Heather Morris
Meramec Plant
Written 8/10/06

As the mid-term elections draw nearer, I find myself barely being able to watch CNN any more. At almost every waking hour of the day, their headlines read BREAKING NEWS!!! Terror alert, war, war, war, more deaths, and the terrorists are coming to get you. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Allow me to interpret what they’re really saying to you.

“Please allow us to scare you out of your wits” and “vote for Republicans again this fall since they are the only ones who can protect you from the evil boogey-men out there”. Oh, and “starting more wars and bombing the hell out of brown people makes less terrorists, not more, so we’re not going to ask Israel to quit bombing Lebanon”. “We’re just going to keep sending them more bombs and bunker-busters which are tipped with depleted uranium.” Nothing like poisoning the civilian populations to spread just a little more good will around the world. 

In the lead up to the Presidential elections of ’04, the terror alert was raised continually, and then after the elections until just this week, nothing. No more threats, no more alerts, and suddenly we were safe again, and all was well. Well folks, it’s starting again, and the alerts will be raised, and the drum beat to war will ramp up again, and it will not stop until after November.

The Republican Party thinks it’s still 2003, and that Americans are still willing to follow their policies of pre-emptive war right off of a cliff with them, and that the public still thinks this fiasco we’ve got in Iraq was a good idea. Or that it’s spreading democracy. Or that it’s not a civil war. Or that anyone who marched us in there had any plan to keep the peace after the war ended. We now all know that it is not spreading democracy, and the war instead has created more terrorists, and more instability in the region, and that we’re not safer with this crowd in charge after their handling of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

This is literally the gang who can’t shoot straight. After as small a matter as Vice President Cheney shooting a man in the face to the major ones of attacking a country that was no threat to us, while allowing the ones who are real threats, such as North Korea and Iran become emboldened. Our failed diplomacy has created our falling status in the world, and left our military drained and weakened. 

This gang wants to tell you they’re the ones who should stay in charge, and if they don’t, you’ll literally die. The terrorists have won. I don’t believe that anyone is “winning” right now, and the ones who surely are not winning is the working class of this country. This war has put us into the largest national debt we’ve ever had. Under Bush, we’ve amassed more debt than under all of the other Presidents before him COMBINED. And do they ask for any sacrifice from the have-more’s of this country while this is going on? No. They want more tax cuts for the rich, more debt and let your kids, or your grandchildren pay for it.

A week or so ago the Republicans literally held hostage a raise in the minimum wage for the poorest in this country which has not been raised in ten years so they could try to make campaign ads against the Democrats who voted against it. What did they want in return for raising the minimum wage? Another Paris Hilton tax cut in the form of the estate tax, for the richest among us, many of whom have never worked a day in their life.

This is their agenda; More for the rich, and talk about how we’ve got to cut “entitlements” which is code for Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. They absolutely hate everything that FDR did to bring the poor out of poverty and help create this great middle class that we have now, and they have wanted to dismantle those programs for ages, and they’re cynical enough to think that the public doesn’t get it when they speak in code. I tell you who does get it, and that’s their big business campaign contributors. 

This November, we’ve got a choice.

• We can choose to allow the politics of fear and hatred hold us hostage, or we can change direction and have some hope that someone will care about the little guy out there again.
• We can decide to live in perpetual fear of everything around us, or we can stand up and say we’ve had enough of this nonsense, and it’s time to start telling the truth to the American people and holding war profiteers who steal our tax dollars accountable.
• We can say more of the same, or it’s time for some checks and balances, and some sanity to be restored to Washington.
• We can let someone tell us to be afraid of gay people and buy the ridiculous notion that somehow some gay couple is going to affect your marriage, or we can say the real threat is having people who are war mongers in office with no one willing to put them in check and hold the conduct of the war to account.
• We can be afraid that somehow stem cell research is going to lead to someone coming in and stealing your eggs and sperm, and doing horrible experiments with them, or wake up to the fact that the religious fringe of this country would rather throw away a fertilized egg from a fertility clinic than allow someone else to use it for research to cure an awful disease, and give someone hope.
• You can be afraid of the flag burners and think that is an important issue for the Senate to be debating, or ask them to start holding hearings about why we allowed a major city in this country to literally drown, and why no one’s done anything about it, and why contractors there are again ripping off the American public.

We’ve got a choice. The only thing I have to fear is two more years of the same, and unchecked power run amok in Washington. When you go to vote this November, I hope you keep these things in mind, and vote for accountability, honesty, and fairness and that only comes when there is a balance of power.

Politicians will not police themselves. Our ONLY chance to do it for them is when we hold them accountable for their actions with our vote. Joe Lieberman just got that message in CT this week, and it’s shaken the establishment. It’s time for people powered politics to send them another message this November, and vote the bums out.