The Bush Zone

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Mon, 17 Jan 2005 11:27:14 -0500

The Bush Zone

 

 

 

The Bush Zone (with Apologies to Rod

Serling)

 

By John Cory

 

t r u t h o u t | Perspective/Satire

 

 

Friday 14 January 2005

 

There is a fifth realm beyond known

reality. It is a realm as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It

is the middle ground of haze and shadow, between science and

superstition, and it lies at the pit of man's fears. This is the realm

of the unimaginable.

It is an area we call " The Bush Zone. "

 

 

Meet Mr. and Mrs. America, faithful believers in

the one true nation. They arise each morning and stand before

the mirror reciting their daily mantra: " It's a grand old flag! Leader

of the free world! We're no. 1! " Their iconic reflection smiles back,

a warm and homemade apple pie image of the best of everything, the

best medical care, the most powerful military, and the best political

system of any country in the world. The mirror never lies.

 

 

But this morning, Mr. And Mrs. America,

discover a warped mirror that casts a disturbing and twisted funhouse

reflection of their former selves. Daily slogans are powerless against

this distorted likeness, and all that they once held sacred now

ripples across the glass in a deformed and misshapen wave of

elongated ugliness. Mr. And Mrs. America just stepped through the

looking glass and into the Bush Zone.

 

 

Submitted for your consideration: citizens of the

wealthiest country in the world seek salvation via the free-

market system. They organize bake sales and eBay auctions to raise

money for medical therapy not covered by their profit-driven corporate

HMOs, only to discover that some of that money is also needed to

purchase body armor the Pentagon failed to provide to their sons and

daughters in Iraq. War is never cheap, but always profitable in the

Bush Zone.

 

 

Further submitted for your consideration: a

President insists on free elections in his combat arena despite the

risk to life and limb for Iraqis, even as his own political party

strains the boundaries of legality and decency to suppress the vote of

Americans at home.

Democracy is only for the righteous few required to guide the many

along the sacred path of destiny and empire in the Bush Zone.

 

 

This is Alberto Gonzales, lawyer on his way up,

salt of the earth, minority makes good story. He is, as you

have perceived, a purveyor of partisan loyalty, one of a breed who

substitutes smiles for substance, venom for value, and noise for

nobility. His skill is the ability to turn the objectionable into the

tolerable, the illegal into legal, and define it all with the

phonetics of patriotism. Mr. Gonzales sits before his inquisitors,

speaking in tongues while saying nothing. He has no fear because he

knows Democrats are willing ghosts without power in the Bush Zone.

 

 

Picture of a campaign paid for by $600 million

dollars of private funds, a cacophonous symphony of slander,

mendacious media, and clanging garbage cans of innuendo and falsehood.

The prize? A lavish gala held at the picturesque white house residence

of the owners of America. Attendance is by invitation only.

 

 

The Bush Zone hosts a cast of characters, who

like children's fertile imaginations, have no attachment to reality.

A surreal traveling Medicine Show comprised of peddlers of

faith and fear, sellers of superstition, martyrs and moguls who

line their pockets with the lives of the innocent and faithful, all

united to market the elixirs of corporate conformity and passivity,

for the price of one thin nickel plus your soul. No waiting.

 

 

Picture of a Nation gazing into a warped mirror,

its reflection, a blemished garden of atrophied freedoms, the

acne of cowered silence, and once bright eyes dulled by corporate

greed and the focus group political entertainment of talk television.

In a little while, the face in the mirror will be permanently etched

into the glass unless the Nation can avert its eyes from the hypnotic

glare and focus on its people, principles and Constitution.

 

 

There is a way out for all of us, albeit through a

locked door.

 

 

You unlock this door with the key of democracy.

Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of peace and

prosperity, a dimension of free speech and civil rights, a dimension

of tolerance and enlightenment. You're moving out of the land of

haze and shadow, and into the wondrous journey of the people, by the

people and for the people.

 

 

You've just stepped out of - the Bush Zone.

 

 

That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the

real America!

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Cory is a Vietnam veteran. He received the Purple

Heart and Bronze Star with V device, 1969 - 1970.