IT’S THE 21ST CENTURY, MR. BUSH

By Jerry

[This article was published unabridged in: The Lone Star Iconoclast, June 1, 2005. This incredible newspaper from Crawford, Texas is available at www.iconoclast-texas.com.]


While I worked for my local newspaper, a free seven-day-a-week subscription was virtually the only perk. Not that there’s any point to actually reading that conservative rag, mind you.

The paper’s most revealing characteristic is the news that it omits.

During the 1990s, everything that impacted negatively on the Clinton’s or the Democrats made page one headlines. These days it’s our Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich, whom the editors trounce mercilessly in his attempts to clear up 25 years of GOP theft and mismanagement in Illinois.

Conversely whenever anything surfaces that looks bad for George Bush or other republicans the story either winds up buried on page eight or is completely ignored. The names Bill Frist and Tom DeLay pretty much have no recognition value around these parts.

The steep precipice of ignorance about the world outside this county by the local folks gives me spinal shivers.

Excuse me, though I digress. This past January, after it came to pass that my right-wing masters considered me expendable, we found no reason to pay for a subscription.

Well, this past Saturday morning there was a most unusual occurrence: for the first time since our split, the local paper carrier left a copy at our door.

I felt obliged to make a cursory scan of the front page. There was no improvement: the usual abridged versions of stories I’d already seen covered in depth by other papers and television news, along with human-interest pieces that should be in latter sections. So, on to the one and only feature I could always count on for a chuckle-Letters to the Editor.

Generally, comments from the area readership consist of ill-informed, self-centered, whiny attacks on Democrats; Liberals; Chicagoans; Jews; Arabs; demon rum; Canadians; homosexuals; bisexuals; Bill and Hillary (locals can’t get over them); Hollywood filmmakers; aliens; anyone who is capable of reasoned, cohesive thought; or any conceptualized idea with a positive, progressive view. Some letters even hint ambition by taking on a various combination of the aforementioned categories.

Sprinkled in on any given day might be enough evangelical rhetoric to make an entire camp meeting jump up and dance while shouting “Glory! Hallelujah!” for an extended period.

There was a letter in Saturday’s issue that was, for once, unique. I’ll call the writer Fred. The fact that this particular issue just happened to show up on our front porch combined with the publication of Fred’s letter seemed tome an omen.

Fred was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease early in 2000. His letter was a public plea to Republican Congressional Representative Timothy V. Johnson to vote for HR 810.

The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005 or HR 810 is the bipartisan bill sponsored by Congresspersons Michael Castle, a Republican from Delaware and Colorado Democrat Diana DeGette.. This is the bill passed by a fairly decent margin in the House on May 24, with some 50 Republicans, many prolifers, voting in its favor..

According to our confused president, anyone who has all the children they want or can handle should offer their remaining embryos to barren couples. And the Snowflake Foundation will make sure that the right Christian couple will get your offspring..

Whenever science finds a new avenue to solve an enigma, as man is expected to do in his evolution, Christian leaders get freaked. They loath any alternation in the status quo because it lessens the fear and mystery necessary to retain their esoteric control. From the Right to Lifers to the Catholic Church to the evangelicala, they’re all expecting some kind of Frankenstein to create his own breed of monster.

How ludicrious can they get? Let millions suffer endlessly because somebody might abuse the knowledge? By the time man reaches that level of knowledge, we’ll probably all be way past caring.

Unfortunately George Bush is just as confused. But that’s what happens when you allow your own personal religious choice to obscure any possibility for clear and reasoned thinking…

After all, George did show us all he possessed superior scientific acumen than the rest of America and the World when he decided to renege on the U.S. agreement of the Kyoto accord. (Scientific acumen, my foot. The pullout was part of the payback to big business for being installed as presidential front man in 2000.)

It doesn’t take a Rhodes scholar to realize that Junior George is confused in the extreme. He is morally against “the use of federal monies that end up destroying life” and adamant to veto HT 810, where there is no proof of life but the humanitarian hope of freedom from pain and suffering. Yet, he doesn’t bat an eye to waste in excess of 300 BILLION taxpayer dollars raining death on and maiming innocent people in the Mideast in the personal revival of the Crusades.

Of course, the Bush regime operates on a higher moral standard than that of the rest of humanity. Yeah, right! I suppose forcing Bushocracy at gunpoint on whatever countries he feels deserve it is more moral..

It floors me that Laura Bush’s own father died of Alzheimer’s, yet she doesn’t have enough heart to get her husband off of his theocratic ideology and consider the bigger picture. It’s a far worse sin to invoke the name of Jesus or a contorted Biblical belief to assume something is what it isn’t (life) for one’s own self-serving political ends, while ignoring the possibility of humanitarian relief for the very people you’ve sworn to serve.

The fact that both George and Laura are agreed that man is not ready for stem cell research tells me that the Bushes care not one whit for anyone outside their white-tie base…

My born-again Christian Mother would be disgusted with these Republicans and their pandering to the evangelical neo-con right-wingers. It would rip the heart right out of her the way Bush and DeLay and Frist use Jesus as an excuse to further their own ends, and she would be appalled by whatever religious group would block access to any avenue of humanitarian assistance for people who are ill and debilitated, especially those who would do so in the name of Christ.

Mr. Bush, for my Mother and all the people like her whose suffering is over; stop being so damned confused and sign HR 810 into law so those babies whom you were showing off at the White House will never have to feel their pain. If you read your New Testament, I think you’ll find that’s what Jesus would want.