I have spent the last six years ignoring my gut. Oh, sure, I titillated it a few times with Fahrenheit 9-11 and theories about Bush's back box. I read -- but rarely commented -- in the "tinfoil" LIHOP and MIHOP diaries, and it was easy to dismiss Bev or Greg based on the intellectual weight and irresistable wit of dKos' many articulate naysayers.
"You can't get me," I'd think. "I'm too smart for that." I've got college and grad degrees, I've been around the block, I've been on debate teams and can look at a thing more ways than one. I'm going to wait for the incontrovertible evidence, by God.
Almost 15 years ago, I was walking down Wellington Avenue on Chicago's north side, headed from where I lived on Clark Street to a store on Broadway. About mid-block along the dark street, a man reared up in a yard, stared straight at me, and dropped his pants to his ankles. I did not engage him in conversation. I did not weigh his many possible motives. I didn't wait for someone to tell me what to think. I ran like bloody hell.
Keep your pants up and follow ...
Well, I'm running like bloody hell now.
There are just some things that my gut is telling me, and they're unpleasant as all get out, but I believe I ignore them -- or try to talk myself out of them -- at my peril. I'm writing this diary to make a record, so that I can check back in a year ... or two ... or whenever seems appropriate. Then I'll decide whether I'm delusional ... or rightly running from the naked man in the bushes.
My gut says:
1. Hillary Clinton was right about the "right wing conspiracy." Wasn't that funny when she said that on the Today Show [what seems like decades ago] and everyone had a big old belly laugh? She was dead on, and we are living with its fruits today.
2. There is a ton about 9-11 we do not know. And none of it is good. I think the Commission was a monumental blow job, and that there are a hundred [at least] unanswered questions and inconceivable conclusions. I think there were Republican plants on the commission and serious flaws in both the process and the product. I think the American people are being sheltered, or bamboozled, by a lot of powerful people with agendas. My gut tells me I can trust Michael Moore. It tells me Thomas Keane is a corrupt asshole who did -- and continues to do -- what's been asked of him.
3. The Republican Party is sick and twisted. I don't mean just bloated with power and arrogance, and totally corrupt. I mean sick and twisted. If our country has a prayer, it means this party must die. Intellectually, I try to tow the line. I try to avoid comments about people's looks, or their accents, or their idiosyncracies. I try to wait for facts, and for evidence. But my gut told me about Allen and Foley a long time ago. And it tells me that the GOP is the party of fearful and perverted people who get their jollies from pissing on others. These are the brownshirts, the psychologically unbalanced, the racists, the uncool kids, the thin-lipped fat white bad dancers, the authoritarians, the C students, the control freaks, and the dispossessed -- all joined together in one political party dedicated to sticking it to whomever they can momentarily feel better than. I can look at the Republicans in my own family and see the truth: these are people who are more afraid and less educated, and willing to do almost anything to be "on top" because they spent a pivotal time in their lives feeling unimportant. They need counseling, but they won't get it. Sure, we can discuss it -- for days, for months, for years. My gut says: these people are dangerous -- at every time and in every place they have appeared in history.
4. Elections have been stolen and will continue to be without a serious "event." Let's keep batting that ball around through 2006 ... and 2008. Yes, I want Diebold whistleblowers to come clean. Yes, I want impartial election officials and paper ballots. And sure, I want to learn a whole lot more about exit polling and Zogby vs. Quinnipiac. In the meantime, my gut says: the Republicans have, at the highest levels of our government, colluded to tamper with elections and have committed election fraud. Go read Blue Shark for fun for the latest
5. Cheney is the president. I'm going to love being proved wrong on this one. Believe me, I want to be proved wrong. Bush the Lesser wanted to be president, all right, and he wanted to push his MBA agenda. Like the rest of his creepy crew, he aimed to drown government in the bathtub, as well as New Orleans, and as many of us as he could get swirled down the drain. But it is Cheney pulling many of the ickiest strings. He had the real agenda: to get his hands on that oil, to enrich Halliburton and himself, to dismantle all that he hates: OSHA, the EPA, the national park system, liberals, you name it. Bush just repeats the platitudes, fed to him daily. My gut tells me Cheney has his hands all over the darkest deeds of the last six years, from Valerie Plame to the detention centers.
6. Speaking of "detention centers," my gut tells me this is one of the scariest of the unreported stories the MSM has pledged to keep ignoring. A $385 million contract to Halliburton subsidiary KBR to build holding pens for people and nobody gets to the bottom of it? This is nuts, by any standard. We got multiple news reports when the outgoing Clinton administration was falsely accused of stealing $48.29 worth of W's off West Wing typewriters -- but nothing on multi-million dollar homeland security "housing"? My gut tells me that these detention centers are bad news, and that by the time we learn more we'll be very, very sorry no one paid attention.http://www.consortiumnews.com/...
7. I bet that my name -- and possibly yours -- is on a list of characters to watch. My gut tells me that the huge, all-encompassing intelligence gathering apparatus in this country -- the one that has created lists of anti-war groups and the names of people at Quaker gatherings -- would include many of us. My gut also tells me there is a reason why so many figures of national prominence are remarkably silent during these most disturbing times. The Republicans are masters at digging up dirt and using it. My guess is that they have many citizens by the balls and are squeezing tight.
8. If the Republicans can steal 2006 -- by whatever stealth methods are available to them -- I expect an Internet crackdown. My gut tells me that Rove has spent a lot of time bitching about liberals on the internet messing up their shit. And I'd bet the media is none too happy, either -- all 5 or 6 of those fat white guys who own the country's airwaves. Like social security, I think this is the quiet before the storm. They'll try to hold onto their majority, then storm the ramparts again -- this time for blood.
9. We live in an era of untruth. No matter what the hearing, commission, or investigation -- we're being psy-opped into a stupor. "The Path to 9-11" was one little piece. Remember the staging of the Saddam statue take-down? Does anyone remember Jessica Lynch? http://en.wikipedia.org/... Most of the material in the national consciousness has been deliberately faked, massaged, produced, packaged, and fed to us. My gut tells me that -- should we be so fortunate as to someday unravel the mountain of disinformation that is Bushco -- we will be stunned.
10. Yes, Bush cheated during the debates. I believe he was fed the bulk of his lines. I've watched the film a million times, I've watched his face and measured the cadence. I'll be happy to let this one go, really I will. But my gut says: the guy was definitely wired.