And it seemed like everyone fell for it too. And let’s face it, kicking over the Taliban regime in Afghanistan wasn’t the most satisfactory victory for action film addicted Americans wanting SOMEONE’S ass kicked after 911. It was like eating a vegan meal, it was good for us, but damn if we didn’t need some meat. We wanted to see buildings exploding, tanks burning, and to hear the lamentations of the women.

So that almost unanimous feeling, combined with a devious and greedy administration bent on acquiring the Kurdish oil fields, led us to the biggest the biggest screwup in American history. And here we are today, waist deep in an ethnic conflict that has been brewing since the damn viking era. Those of us in dissent who saw this coming were branded every kind of name from anti-American to just plain stupid. I think time and lower blood pressure have vindicated us, but then they try to pull the same damn stunt AGAIN!!

Aaron McGruder, the genius behind The Boondocks comic strip and animated series, summed up the Iraq war perfectly in this jewel of a scene…

Attacking Iran will be this country’s final act as a global superpower. The truth of that statement hurts, but truth has a tendency to do that. With all the evidence on the table now with the new NIE report showing they stopped making plans for weapons back in 2003, we wouldn’t even have the flimsiest justification for attacking them. If Iraq was our Sudetenland then Iran would be our Poland. We would lose what precious credibility we had left on the international stage, and all the foreign investors that keep our economy afloat would probably withdraw. China, who gets pretty much all of their oil from Iran, would embargo us. All of our industry is there right now by the way, solid gold houses for corporate CEO’s don’t come cheap you know.

One thing is for certain, if we were to attack Iran and we still could (these assholes are crazy), we would start to be personally affected by it finally. It wouldn’t be a distant problem that we could choose to change the channel from. It would be World War 3, and all bets would be off.

My kids and yours deserve better than that.

This is the same guy who actually showed some bespunkified resistance and much needed outrage when he went toe to toe with Scott McClellan over the Valerie Plame mess. Remember how Scott would get all fatboy at recess sweaty when the questions started to dig? It was like watching a live action version Milton from Office Space sans the coke bottle glasses. Good times, good times….

But earlier this week, he was asked by Helen Thomas why American politics are so polarized. Now you and I quickly can surmise that maybe an entire network devoted to propaganda and slander might have something to do with it? Or maybe it’s conservative leaders playing the “God card” whenever an election comes up so voters feel they have to consider their immortal soul before casting their vote? Oh wait! Maybe it’s because “old money” and big business plays way too influential a role in the political landscape?

Nope..according to NBC News Correspondent David Gregory, it’s the internet and the blogoshpere that’s to blame. That’s right folks, it’s not any of the rich and powerful forces I mentioned before, it’s those pesky common folk on their computers screwing it all up. Go ahead and listen if you don’t believe me.

Dave, Dave, Dave….wtf man? You DO realize that if the media in this country actually got their heads out of Paris Hilton’s skirt and into what actually matters, there would be alot fewer people like me doing YOUR job. Do you think the 2000 election would have been reported differently on Edward R. Murrow’s watch? Think of the outrage the old school journalists would have expressed about a major US city transforming into the Gulf of Mexico and the relief effort being spearheaded by Mr. Horsey Show.

Bloggers (liberal AND conservative) are stepping up to the plate while you over paid paparazzi ignore things like the CIA spook in charge of making sure we don’t get nuked being outed for political gain. Here’s the difference between us; we are people speaking for people, you are a mouthpiece of General Electric. I guess your starting to smell the odor of obsolescence? But I guess Britney not wearing underwear one day is more important….

Screw you David Gregory, you are my first “Asshat of the Day”

It’s even the same effing cast of characters right down to Rumsfeld being there at the exact moment he could do the most harm. Dick Cheney made a return to bonehead strategic thinking on a global scale after his hiatus too. Tricky Dick Nixon’s war cabinet helped organize this war in Iraq and it seems they face the exact same repercussions for screwing it up like last time….. retirement in riches.

Thankfully other things remained the same too though. At first the people who thought this war was a dumb idea were branded liberals, traitors, and associated with Barbara Streisand. But as the body count rises, and the exit door drifts further down the hallway, people are starting to see what this mess is all about. And we have these words from another man from that time who actually deserves to be with us still, but isn’t. This is 23 minutes of your life that you really need to invest for the sake of knowing the bigger picture.

Ebenezer Baptist Church April 30, 1967

This is one of the most beautiful sermons the good Reverend ever gave. As you listen, you may get chills as this speech could very well have been made last week about this war.

When I think of all the bigoted flotsam and jetsam coming from current religious leaders like Pat Robertson who actually called for the death of a world leader on national TV, I see why so many are drawn to agnosticism. But here was a man who actually thought Christianity was supposed to be based on the teachings of the gentle Nazarene, and not some Norse god of war. Where IS the Religious Left nowadays? How did mainstream American Christianity slip so far to the right of the political center? Listen to this MLK speech and then one from Pat Robertson and you will swear we are working with religions as far apart as Buddhism and Orthodox Aztec Church of Heart Romoval.

Ye Olde Uncle Foch Snooze’s Tavern and Whiskerarium

It’s Friday night and the place is packed full of men with too little deodorant and women with too much underwear. Our country is still in its larval stage at this point, but some themes that have stuck with us are readily apparent. Just common folks unwinding after a vicious pre-Revolutionary work week. The atmosphere is tense because of “George”, and his name is brought up quite a bit in both the “liberal” and “conservative” cliques.

Standing on a wooden table giving a speech we have powdery wig wearing Walter Walterson, a conservative in the acceptable definition for that era. Back then they had a different name, they were called Tories. Walter is ticked off what with all of the scruffy looking ne’er do wells rocking the boat by defying HIS beloved George. Intellectual snobs who thought themselves wiser than the king, they were. These riff raff were threatening the status quo that made the Colonies great and British.

“A man should be proud to have soldiers of the crown garrisoned in his house by order of his liege!” Walter announced as he hefted his tin flagon in the direction of a new bailey that was hastily constructed after the last riot. “It shows a special kind of regard for his subjects when his majesty bestows this honor, a special trust! We face the most deadly enemies in the history of our empire whatever inconveniences we must endure for our families’ safety should NOT concern us. Unless you have something to hide that is…..”

Uncle Foch Snooze’s was a Torie tavern after all, so Walt’s spontaneous declaration of crown loyalty and regurgitated propaganda was well met with a room full of “aye”s and similarly raised flagons. “We are the only true citizens of this land! And God has given our kingdom these colonies as a testament to the greatness of the British Empire!! Long live the king!”

Seamus Hannedy and William O’Reely, Walter’s Irish stable boy and manservant (respectively) jumped to their feet in support of their master’s words. Seamus, being the boldest but the dumbest of the two was first to add to the growing pep rally. “Here, here master! Oye gets tahrned in a bed whey whenever me hart thinksa nuttin boot tha king b’gosh I tell ye!” Awkward general silence eventually oozed into a state of equally awkward and confused sounds of accord as the crowd GUESSED he meant something ….well something good. The thing about Hannedy was that even HE didn’t know what was coming out of his mouth half the time. Top notch stable boy though…

The harbor was still a dark amber color from the escapades the night before. The local ruffians backed by their “Sons of Liberty” puppet masters had destroyed a precious cargo of British tea by dumping it overboard from the ships to the water below. The proud vessels Dartmouth and the newly arrived Beaver and Eleanour were violated and the livelihoods of Boston’s tea merchants were shamelessly inconvenienced. Those ships are the king’s property, after all. The proud Dartmouth, graceful Eleanour, and yes even the king’s precious Beaver were violated all night long by shabby men.

<snicker>

At first, everyone had said local Indians were responsible. One of them even had “I be an injun bloke” written in red paint on the back of his jacket to avoid any potential confusion. Clever ruse….these people were good. However the drunken boasts the next morning pointed to liberal scum, Alexander Hamilton, as the ring leader of these beastly men.

And that was the source of all the fuming and grumbling in the smoky recesses of Uncle Foch Snooze’s that cold Friday night. Resentment was growing, and it was beginning to fester in drinking establishments such as these. These upstart colonists who claim no loyalty to the great George are nothing more than traitors, scallywags, and “readers” in the hearts and minds of this establishment.

These Sons of Liberty were starting to spread their message of defiance throughout His Majesty’s colonies. And last night’s ruckus will serve as a recruiting tool for years to come unless they find a way to stem this tide of liberalism. The notion of a person being in charge of his own destiny and not subject to the king’s rule was laughable at best. If all men are created equal, then why are some men born king? Let their so called “free minds” chew on that one for a while!

Who did these barbarians think they were? After all, even after dumping all of that luxurious tea into the harbor, the soldiers and constables had to stop people from running into the dark Earl Grey surf with enormous crumpets clutched to their chests like boogie boards*. One unfortunate woman who succeeded in the stunt was heard to slur, “quite lovely” before succumbing to hypothermia and adding more chaos to the harbor’s surreal new biochemical makeup. So they were still English at heart after all and the tea was of impeccable quality. What a waste.

Walter continued his tirade. “It’s all these foreign influences, Catholics, Masons, and intellectuals that have taken us here! If we could just go back to being a white, English, Protestant, and well behaved little colony I’m certain all of this chaos will pass! We have mixed ourselves too closely with too many different kinds of people and we have become perilously close to….diversity!”

The simultaneous gasp of the entire tavern conveyed the brevity of his last statement. And Walter used the ensuing silent pause to gaze upon everyone assembled with a look that meant business, brow furrowed, nostrils flared, and talcum powder cascading like unholy snowflakes from his fake hair. Anger and irritation in the crowd were starting to give way to genuine dread and fear. Fear of being forced into accepting undesirable elements of humanity as “different” instead of the more comfortable “less than”. What next? A Catholic governor? Poor people owning land?

The assembled crowd was a cross section of the more wealthy and influential loyalists in the upper colonies. Walter had his riders send invitations to the gathering this morning after reading about the tea incident in the newspaper. There was no masking the paper’s liberal bias anymore as the headline simply read verbatim: “HA HA HA HA!” There were also several articles praising the qualities of this new black tar drink called “coffee”. Yeah, like that would ever take the place of a good cup of tea…..it’ll never catch on here.

“You’ve made your point, young Walterson!” wafted the wizened voice of Sir Cockton “Cock” Shaney. Sir Shaney always made it a point to be the voice of reason at these gatherings. No one was certain what exactly earned him his knighthood, but rumor had it that George and he were student and teacher once upon a time. There was a darkness to him that couldn’t be readily explained. All babies within twenty paces of him just start shrieking inconsolably. Whatever it was, Sir Shaney had a way of making even the hardest British redcoat scamper aside in fear whenever they crossed his path.

Shaney continued “Until this body accepts my last written proposal and acts on it, we shall all be listening to the same speech over and over again, just with different words. I painstakingly pointed out every detail required to make it come to fruition, I even provided visual aids to…”

“Cock!” Walter interrupted.

“Yes?”

“Ah yes, you are referring to the written proposal you submitted by carving ‘just torture the bastards to death’ into your chair and using it to beat your chambermaid into a coma last Christmas party? The council has already deliberated, has made its decision, and stands by it. There were children in the same room for God’s sake, man! We respectfully ask that you lay that plan to rest, Sir, however appealing and intricate as it may seem to you.”

“Fags…..”

Karlton Rovington, the rotund fertilizer tycoon, used the uncomfortable silence to give his input. “The liberal elements in this country have us at a disadvantage on the following fronts: education, press bias, and these weird concepts called ‘facts’. Facts are these strange pieces of information that are supposedly not subject to the crown’s scrutiny or alteration. Here is one example of a supposed ‘fact’, if you jump in front of a running horse you will be hurt. Well what if you’re the king? Wouldn’t the horse either stop or be instantly transported to Hades for its insolence?”

“Oooh ya bet’cher arse this guy’s smart!!!” O’Reely piped in from the back. “Quiet taig!” barked Walter in response. He was also transfixed by the hardcore science his colleague was laying down. “Go on, Rovington, you have our attention.”

The tubby man’s sweat glistened like anointing oil as he continued. “Gladly! If we can defeat their facts, we have them dead to rights. And I am here to tell you that facts are easily killed with some simple formulas. Reason is always overpowered by emotion if that emotion can be tweaked far enough. For example let’s say we have one of these bleeding heart Sons of Liberty types giving another one of their soapbox speeches about how all ‘oppressed and subjugated’ we are. One of us can be there to yell ‘hey I noticed we haven’t been invaded by the Turks yet! I guess it’s a good thing our king keeps you safe enough to be able to make that speech huh?!? Let’s face it, gentlemen, no one wants the Turks invading!”

“The Turks…….my GOD, is that a possibility?!” This came from Willie Gibbsin whose lacquered beechwood wig moved as one unit when he raised his eyebrows at the thought of an imminent Turkish invasion. The same wooden wig probably saved him several nasty cuts after he then shrieked in a pitch that should have been way to high for a man and executed a flawless (but horizontal) triple corkscrew dive through the glass window next to him.

“No, no, no you idiots!! It’s NOT a possibility”, Rovington was trying to calm the quickly panicking room by speaking very loudly and slowly. “It couldn’t happen in a million years, and that’s my point! The common people don’t know that, in fact they know very little about the world beyond their farms and churches. We can say pretty much whatever we want to say, and if we say it with enough conviction, the people will believe the bloody sky is green!”

“But Rovington, you said yourself that we are at the disadvantage when it comes to education.” Walter chimed in, “the leaders of this rabble will know deceit when it’s this obvious, and its part of their agenda to make everyone just as educated as they are.”

“Which is why we must work to kill their ‘facts’ as efficiently as we can. We have to approach the common people as though we were ‘one of them’ and….”

“Eeeeewwwww! Seriously?” Screeched the Widow Coultain

“…and show them that being a good British subject is an obedient one by projecting a sense of superiority over these new ‘freedom huggers’. If they believe we are “just plain salts” like them, we can present our “view” as some kind of backwoods wisdom. We will attack their leaders personally by spreading enough misinformation to keep BOTH sides wondering who is telling the truth. We also need to start our own press works that churns out nothing but praise to the king and our point of view whilst ridiculing all others.”

“We can name it ‘FLOWERS’!!!” Someone in back screamed as though the word “eureka” should have preceded the sentence.

“We can name it after this tavern for all I care, the point is we need a method of steering the hearts and minds of this country back to what’s important: King, country, and working endless hours for us in complete servitude. And by the time we are done with them, we’ll have them thinking God just wants it that way!”

With that the entire tavern erupted into thunderous applause. Hope for a return to the “simpler times” seemed real and attainable. Plans were made and schemes were cooked to thwart this new enemy to the crown. This disgusting notion of “freedom” was about to become just another passing fad like “democracy” in ancient Greece or roller disco in twelfth century Venice*.

A consensus was taken and the first target they were going to focus on was Alexander Hamilton himself. Best to start the effort locally, and besides, it was time he paid for all that tea that was snatched from the king’s Beaver!

Those of you who have come over from my stumbleupon site, welcome! I haven’t posted there in a while due to the combined obstacles of my Costa Rican ISP and an unusually tenacious cyber stalker. Funny story…

I have found that I can no longer keep my words in and my conscience is getting stretch marks from the effort. But I have a fresh batch of rants and observations that I just slapped on the grill for your continued intellectual amusement.

For those of you just meeting me in this format: Welcome! My name is Merlyn Hunter and I am an expatriate American systems engineer living and working in Costa Rica. I have found in my year here that the best way to be an American right now in these sad times is to not live in America. I love my country, but I am “seeing other people” right now. I have been a freelance writer for some time right now and have made a few appearances in a few columns under a few pen names. Though my politics tend to lean a little to the left a majority of the time, I also have a few conservative views as well. And I am informed enough to know the difference between a respectable “true conservative”, a loathsome neocon, and the neocon thralls who wrongfully believe themselves to be the former.

I want this blog to help give people a fresh perspective of freedom from someone who has taken a step outside the bubble and away from the background noise. Is freedom the ability to sit in a warm safe cocoon of high tech neon bathwater and say “whee, look how free we are?” Or is it something else, something we dropped along the way running around between world wars? Maybe it’s the state of mind that carried us into the 20th century inventing just about every cool thing imaginable culminating in us smacking golf balls on the moon. So my blogs will be coming from a politically astute computer geek trying to make sense of where the homeland has drifted while making sense of a new life in a 2nd (and a half) world country. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some n’yuks out of you all as well…..