Fear and Loathing in America

by Mike Wasdin

Are you scared shitless yet? Well you should be, or at least that’s what both Republicrats want you to be. While watching and reading the news the last few weeks, I have noticed that one thing is incessantly being hurled at us, TERROR!  

I think the lyrics to Green Day’s “American Idiot” sums it up best: “Welcome to a new kind of tension, all across the alienation, everything isn’t meant to be okay.”

This is a new kind of tension, one that I have never known before. Fear, loathing and paranoia have replaced liberty, peace and freedom.  

Both candidates want you to be frightened. Frightened of Iraq , frightened of Osama Bin Laden, frightened of terrorists, but most of all, frightened of their opponent. It’s as if before they were around, terror was the rule and not the exception. Truth is, we are in far more danger now than ever before. How could anyone believe that by shaking the hornet’s nest that we have somehow become safer?  

People have become complacent, as if terror has always been a part of their lives. I don’t recall in the past turning on the television and hearing every day how dozens of people were being blown up, shot or beheaded anywhere in the world. Sure, there were always isolated incidents of crazy people, and religious fanatics (oops, sorry, I repeated myself) in the world, but never to this degree. As I am writing this, 50 Iraqis were found shot to death in Iraq , as well as a US diplomat.  

Can anyone truthfully say that we are winning the war on terror? It looks to me like terror is kicking our asses. I don’t know what the Bush regime’s definition of victory is, but this is not mine. Of course, Bush will go on television, smile and tell the sheeple that all is well, and they will immerse themselves in the bullshit like the brain-dead zombies they are.  

John Kerry says he has a “plan.” I am sure that both of these megalomaniacs’ “plan” is pretty much the same, which is more of the same.  The problem seems to be that we just have not spent enough money, destroyed enough property or killed enough people yet. John Kerry said that he could guarantee a win in the war on “terror.” Give him four years, a gazillion dollars, and the lives of our children, and he would guarantee our safety. The price seems too high for me. I am with Ben Franklin on this one: “He who would give up essential freedom for temporary security, deserves neither.”  

I have had several libertarian friends of mine tell me that they are voting for Bush because he is right on the war on “terror.” I am of the opinion that you cannot be a libertarian and support this war. You cannot break the basic philosophy of libertarianism, which is the non-initiation of force principle, and still call yourself a libertarian, any more than you could be a member of Jews for Hitler.

  The war on “terror” will never be over, it will just change locations. Like the war on drugs, prostitution, pornography, and the many others that will follow, it is a war on humanity. These wars will never be won; the State will just keep creating new boogiemen to frighten us with. The sheep will anxiously anticipate the next fall guy the State offers up as a sacrifice for the war on whatever happens to be next. Be careful, the next pawn could be me or you.