Wake Up

A few insightful words by Sam Smith, from the December 24th issue of Undernews.

Since September 11, 2001 the Bush regime has repeatedly taken actions and spoken words that have increased the constituency of those who could make it happen again. By refusing to deal forthrightly with rational demands – such as ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine – we have done nothing but strengthened extremist arguments. By demonizing the Muslim world we have pushed even the moderate and the rational closer to the mad. And in our own madness, we are draining our budget, destroying our principles, ending our freedoms, and risking our people and their places.

If Bush’s actions, supported by much of the media and many in the
so-called opposition, were individual, they would be rightly considered a form of criminal recklessness. But since justice is typically inversely proportional to the power that wields it, the culpably irresponsible has been clothed in the respectability of national policy and defense instead of being brought to trial.

Yet whatever intellectual patina and semiotic gloss is placed upon it can not hide the madness. We are trapped in a war of religious extremists – Muslim, Christian and Jewish – and a rhetoric of competing Armageddons. The way out is clearly through some form of secular sanity but its voice can not be heard amidst the crazed chanting of those who have usurped their own God for their own ends.

And so we wait, knowing for certain only that whatever happens didn’t have to. — Sam Smith