normally I enjoy saying I told you so.

[buggery]

Surprise, surprise. As in, if you're surprised, you simply haven't been paying attention.

The author of this article got one thing very wrong, though: he says "We are only now getting a full vision of Ashcroft's America." Sorry, Mr Turley, but this is precisely the sort of thing I excpected from Ashcroft, right from when his name was merely being bandied about as "under consideration" for the Bush regime Cabinet.

(At no time will you see me refer to a Bush presidency or administration, unless I'm referring to 1988-93; a moment's reflection should make the reason for this obvious.)

This is the sort of thing that the men currently running the United States have been wanting to do from the beginning, and the only thing that's held them back has been the necessity for creating a pretence of a political climate that excuses, nay, calls for it. This is why I shivered at Dubya's introduction of "Homeland Security." This is what's been at the root of every international policy decision the Bush regime has made -- how quickly we forget the middle-school-bully strategy of the spy plane incident with China, in these post-9/11 times.

I'm not surprised. I wish I was surprised. I wish I was still in Europe. I wish I had a convenient Stupid American to kick.

I wish I had no cause, right now, to say "I told you so" to people who said Dubya wasn't substantially worse than John McCain or Al Gore, or who supported him outright.

I wish the phrase "Homeland Security" didn't evoke echoes of Vaderland every time I came across it, or that the parallels were merely as incidental as the concidences shared by the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations.

I wish this was a bad dream I could wake from.


Thanks to niqaeli for the link.

This LJ now returns to its regularly scheduled slashly fannishness, already in progress.

Comments

[buggery.livejournal.com]

Truth and justice are supposed to be the American Way, but in practice it's rarely if ever been so.

And no, actually I haven't seen The Siege, though I'm familiar with its premise; I don't need to see it, I read. And I can extrapolate future events from past and current patterns.

The truly sad thing is that speculative fiction authors have been warning against the rise of something like the Bush regime for over half a century. This is even more frustrating than all those nits clapping themselves on the back, chorusing "Never Again" at the NATO 50th anniversary, while genocide (or ethnic cleansing, as it's called these days) was being carried out mostly unchecked right in their own backyards.

too depressing for words.

[pandarus.livejournal.com]

This is even more frustrating than all those nits clapping themselves on the back, chorusing "Never Again" at the NATO 50th anniversary, while genocide (or ethnic cleansing, as it's called these days) was being carried out mostly unchecked right in their own backyards.

Soooooo true. Jesus. Reminds me of watching coverage of the pomp and ceremony of earnest-faced representatives of The Establishment marching around London and commemorating the 50th anniversary of "the end of war in Europe", and announcing that "there must never again be war in Europe", which was immediately followed by an article about genocide in the Balkans. No flicker of irony. No newsreaders smacking their foreheads and saying "Oh, actually those people with the funny names live just round the corner, and gee, they're Europeans too." On the fucking NEWS.

I think I need a drink. Or icecream. Or PWP

Re:

[pandarus.livejournal.com]

PS - incidentally, "The Siege" is well worth seeing, regardless - surprisingly good film, I thought, on a number of levels. Even shallow and obvious ones. ;o)