Were I a political cartoonist, I would draw a castle with a high wall and a deep moat with Sir Georg Bush looking out and saying, "We're safe from the barbarians!" Behind him, inside the castle walls, the people are starving and dying of disease.
Recall the excuse for spending $1,000,000,000,000 on the Bush War? To refresh memories, "We're fight'n them over there so that we don't have to fight them over here.!" Lots of Americans nodded their heads in agreement. That was some 5 years ago. A few bobbleheads still are, but most are shaking their heads as they look at their own economic situation.
The Consumer Price Index for November 2007, the latest data, compared with November 2002 shows these data:
Housing costs up 16%
Transportation costs up 23%
Food cost up 17%
Health care costs up 23%
While most Americans were shaking with fear about the 'terrorists' over there, we were being shorn, like sheep, by big business. Few sheeple noticed because they trusted that their government was protecting them from the dangers 'out there.' Yet, like Sir Bush in my imaginary drawing, the folks were dying inside the walls, starving to death within the moat.
Recession is upon us. No-doubt-Cheney doesn't give a damned about that; he's made his money and the money for his energy friends. So has Sir Bush, for his friends in the military-industrial complex.
I think of those ruined castles that I walked through in Germany during my visits there. Grotesque tombs of times past. Glorious bastions of defense against the marauding barbarian forces wanting to get in and plunder. They did. Soldiers died, but all was plundered.
We've been plundered too.
