Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of
tragedy - the single greatest failure of national defense in our history,
the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation
into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought
to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps,
thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into


a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we
engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the
president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on
the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract
us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country,
flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few
is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity
has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what
happens to ours. The omens are not good.

Our beloved land has been fogged with fear - fear, the greatest political
strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of
whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the
opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bullet-brained
judges, strip the bark off the Constitution, eviscerate federal
regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy
the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich.

There is a stink drifting through this election year. It isn’t
the Florida recount or the Supreme Court decision. No, it’s 9/11 that
we keep coming back to. It wasn’t the “end of innocence,” or a turning

point in our history, or a cosmic occurrence, it was an event, a lapse
of security. And patriotism shouldn’t prevent people from asking hard
questions of the man who was purportedly in charge of national security
at the time.