Won't Get Fooled Again

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again

Yeah, yeah, obviously, my post is centered around the election. Please, please, please, for the love of God, get off your keysters and vote, if you haven't already. It's time to stick it to the Man.

That's right. The Man. Yes, I have watched School of Rock way too many times, and I realize that for them, sticking it to the Man just meant getting on a school bus and playing some rock n' roll, but that's not what I mean. First, let's take a few minutes to list some of the Man's accomplishments and/or abominations of peace, justice, humanity, and nature.

I believe it was Josef Stalin who said one death is a tragedy and 100,000 is a statistic. Maybe that's what Bush is going for. 100,000 innocent Iraqis are dead -- no joke [1]. Over half of them are women and children. We liberated them, all right. Now they sure don't have to worry about tyranny, starvation, biological weapons, occupying nations, nothing. Try this on: it's said that everyone in the US was no more than three people removed from someone who was directly involved with the September 11, 2001 crisis. There were 3,000 people killed. Now, there are a lot more US citizens than Iraqis, and 3,000 is a lot less people than 100,000 (I can't emphasize enough that these were all non-combatants), so just imagine how many people are directly affected by all these deaths. OF COURSE THEY'RE ALL TICKED OFF! Don't let Karl Rove and "President" Bush fool you again...they aren't happy over there, despite the fact that Saddam Hussein isn't running the show anymore (which I'm not lamenting...he's a bad dude; I'm just saying it's unfortunate that they traded one tyrant for another). Iraqi interim President Allawi even blames Bush for heinous neglect of the Iraqi people [2].

Bush may be the religious candidate in the sense that he seems to have a deep connection with the Crusades, and we all know that the era after a bunch of English-speaking Christians ran into the Middle East spreading their values was marked with peace, prosperity, and goodwill. Wait, actually, a lot of historians attribute the West's current problems with the Middle East to the Crusades. The ones that don't attribute them to postcolonialism (imperialism in the Middle East around WWI and WWII) or Bush. Aside from that, for all the lies he's told, I don't think he can portray himself as pious. Granted, I'm not the one to judge him for it, but I certainly don't think he can pretend to be so holy only because he didn't lie about sexual activity in the Oval Office (instead, he lied about weapons of mass destruction in the State of the Union address and altering economic statistics [3]).

People like to give Bush the benefit of the doubt and say he had bad information, rather than he lied. Okay, so, he's a total and complete idiot, rather than a liar. That's not much better.

He ignored his counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, because he wasn't talking about Iraq. Way to go, Bush. While the culpability for the September 11 attacks certainly lies squarely on the shoulders of the hijackers and terrorists, there's a chance that it could have been prevented if Bush had listened to smart people instead of his moronic, evil friends.

There's the No Child Left Behind Act, which amounts to billions of dollars in unfunded mandates. It sounds good; teachers are required to have formal education in the topics they teach. Trouble is, it doesn't pay for all the teachers that would be needed to offer such specialized credentials. This serilously cripples rural schools, special education, ESL programs, and it definitely hurts everyone else [4].

Since I'm talking about misnomers, I may as well mention the Clear Skies Initiative. I don't know any effective or engaging way to summarize this. Just check out the link [5]. Yeah, I know it's the Sierra Club, and some people think they're nutso tree huggers, but at least they really know the facts. They'd support it if it were good, right? As long as I'm on an environmental kick, remember ANWR? Oh, yeah, people were making a big stink about that a while ago. Odd how it's completely forgotten, now [6]. Backpacker magazine pointed out, a few issues back, that Bush has secured 1/2 acre of land for public use (Forest Service, BLM, etc). For all you conservatives out there, that's a couple hundred thousand less than Ronald Reagan, your messiah.

Suspension of habeus corpus, or the right of an accused person to know his or her charges, is perhaps the keystone of the Patriot Act. Aside from being blatantly unConstitutional (habeus corpus is an explicit right of the people in the Constitution), it's downright unethical. Who are we protecting by condoning fear so rabit that we're willing to give up such a crucial Constitutional right in hopes that it keeps someone from hijacking another airplane with a razor blade? There are a few dozen things wrong with the Patriot Act, and I'm admittedly not well enough informed to name them all, but that's probably just as well. It would be wholly saddening.

So that's what the Man has done for our country. He wouldn't even admit to a single mistake, aside from some comparitively mundane mistakes in appointments (which he wouldn't list...didn't want to hurt Colin Powell's feelings -- he's the only person that almost had enough guts to sorta stand against Bush on like, one occasion). Apparently, he's more willing to pay for his mistakes with the lives of 100,000 (and counting) innocent Iraqis, 1200 (and counting) US soldiers, the US economy, and the once favorable attitude toward the US most of the world had than he is to say he's sorry.

There's a second part to the song. "Then I'll get on my knees and pray / we don't get fooled again." Ball's in your court, Kerry. We'll vote for you, but then you'd better clean things up in Iraq, our education system, the environment, the health care industry, and our economy. You had the courage to stand against a bunch of hair-brained chickenhawks in the 1970s. Hopefully not all of that has been beaten away by compromise after compromise in the US Senate. Be honest, accountable, hardworking, discerning, prudent, approachable, and intelligent. You're about (I pray) to be the most powerful man in the world. Please remember that it's nothing more. Bush gets the lines blurred between himself and God. I'm willing to bet God isn't real keen on this. Sure, a whole bunch of idiotic, brainwashing, capitalism-fearing preachers and Christian Coalition leaders are all too happy to see these lines blurred, but the rest of the American people are getting sick of it, the world is already sick of it, and not that I know God any better than anyone else, but I imagine God is getting sick of it.

The last lines of the song are "Meet the new boss / same as the old boss." I certainly don't want the old boss, and I don't want the new boss to be the same as the old boss. I honestly believe that four more years of George W Bush and his cronies could potentially shorten the life of the United States of America by several hundred years. Once Rome's courts became overconfident, overstreched, decadent, and lethargic, it wasn't long before a somewhat unorganized and uncivilized tribe came down from out of the mountains and put an end to the Empire. I don't want history to repeat itself here, even if it makes me right. Bush, you're fired. Kerry, it's up to you to fix this mess. Sure, we'll do everything we can to help you, but you're about to be the shepard.

Peace.

1 http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/29/iraq.deaths/index.html
2 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3955673.stm
3 I have an e-mail explaining this in detail. Ask me if you want a copy of it.
4 http://www.ruraledu.org/issues/nclb.htm
5 http://www.sierraclub.org/cleanair/clear_skies.asp
6 http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/04/17/anwr.facts/index.html

Oh, yeah, in case Bush's wrongdoings aren't enough for you, check out www.johnkerry.com to see why he actually will do a better job.