anger, now
Sep. 26th, 2001 01:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabI sent a letter to the editor, over at MSNBC.com. I said:
Bush's promise for a "lengthy engagement," his insistence that he's a "patient man," and that he won't rest until the world is rid of terrorism is all fine and good for HIM, the first president to have to use the anti-nuke bunker ever. Sure, he's not afraid for his own life, so he's in a very peculiar position to make decisions for the rest of us.
I'm in New York, and like a lot of people, I'm scared. I'll tell you, if I were flanked with secret service men, if I could fly with an armed escort and F-16s at my side, I think I might have exactly the same idiotic perspective our president has -- this doesn't affect him, this is just a game, he can come off tough and proud and haughty and militant and hell, maybe he'll even get re-elected, if there's anyone left alive to vote for him.
But we're told the rest of us are expected to make sacrifices. And I don't think he means just the military. I think he's calculating, over there in his protected crazy brains, just how many more civilians we're prepared to lose that'll still allow him to win re-election. How many cities is that, George? Do we need to finish New York? Chicago and LA too? What about middle America? Well, they're nice and spread out and they always liked you anyhow. So let's do away with the big liberal urban centers, that'll lock up re-election for sure.
So I'm not prepared to support any of this, not any more loss of life or any more fear or sacrifice unless I'm convinced the President's got the same fear for his life that I've got. That we've got. Giuliani stood up for his city, but that was because he was scared, he knew it could have been him too.
And as far as I can tell, that's the only thing that separates us from the suicide pilots and the trained kamikazes of the Taliban -- we've got a will to live. But knowing that when the attacks come my president's gonna be holed up in a bunker somewhere makes me very loathe to rally behind his call to arms. And, yeah, reminds me why this country didn't really vote for him the first time around either.
Bush's promise for a "lengthy engagement," his insistence that he's a "patient man," and that he won't rest until the world is rid of terrorism is all fine and good for HIM, the first president to have to use the anti-nuke bunker ever. Sure, he's not afraid for his own life, so he's in a very peculiar position to make decisions for the rest of us.
I'm in New York, and like a lot of people, I'm scared. I'll tell you, if I were flanked with secret service men, if I could fly with an armed escort and F-16s at my side, I think I might have exactly the same idiotic perspective our president has -- this doesn't affect him, this is just a game, he can come off tough and proud and haughty and militant and hell, maybe he'll even get re-elected, if there's anyone left alive to vote for him.
But we're told the rest of us are expected to make sacrifices. And I don't think he means just the military. I think he's calculating, over there in his protected crazy brains, just how many more civilians we're prepared to lose that'll still allow him to win re-election. How many cities is that, George? Do we need to finish New York? Chicago and LA too? What about middle America? Well, they're nice and spread out and they always liked you anyhow. So let's do away with the big liberal urban centers, that'll lock up re-election for sure.
So I'm not prepared to support any of this, not any more loss of life or any more fear or sacrifice unless I'm convinced the President's got the same fear for his life that I've got. That we've got. Giuliani stood up for his city, but that was because he was scared, he knew it could have been him too.
And as far as I can tell, that's the only thing that separates us from the suicide pilots and the trained kamikazes of the Taliban -- we've got a will to live. But knowing that when the attacks come my president's gonna be holed up in a bunker somewhere makes me very loathe to rally behind his call to arms. And, yeah, reminds me why this country didn't really vote for him the first time around either.
