Fire Alarm: Feeding the Flames at Traitor's Gate

Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque

September 23, 2007"The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around." – Martin Luther King Jr., April 3, 1968.

I.We are told that in the weeks before 9/11, then CIA chief George Tenet and his colleagues across the intelligence community were so alarmed by the flood of reports about an impending major terrorist attack that they felt their "hair was on fire." God only knows what the truth of this self-serving, after-the-fact assertion might be, but it is indeed an apt term for a sense of imminent doom in the public sphere. And given the headlong rush to a new war against Iran, and the G-force acceleration into the tyranny of a lawless, all-encompassing surveillance state that is unfolding before our eyes -- not to mention the Democratic Party's complete abandonment of even the pretense of carrying out the people's mandate and opposing the Administration's maniacal, murderous, criminal policies -- anyone whose hair isn't on fire today is either brain-dead, bought-off, or an active, eager, conniving traitor to the American people, and the human race.

That latter designation covers all those who now willingly serve the interests of the Bush Administration: not only the scuttling worker ants of the Bush-controlled Republican Party, but also every so-called "conservative" commentator toting water for the Bushist agenda; every so-called "libertarian" lining up for war, tyranny, torture and corruption; every star-spangled general whoring himself with propaganda exercises on Fox News and deceitful testimony before Congress; every so-called "centrist" wringing their hands over the need for "bipartisan compromise" with the blood-soaked thugs and rapers of liberty who have seized the Republic. Call them out by name: Bill Kristol, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Leeden, David Petraeus, Fred Kagan, Glenn ("More Rubble, Less Trouble") Reynolds, Joe Leiberman, Jon Kyl, Gasbag Limbaugh, and on and on, straight down the line. Call them by name, and call them what they are: traitors, and yes, betrayers, leading the nation -- knowingly, gleefully -- into ignominy and ruin.

This is not the time for polite debate and "political positioning." This is not the time for "politics as usual" at all. The Bush Regime long ago took anything resembling "politics as usual" off the table. Get that through your head already. The current presidential campaign -- an utter farce, a multi-billion-dollar carnival of despair and deception -- is meaningless. Anyone who pays attention to it for more than two minutes a day is wasting their time. Do you think that any of the candidates -- yes, any of them -- are putting all their cards on the table? Do you think that anything that any of them is saying right now can be taken on trust, or will be translated into actual policy once they are in office?

If so, let me sell you some shares in all that "high-speed rail" Bill Clinton talked about building in 1992, when he was going to take the "peace dividend" from the end of the Cold War and beat a few of our redundant swords into gleaming ploughshares for American workers ravaged by globalization. Where did that dividend go? It went to the NAFTA boondoggle. It went to Halliburton (yes, the massive privatization of the American military -- the results of which we saw on the streets of Baghdad last week -- began under Clinton, who threw billions of dollars in fat contracts at Dick Cheney and other "military servicers."). It went right back to the Pentagon, with its "missile shield" scams, its "Space Command" plans, its new missiles, tanks, and planes, its ever-expanding global empire of bases. It went to the continuing strangulation of the Iraqi people (and the continuing enrichment of Saddam Hussein with the express approval of the US and the UK). It went into the bombing of civilians in Serbia and Kosovo in an illegal, undeclared, unsanctioned war that ended with the same settlement that was on offer before the US and NATO attack began. In short, it went -- as usual -- to the same murky conglomeration of arms merchants, corporate cronies, revolving-door contractors, energy interests, investment firms and elite institutions that hold the true reins of power, and will do so whoever gets elected in 2008, no matter what they say now, or even try to do afterwards.

"Oh, but that Dennis Kucinich," you say, "that Ron Paul, that Mike Gravel -- they're sincere about wanting real change." Well, maybe that's so; I have no way of knowing if it's true or not, and neither do you, but let's assume that it is. The brutal fact of the matter is that the more likely they are to actually change things in a fundamental way, the less likely it is that they will ever be allowed to take office, or come anywhere near it.

Already they are mocked, scorned and marginalized by the powers-that-be and their sycophants on both sides of the political aisle. And if by some miracle they managed to punch through this cordon sanitaire, and gather the makings of a mass movement behind them, we know exactly what would happen to them. The last person who broke in from the outside and spearheaded a mass movement that seriously questioned the social, economic and military underpinnings of the American Empire was gunned down in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Although he was long a controversial figure, long a target of government surveillance and dirty tricks, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed only after he began expanding his movement beyond the issue of civil rights (which many Establishment figures supported) to include opposition to the Vietnam War and economic justice for American workers. Remember: he wasn't in Memphis that day for a civil rights rally; he was supporting a strike by garbage workers. >>>cont

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