Thursday, November 04, 2004

Four More Years of Bush!

Four more years of Bush

I guess it depends on how quickly you say this as to whether it brings a smile to your lips or you break down in tears. I guess it also depends on whether you have the mentality of a thirteen year old boy or you are serious about your politics. (I hope I am in the latter category) – (Well not too serious!)

So Freedom and Democracy is safe for another four years. I don’t really know how afraid I am when I write this. But I send a word of sympathy to all the good thinking people of the US.

An online dictionary from Princeton University in the US tell us that Freedom is:

the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints.

Is this the ‘freedom’ that Bush jnr. Is imposing on Iraq and Afghanistan? Because is seems to me that this ‘freedom’ Bush talks about comes with a lot of strings and external imposed (by the US) restraints – that’s not Freedom is it?

Another definition is:

Not being under another's control; the power to say or do as one pleases, e.g., freedom of speech or belief or freedom of economic decision making.

None of these, to my mind, is what’s on offer when the United States, through its figurehead Bush, starts to influence the citizens of those countries with displays of military strength and bombing by its Air Force. What about freedom of belief, and freedom of economic decision making? None of these will be part of Bush’s plan (Bush being, I am sure, a part of the ultra-right Christian Evangelical movement for whom Islam would be an anathema)

This leads us to another definition of freedom:

The societal condition that exists when every individual has 100% control over their own property."

That is, if it has not been bombed into dust, along with the rest of your extended family!

Freedom is one of those tricky words that mean different things to different people. For some CCTV is a means to freedom, for others is an abuse of a persons freedom to walk freely without being observed. There is, through the use of CCTV for instance, an implied guilt, that we all have to be observed in some way, like in Orwell’s 1984, and of course its all in the name of the people for the good of the people.

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face… was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime Orwell 1984


It’s like the bringing together the two words Freedom and Terrorism can be used as a sort of a talisman that allows bullies like Bush and his Government (Which it appears over 50% of the US population support – so using guilt by association, the US is a country of bullies – and not just the red necked sort apparently) to enter legal states around the world and to enforce this thing ‘Freedom’.

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." Orwell 1984.

To be honest I do not want America’s ideas Freedom, I do not want the US to even suggest to me that their freedom’s are better than the freedom’s enjoyed by me in my country. I do not support any invasion of another country in the name of Bush’s idea of Freedom. I do not want the American Dream because from this side of the Atlantic it looks much more like an American Nightmare. The pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness seems to be some sort of horrendous joke when it is applied to whats happening in the Middle East.

Remember Bush and co one day you will be bought to account:

"It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same—everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same—people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world." Orwell 1984


Four More Years
Don’t Dry the Tears
On the mothers sallow cheek

When Soldier Boys
Have Lost their Toys
And return in the Brittle Box

A folded flag
Just a political gag
Placed in the Mothers hands

In Dusty Street
Other Sad Mothers weep
For the children dead in arms

It’s Freedoms stain
Americas Shameful Bloody Pain
Four More Years of Bush





4 comments:

Cattiva said...

Wow! Did you write that poem at the end? Very powerful!

Rob Burton said...

Yep my poem, thanks very much

Anonymous said...

My word! Well, your words, really! How well-written! You got my adrenaline going, there. Thanks for your condolensences. Though I feel sorry enough for myself, the support is nice comforting. I am really enjoying your site!

Michelle said...

Australia agrees!