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The F.O.G. of Culture War
by arendt
The uncertainty level on almost all military battlefields, which limits the control of
the commanders, is so omnipresent that it has acquired a name: the fog of war.
Both sides of a battle try to mask their intentions from each other, to deny the
each other the ability to make send out scouts or observers, and to interfere with
communications from scouts to commanders and from commanders to everyone
else.
Reactionaries in the United States have declared a Culture War on the rest of the
country. Progressives, with their trademark sophistication, have mistakenly decided
that this is just a metaphor for an honest political discussion. The result is a real war
where one side is in a fog, and the other is not.
Since George Bush was illegally installed as president by a judicial coup d'etat,
government secrecy and lying has taken a quantum leap. That is because the
people now running the government don't believe in open democracy, don't believe
in the principles enshrined in what Bush calls "just a "*** piece of paper", don't
even believe in the bedrock of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, habeus corpus. All
they believe in is war - war on terror, war on Iraq, and the Culture War.
What has really not penetrated to most Americans is that, since the bum's rush to
cram the unread Patriot Act and unverifiable electronic voting down our throats, America
has been an occupied country. We have a Fundamentalist Occupation Government(FOG)
that is prosecuting one side of the Culture War mercilessly, with every tax dollar that they can
funnel to their side (via "faith-based" initiatives and phony defense contract kickbacks),
and with every government agency they can pack with their supporters - the way Stalin
packed the Politburo in his fight for total domination.
The FOG is doing this in a secrecy broken only by courageous whistle-blowers who
pay the price, usually without the bright lights of a media, long since corrupted, to witness
the payback. The under-publicized service men and women who tell the truth about torture,
contractor corruption, and random killings of innocent civilians are the unsung heroes
of the disgusting "elective surgery" war in Iraq.
The major generator of the Culture War Fog is the corporate media, often fed directly from
the White House fax machines. This media is nothing but the propaganda ministry for the
Cultural Comissars of the FOG. It is this media that legitimize and spin for the moral imbeciles
running America into the ground for their own profit and their own mental delusions about morality.
The corporate media swallows these delusions whole. They loudly and repeatedly question the
morality and the patriotism of anyone who has legitimate concerns about any action of the Bush
Administration. Meanwhile they fail to examine the excuses offered as justifications, and the slogans
offered as arguments, for the serial felonies of the most criminal administration this country has ever
endured. Any honest reporter would describe this administration's policies as a subversion
of our Constitution by a fifth column - you know, like the vast Communist conspiracy
that we were on guard against for forty years. Its just amazing that our vigilant, patriotic
media can't notice a bunch of ex-Trotskyites (the neocons) overthrowing democracy with
the help of a worshipper of Lenin (Grover Norquist).
But, in the Culture War, all that matters is whether or not you obey a twisted, pathological,
and heretical reading of the Bible that focuses on the Old Testament and the more
misogynistic sections of Paul's epistles. Only personal, sexual "crimes" matter; and then only
if you're not a Catholic priest, a Republican office holder, or a fundamentalist child molester.
Evidence of corruption, treason, torture, institutionalized looting, and unjustifiable mass
incarcerations by executive fiat are considered "the criminalization of politics".
In this FOG, the words of Jesus, such as turning the other cheek, returning love for hate, not being
a "whited sepulchure" of a Pharisee, and rendering unto Caesar are conspicuous only in
their absence. Pat Robertson's repeated calls for assassination and curses upon citizens
exercising their voting rights and their scientific training are nothing any real Christian
would claim as emanating from Jesus. But this is all ignored by the corporate/theocrat
media, which instead manufacturers a "war on Christmas" that would be laughable if
its megadollar funding and military-level message discipline did not demonstrate the
triumph of money and fanaticism over truth and tolerance.
Also notable for its absence in the media is any serious discussion of the war crimes of the
neocon warmongers. These crimes began with cooking the intelligence and lying to incite
a war of agression against a non-threat. They continued with lying about the use of white
phosphorous, lying about torture in Abu Ghraib, and covering up CIA black sites and
kidnapping/torture of innocent people. Probably the most lethal omission is the absolute blackout
on the obscene use of the unbelievably toxic depleted uranium munitions which poison not
only the Iraqis, but also our own troops, not to mention the rest of the world.
Stepping down from mass murder and torture to mere tort crimes, we have massive
corruption. $9 Billion "gone missing" without so much as an investigation in the first
year of the war. A billion dollars of cash airlifted and thrown from duffel bags to
the grasping hands of contractors. Empty trucks delivering nothing, paid for as real
deliveries. Defective and second rate body army delivered to the troops. A $150 Billion
lie about the cost of a flawed and bogus Drug Benefit.
And yet, the corporate/theocrat media stonewalls all these moral abominations.
In their delusional worldview, none of this matters. For the theocrats, it is irrelevant to
the coming nuclear armageddon that they hope will cure their pathological self-loathing
permanently. For the corporations, its all about money. They figure the theocrats are nuts,
but someone will stop them; in the meantime, its the biggest gravy train they have ever
seen.
Through all of this, many so-called progressives in America continue to believe themselves engaged
in a political debate instead of a war to the death. There are also phony progressives, like the DLC,
who are yet another fifth column of appeasement and acquiesence to treason. Someone ought to
send Joe Lieberman and Hilary Clinton umbrellas. But they won't because the DLC is invisible to
them in the one-sided FOG of the Culture War that lies only over the progressive trenches.
The only way to cut the FOG is to let the sun shine on it. Let some daylight into the dark
rooms in which the destruction of America is plotted. Tell the truth like Cindy Sheehan, like
Jack Murtha, like Seymour Hersch. Stop the re-animation of the "Night and Fog" tactics that terrified
an earlier generation. Today, we still have the BBC to tell us the truth; and we have the Internet to
deliver the BBC and all the other honest reporting to us.
Consider this essay to be a ray of that desperately needed sunshine. Pass it along. Vaporize the FOG.
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