In A Land Of Sausage Brains, Suspect The Wurst
In A Land Of Sausage Brains, Always Suspect The Wurst
By Mark Drolette
As bad as things are in America, I've always felt safe in saying I'd consider leaving the country only in the unfathomable event Dubya started offering vocabulary lessons.
So.when's the next flight to Costa Rica?
As if it's not horrible enough watching Busholini destroy everything decent about our dear American values while having to also endure his aggravating aural assault on the English language every single, solitary time he opens his smirking mouth, heh heh heh, shoulder bob shoulder bob shoulder bob, now we are treated to the brain twisting (Republicans excluded, by definition) spectacle of listening to him misuse a word and then immediately explain what it means. I mean, what it doesn't mean.
Since Dumbya is in such a mood for larnin', maybe someone should also ask him if he knows of a synonym for "beyond Kafkaesque." On second thought, that's probably not such a hot idea since one would first have to explain to him the meaning of "synonym" (and perhaps even "beyond"), then fill him in on Franz Kafka, then do a few minutes explaining "surreal distortion" (per The American Heritage Dictionary®), then.
I've eaten sausages brighter than this spiritually bankrupt linkhead -- check that, lunkhead. In fact, they've all been. Except maybe for that brat with extra kraut I had at Candlestick Park once, but at least it had an excuse: its parents were Republicans. (Dubya's folks? Aliens.)
What's Costa Rican food like?
In the interest of fairness and so that you may judge for yourself the SF (sausage factor) of our immoral wurst's immortal words (pretty tortured, I know; just like our foreign policy), here is the pertinent utterance from the impertinent Bush's recent depress conference (per Yahoo News):
"The president alleged that some of the accusations by detainees were made by 'people who hate America, people that have been trained in some instances to disassemble, that means not tell the truth.'"
I can think of only three reasons the above phrase is sans "sic" in the appropriate spot: either a) the "journalist" who wrote the article was too scared to put one in, b) the even-more gutless editor chopped it or, c) whoever wrote the damn thing doesn't know the difference between "disassemble" and "dissemble." My money's on "c."
I won't even mention the sickly icky irony of our [p]resident boy wonder(ing) dissembling while also disassembling all recognizable components of English.
Is Spanish hard to learn?
Obviously, millions of Americans don't care that the man who is (be)heading the most lethal nation on earth is essentially illiterate. In fact, they like it.
A recent e-mail from a good friend said, in part:
"I remember seeing an interview with a woman who was asked about GWB's inability to communicate, his stumbling over words, his half-sentences that make no sense at all, and didn't it bother her that our prez is so inarticulate and doesn't sound particularly smart sometimes.and her response was, 'Oh, no, that doesn't bother me. I like THAT! He's just like all the people I know.'"
Like all the people she knows, who then are like all the people they know, who are then like all the people they know, who then.my god, it's just like some sort of never-ending dumbing-down Ponzi scheme. I need to find out who's the last person in that lamebrain chain so I can just stay the hell away from him/her. What if I accidentally got to know this human vector? (Or more sinisterly, was forced to make such an acquaintance? Maybe that's what all those chemtrails contain: some sort of forcing-thinking-people-to-know-non-thinking-people agent.)
Does it rain much in Costa Rica? (I mean, other than the six months it rains in Costa Rica?)
It's true: millions of my fellow countrymen/women relish our head sausage head (not to be confused with head cheese, though both are yucky). I won't go into the standard diatribe about how stupid it is to venerate stupidity (for those who are interested, though, I believe it's rant #27B). Nope. Here's my point:
The individuals who are right now destroying America and its values as set forth in the Constitution (remember that thing?) are not people like Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, terrorists, detainees who "hate our freedoms," or even the French.
Unh-uh. America's most dangerous enemies, next to those who comprise the current fascist administration, are those who support the current fascist administration and find its malapropism-spewing front man cuter'n sea monkeys and besides, dontcha know that being smart is only for them smarty-pants smart people?
What's the literacy rate like in Costa Rica?
Yup, that's right: I'm saying American citizens who don't fully and actively oppose the utter destruction the Bushies are wreaking upon America and the world are just as bad as the wreakers. After all, you're either fer 'em or agin 'em, right?
To potential right wing flamers: Save it. I truly do not give a shit what you think. After spending far too many hours composing facts-filled, solidly documented e-mails in good-faith efforts to respond to whatever arguments I thought were being made (usually very difficult to decipher, but oh lord, I tried), I realized long ago that my sincere attempts to engage in "dialogue" were decidedly one-sided. Subsequent return messages (if any) would typically eruditely begin: "Listen, you ignorant, naïve, Marxist, Saddam/Osama-loving, atheistic, America-hater: Bill Clinton never/always/would've/didn't."
Here's my updated reply: fuck you. And fuck Bill Clinton, too. Anyone who believes I'm a fan of America's last elected chief executive (accurately described once as the best Republican president ever) just because I detest Bush's guts, needs to re-ponder. ('Course, this implies pondering has occurred initially, an exceedingly dicey assumption.)
Either come over to the light side with us, where facts and corroboration and hard evidence and common sense and reason and documentation and logic and law are utilized and respected, or screw off. I hate Bush's innards because they deserve to be hated, and if you think he's a good guy, then, as far as I'm concerned, you're fully qualified to occupy that special place in Hell reserved for citizens who abide their government's hideously barbaric actions. (You might want to brush up on your German.) Rough? Not as rough as 100,000 murdered Iraqis and almost 1700 senselessly dead American soldiers you oh-so patriotically "support" by slapping a yellow magnet lickety-split on the back of your truck so you can hurry your jingoistic ass back inside just in time to crack open another Miller and settle down in front of the magic mesmerizing machine for another evening of rip-snortin' chortlin' over the highbrow antics of your kindred intellectual spirits on Fear Factor. (For those who prefer to pass time by perusing the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, please: feel free to double my contempt.)
Has Costa Rica had a peaceful history?
For me, the most maddening examples of our fellow citizens' dearth of rationality are provided by those Americans who irrefutably have the most to lose in the conscienceless neocon push to take over the world: members of the U.S. armed forces.
Here's text from another recent e-mail I received (not from a good friend):
"As a United States Marine I am appalled at your illustration of the American military and your comparison of it to an 'imperialistic death machine.' You are obviously so brain-washed by your hate for our country that you generalize and cast false accusations about those who protect our nation..Tomorrow or the next day, or next week, I'm sure another article painting the U.S. military as savage killers of innocent babies will appear on that site of yours, but I'll be doing my job, and hundreds of thousands of others will be doing theirs as well, with pride. At the end of the day, I'll be able to sleep with the knowledge that I serve and protect my country every day. What will you be able to say? 'I write sarcastic hateful articles for a sarcastic hateful website so that some rich liberal will pay me?'."
Signed: "U.S. Marine and proud American citizen."
First things first: Will this rich liberal who's supposed to be paying me please put the check in the mail already?
OK, so I don't know where this Marine is stationed, but if it's in Iraq, here's the skinny: Soldier, you sure as hell ain't protecting my, your, or any other nation, but you are doin' a bang-up job of safeguarding unending profits for companies like Halliburton, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon, etc. The Bush/Cheney gang doesn't give a dismembered limb about you, and if you don't believe it now, perhaps you will when the nightmares start up and, as your family members tremble every time they see that look in your eyes, you're told you still can't be seen for another six months because the fascists for whom you so proudly kill have cut your VA benefits yet one more time, or when depleted uranium poisoning slowly sickens you, and the government fronted by the guy who respects the U.S. military so much he disappeared for a year while sittin' out 'Nam deliberately diddles long enough so that when you finally do succumb to your painful, lingering illness, the corporate-suckled jackals controlling this country will have successfully avoided coughing up even just one penny of their hard-stolen cash to help alleviate your suffering they indisputably caused.
Is Costa Rica prone to invading other countries? *
At the risk of further confusing those Americans for whom the ostrich would work just fine as a national symbol (or a sausage with blinders on; sorry, but it's one of today's themes), let's see what Thomas Jefferson had to say about the subject at hand (unawareness, not comestibles):
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be" (from a January 1816 letter to Colonel Charles Yancy, per Bartlett's Familiar Quotations).
As anyone who has done so knows, it takes much time and effort to try to stay on top of things politically, especially in today's rabbit hole. Also, as anyone who has ever been jolted or even slowly awakened from personal political slumber can attest, it is an indescribably sickening feeling to finally comprehend the counterfeit bill of goods we've all been sold from day one about how America supposedly operates, up to and including the myth of free elections.
But what's the alternative to, and result of, not knowing/acting? Well, look around you; we're living it. Just the other day, the Senate (lack of) Intelligence Committee voted 11-4 to renew and expand the Patriot Act. Bush fascism is becoming so obvious, shill Democrats aren't even pretending anymore (didja catch the 100-0 Senate vote passing the latest military/industrial complex welfare -- sorry, Afghanistan/Iraq emergency appropriations -- bill, thereby also OK'ing the riding Real ID Act by the same margin?). One cool new provision authorized by this latest liberty-killer gives the FBI power to secure records subpoenas in a "terrorism investigation" sans judge or grand jury approval. Poof! Goodbye, Fourth Amendment. Why waste time on a lengthy, stuffy, old ratification process, anyway?
America's Very Dark Night is here, and it's no mystery how it arrived: as ol' TJ said, no country can expect to glorify ignorance and retain its freedoms, and, as the latter is being voraciously consumed, millions of Americans continue stuffing themselves with the former.
Costa Rica, here I come.
* Trick question: Costa Rica has no standing military.
Copyright © 2005 Mark Drolette. All rights reserved.
Bio: Mark Drolette is a political
satirist/commentator who lives in Sacramento, California.
He can be reached at mdrolette@comcast.net. His website
(still under construction) is
http://www.markdrolette.com/.