Putsch-Speak

Giving liberty and freedom bad names

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson 2005

1/2/05

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/VRWC/p-speak.htm

Much has been made of the fact that Putsch used the words "freedom" and "liberty" so much in his coronation babble. One count put it at 37 "freedom"s and 21 "liberty"s in the short, content-free speech. Given that the weapons of mass destruction fizzled and the American occupiers managed to get many Iraqis to think of Saddam as "the good old days," Putsch has had to settle for just libertying and freedoming the holy living shit out of Iraq. So you would think he would mention Iraq as an example of how he has brought freedom and liberty to the world.

He didn’t.

You have to wonder how anybody in the United States could possibly be so stupid as to think that when he talks about freedom and liberty, he actually means those words in the sense by which they are normally interpreted. Freedom means independence, and liberty means, well, freedom. So let’s just drop "liberty" as redundant. Incidently, "democracy" is also something idiot neo-fascists insist can be imposed on a society, and of course it can’t be, either.

Putsch talks about bringing freedom to the world, by force if need be. Only American right wingers are dumb enough to fail to understand that by definition, you cannot impose freedom on anyone. Freedom is something people take for themselves. So is democracy, despite the sad, Kafkaesque mockery of it we’re seeing in Iraq.

If you want to see freedom fighters in Iraq, look to the guys who are planting IEDs and massacring the "Iraqi police." They are fighting for freedom. It isn’t freedom the way most Americans perceive the word, and certainly not the way Putsch does, but it is freedom from the conqueror, the oppressor. It’s unlikely that many, or even any of those guys are interested in democracy, let alone individual rights. Most, given power, would be at least as oppressive and vicious as Saddam was, and probably many would be even worse. But Iraq would be free. It would be free of the foreign oppressors, the Americans.

Putsch counts on his followers being so stupid, so incapable of thinking or empathizing with others, that they won’t notice that he has completely inverted the meaning of oppressors and freedom fighters. Historians will consider this to be the most disgraceful time in American history, if not the death of America.

However, after 48 hours the White House heard the derisive laughter and "reinterpreted" Putsch’s remarks for him, saying that he didn’t mean to sound like he was talking about imposing freedom and democracy on anyone.

It’s a surprise the White House even NOTICED, let alone responded. Maybe there really is something to the old saw that the tyrant fears laughter more than the assassin’s bullet. Forget Lee Harvey Oswald; we’ve got Jon Stewart.

Of course, the White House probably thought that only the willfully ignorant and hate-filled mouth-breathers who live by Faux News were watching (and Faux was the only network to have higher ratings for the inauguration than in 2001; everyone else was down sharply, indicating that only dumb neo-fascists wanted to watch.) I was listening on my local affiliate of NPR, and was delighted when they broke away one minute prior to the swearing in to play Randy Newman’s "This is My Country" instead. But people were watching, and even Matt Drudge reported on the sneers and jeers in the British media (probably in the hopes of provoking righteous outrage among Putsch supporters) and even the gushing and servile Peggy Noonan said that the speech "gave her a bad feeling."

Well, that’s what the Putschkins get for believing their own propaganda that the vote represented a mandate to rule.

The Chinese main paper noted, "Judging from Bush's inauguration theme in 2005, being morally conceited and militarily aggressive are two major elements of American nationalism." Moral conceit usually turns into farce quickly enough. Military aggression, however, usually results in a lot of dead people, mostly kids.

Of course, the military aggression, despite all the dead and wounded, has elements of farce. Iraq may not be the most reprehensible of America’s wars, but it was one of the most embarrassing blunders. America went into Iraq and got spanked. The reason they are pushing so hard for this election next week (and that is pure farce) is so they can install the new government, declare victory and pull out. Putsch knows that Iraq was a terrible blunder, and already, the few vets to return from Iraq (between stop-loss and the fact that the resistance has killed or injured one in ten Americans over there, there aren’t many returned vets) have organized a Stop-the-War movement. Putsch knows that it won’t do to have rich Republican anti-American filth stand around at the next convention and disparage Purple Hearts again.

The election itself is the stuff of legend. More Iraqis living in America are expected to vote than Iraqis living in, you know, Iraq. Not just expatriates; the children of men born in Iraq may vote. This includes many who have never been to Iraq, and don’t even speak the language. NBC reported without blinking that 60 million ballots had been printed for the election, quite a trick for a country that has only 17 million people. Somehow I doubt there are 50 million Iraqis and children of Iraqis in the US. And 60 million ballots would be quite a job of checking by the ONE international observer allowed into Iraq by America to oversee the election.

They aren’t even going to hold the election in 4 of the 19 provinces (the Donald Rumsfeld "nothing’s perfect" plan), which means 65% of the population won’t be voting. Imagine an election in the US where voting wasn’t conducted in California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania. As for the rest, the location of the ballot place is secret until election day, as are the identities of the candidates, some of whom might want to live until election night. Even better, the White House Republicans, who absolutely hate quotas, have mandated that each party must have at least one-third of their (anonymous) candidates female.

NBC cheerfully announced that nobody seemed to be worried about election fraud. I don’t know if they were being ironic or just trying to polish a turd.

Perhaps after the election, when the US has declared victory and pulled out, they can assure Iraqis of their freedom by giving them a new national anthem to go along with the new flag they tried last summer.