Nightmares

When will the nightmare end? Most people consider this to be a scary time to be alive. But if we compare our lives to those of people who lived in WWI, WWII, and of course the Civil War, we have it made. You would never know it if you listen to the typical Bush speech. He has a surprisingly large percentage of the population believing that we are going to be wiped off the map at any minute by nuclear bombs, anthrax in the mail, and/or suicide airplanes. He has a loyal following with these folks who actually believe that Bush can protect them from the "crazy" people in the world. I'll save you the suspense, he can't and he won't. There will also be very little help for you afterwards too. I use Katrina and New Orleans as fine examples as to how effective the Federal Government is in the post 9/11 world. They didn't save those people before and they won't help them afterwards.

Let's face the facts; every day you wake up is a risk. You get out of bed, that's a risk. You walk out the door, that's a risk. I know people who have died from jogging or riding a bike. What can I tell you? The world is a dangerous place. I'm not even talking about the natural causes such as a defective heart or some illness. The bottom line is that we have very little control of our lives. And as the saying states, "shit happens." What are you going to say after you are dead anyways; "I want a do-over?" It's not going to happen. In my opinion, all this fear to live your life is ridiculous.

I think JFK stated it best when he said, "There is nothing to fear but fear itself." You hear the phrase a lot but most people do not think about what it actually means. I believe he was pointing out how powerful and controlling fear can be. Fear can make us do many irrational things. It can cause us to make decisions which would go against our best judgment. Many people have drawn parallels to how Hitler rose to power and to how Bush maintains power. Both have generated fear to maintain control and gain support. Hitler told the German people that in other European countries Germans were being persecuted, and that Germany had an obligation to bring justice. Bush convinced us that we had to end the suffering of the Iraqi people. We had to disarm Saddam who had weapons to destroy our way of life. We had an obligation.

I'm not arguing that Germans were not persecuted or that the Iraqi people did not suffer under Saddam. I believe it happened. There is a lot of evidence supporting injustices in Iraq. Did we have an obligation to interfere? If we use that logic then we should end the injustices in other countries as well, including the poor countries without oil. In my opinion the president was being less than honest.

Lost in all of this is the fact the real target for the war on terror, Osama bin Laden is still at large. That's our president for you. The man who says he will protect us from the number one terrorist and his organization has failed us. Instead we got a disheveled Saddam who although was a ruthless leader, he was contained. Saddam also had nothing to do with 9/11, which is proven over and over again. Bush and Cheney have been caught perpetuating this myth.

Anyways, it would be much easier to know what is going on if we weren't subjected to so much propaganda. We would be much better off if Bill O'Reily, Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter and their entire ilk literally fell off the face of the earth. Yet they feel the need to use their position to mislead and misinform the American public on a regular basis. I realize that that it's their constitutional right, but the fact that they are not exposed for being frauds and liars is detrimental to our political process.

The truth no longer applies anymore in our society. Whoever can BS the best or who has the loudest mouth gets to promote their version of the truth. Truly real journalism is dead. I'm wondering if the United States I grew up loving is dead too.

Fear and lies are killing our country. These are the true terrorists. We can be a better people by demanding the truth from our media and from our government officials and holding them accountable. It’s not going to happen however, unless we demand it.

Mike K