Attendance is by
invitation only.

     The Bush Zone hosts a cast of characters, who like children's fertile
imaginations, have no attachment to reality. A surreal traveling Medicine
Show comprised of peddlers of faith and fear, sellers of superstition,
martyrs and moguls who line their pockets with the lives of the innocent and
faithful, all united to market the elixirs of corporate conformity and
passivity, for the price of one thin nickel plus your soul. No waiting.

     Picture of a Nation gazing into a warped mirror, its reflection, a
blemished garden of atrophied freedoms, the acne of cowered silence, and
once bright eyes dulled by corporate greed and the focus group political
entertainment of talk television. In a little while, the face in the mirror
will be permanently etched into the glass unless the Nation can avert its
eyes from the hypnotic glare and focus on its people, principles and
Constitution.

     There is a way out for all of us, albeit through a locked door.

     You unlock this door with the key of democracy. Beyond it is another
dimension: a dimension of peace and prosperity, a dimension of free speech
and civil rights, a dimension of tolerance and enlightenment. You're moving
out of the land of haze and shadow, and into the wondrous journey of the
people, by the people and for the people.

     You've just stepped out of - the Bush Zone.

     That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the real America!

  

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