The Revolution Will Be Blogged

Sun Feb 16 2003 01:06PM -0600

In all the history that I have read (not that I've necessarily read that much history), I have never seen a power grab so ineptly handled. Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler. As tyrannical as they are, at least they had half a brain. Not so the current administration of the United States.

It is clear that W and his lackeys have never read The Prince or The Art of War. I'm not even going to bother cataloging their collective obvious errors and failed strategies. The only thing that was on their side was the apparent apathy of the American people (To quote Adolf Hitler, "How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.") But I knew it wasn't true.

Despite the polls, and the propaganda, it is all an illusion. Despite what the media broadcasts (which is quite Orwellian now that only three or so corporations run the entire show), it seems perfectly clear to most people that no one benefits from a war on Iraq except W and his henchmen. The common people will not be safer from terrorist attack (if anything, things will only escalate.) Oil will not become cheaper. The common people will have to shoulder the financial burden of the war, not to mention that they will have to shed blood and surrender their lives for the war. We gain nothing. The only thing that will happen is that W's cronies will become a billion or so dollars richer.

It doesn't take a liberal to understand this.

And I think that it's ironic that W is a Republican. Again, if he studied any history whatsoever, it would be clear that everything he has done since even before he was inaugurated has gone against the basic tenets of the GOP. Instead of letting the people decide who got elected as president, he relied on the government to secure his position. Instead of working for the common man, he is working for the elite. Instead of scaling back government to reduce spending and interference in people's lives, he has reverted our treasury into a deficit and has sanctioned nefarious laws that erode our basic freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution. How anti-American can you get?

But the idea that is America is a powerful thing. If you search the internet, you will find people's impassioned blogs about how much they love this country. Not because the U.S. is the most powerful country in the world, not because these people are lobotomized lemmings meaninglessly saluting a flag. But because they get it. What this country stands for. Why our forebears made such sacrifices. Why people have laid down their lives. It is for the defense of this idea: that we are created equal, that we all have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That freedom, more than profits, more than power, more than even security, is the paramount aim of this nation.

The People have made their Will known. All across the country (actually, all across the world), there have been demonstrations against the War: New York, Chicago, San Francisco (where my sister is now at this very moment, starting at the Justin Herman Plaza at Market and Embarcadero), Los Angeles (not to mention London, Berlin, Rome, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney)

But this is only a beginning. It's obvious that the Powers that Be don't give a flying fuck what The People think, but, they really should read Machiavelli or Sun Tzu. Think about it. There are massive protests even before the war is in full swing. And while we can raze Baghdad to the ground and conquer quite easily, it will be the occupation phase that will kill the U.S. No empire in the history of the world has been able to maintain an occupation when their own streets are in chaos, and no matter how much the jack-booted thugs who are trying to destroy this country try, they will find that the Idea of America will be very hard to kill.

Addendum: A dream I had the other day, completely unrelated to today's entry unless there is some strange symbolism that I'm missing.

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