For anyone wishing to see the Yahoo! webpage I found this piece on, this sentence is the link.

The Nation — David Brooks, the high-minded conservative pundit, dismissed the Dubai Ports controversy as an instance of political hysteria that will soon pass. He was commentating on PBS, and I thought heard a little quaver in his voice when he said this was no big deal. Brooks consulted “the experts,” and they assured him there’s no national security risk in a foreign company owned by Middle East Muslims–actually, by an Arab government–managing six major American ports. Cool down, people. This is how the world works in the age of globalization.

Of course, he is correct. But what a killjoy. This is a fun flap, the kind that brings us together. Republicans and Democrats are frothing in unison, instead of polarizing incivilities. Together, they are all thumping righteously on the poor President. I expect he will fold or at least retreat tactically by ordering further investigation. The issue is indeed trivial. But Bush cannot escape the basic contradiction, because this dilemma is fundamental to his presidency.

A conservative blaming hysteria is hysterical, when you think about it, and a bit late. Hysteria launched Bush’s invasion of Iraq. It created that monstrosity called Homeland Security and pumped up defense spending by more than 40 percent. Hysteria has been used to realign US foreign policy for permanent imperial war-making, whenever and wherever we find something frightening afoot in the world. Hysteria will justify the “long war” now fondly embraced by Field Marshal Rumsfeld. It has also slaughtered a number of Democrats who were not sufficiently hysterical. It saved George Bush’s butt in 2004.

Bush was the principal author, along with his straight-shooting Vice President, and now he is hoisted by his own fear-mongering propaganda. The basic hysteria was invented from risks of terrorism, enlarged ridiculously by the President’s open-ended claim that we are endangered everywhere and anywhere (he decides where). Anyone who resists that proposition is a coward or, worse, a subversive. We are enticed to believe we are fighting a new cold war. But are we? People are entitled to ask. Bush picked at their emotional wounds after 9/11 and encouraged them to imagine endless versions of even-larger danger. What if someone shipped a nuke into New York Harbor? Or poured anthrax in the drinking water? OK, a lot of Americans got scared, even people who ought to know better.

So why is the fearmonger-in-chief being so casual about this Dubai business?

Because at some level of consciousness even George Bush knows the inflated fears are bogus. So do a lot of the politicians merrily throwing spears at him. He taught them how to play this game, invented the tactics and reorganized political competition as a demagogic dance of hysterical absurdities, endless opportunities to waste public money. Very few dare to challenge the mindset. Thousands have died for it.

Bush’s terrorism war has from the start been in collision with the precepts of corporate-led globalization. One practices hyper-nationalism–Washington gets to decide where it goes to war, never mind the Geneva Convention and other “obsolete” international restraints. Yet Bush’s diplomats travel the world banging on governments for trade rules that defenestrate a nation’s sovereign power to run its own affairs. The US government regards itself as comfortable with this arrangement since it assumes the superpower can always get its way. Most citizens are never consulted. They are perhaps unaware that their rights have been given away, too.

It would be nice to imagine this ridiculous episode will prompt reconsideration, cool down exploitative jingoism and provoke a more rational discussion of the multiplying absurdities. I doubt it. At least it will be satisfying to see Bush toasted irrationally, since he lit the match.

See how well the politics of fear work, Mr President?

South Dakota, how I thought I knew thee. Childhood state of my father and currently containing close to 30 of my extended clan of aunts, uncles, and cousins, this is a state that I have visited often and got to know somewhat well over the years. South Dakotans are the same as New Jerseyans, differentiated only be geography. We have schools, hospitals, and churches. They have schools, hospitals, and churches. We have Wal-Marts, roads lined left and right with fast food franchises, and every-expanding suburban sprawl. Ditto for SD. But apparently South Dakotans are a lot quicker to sign on to the agenda of social control by the conservative movement than residents of “America’s Armpit”. How? Let’s pass an abortion ban!

There’s no call for this action. There’s no reason. The numbers don’t require drastic action. It’s not as if a state of 750,000 residents is having 50,000 abortions per year. But apparently this is a state that is filled with men and women who believe, with all their hearts, that enforcing their moral code through law is a justifiable cause. This is a very un-American process, because it means the suppression of the minority by a majority. Secular, rational people will always be outnumbered by idol-worshipping, uneducated Christians (if you refute this position, please explain why every church is filled with statues, crosses, stain-glass windows and other representations of figures of the faith that people bow down to, pray to, and sometimes even kiss out of ‘devotion’ and explain why Christians are at the forefront of the ‘intelligent design’ movement that seeks to exclude proven knowledge from our educational system in favor of superstitious mythology). So is it right and just that non-Christians have to live by Christian morals through popular-at-the-moment laws like this? Isn’t this what we are fighting to prevent in our war against Islamic fundamentalism that is the foundation of the terror movement?

Things aren’t as they used to be. The days of tax-and-spend liberals appear to be fading into history, paving the way for the modern conservative movement of borrow-and-spend. Ages past, conservatives used to lament the bloated influence of the federal government on state and local affairs, especially when it involved increases to the federal deficit. Those days are gone. In what I suspect to be a Bush Administration-sponsored news story (read: propaganda), Republican congressmen are crowing like crazy over their abilities to bring federal dollars to their districts for purely local projects. “Where’s the fire, MrKedder?” you may be asking. Well, assuredly, nothing is new about congresspersons of either party using earmarks to send government monies into local municipalities. But doesn’t anyone notice the difference? The change? Conservatives used to decry this method as a way for liberal representatives to waste more of the taxpayer’s hard-earned dollars. Now it’s business as usual? The only way to fly? The day that the inability of a President to veto any old piece of legislation that a Congress controlled by his party sends him becomes a boon to America is a sad day indeed. Clinton, if you recall, ran a surplus for the remaining years of his presidency, and passed that surplus off only to see it evaporate under the hands of a Republican president. Since then, our national debt has skyrocketed and the government has been forced to raise the debt ceiling of America’s credit limit repeatedly. All of this wouldn’t be such a big surprise if conservatives hadn’t been running on the smaller-government-controlled-spending platform for the past 20 years. I mean, come on! Who ever thought we’d miss the good old days when conservatives actually conserved things?

Apparently in Missouri, if you don’t pay your dues, you don’t get public services. Such is the case of Bibaldo Rueda, who had an audience of firefighters who stood and watch his property burn rather than help because he hadn’t paid his vaguely-defined “membership dues”. Now, I’m not saying that I know the exact structure of Monett, MO’s property taxes and other municipal fees, but my understanding has been that taxes paid on the ownership of property go to fund things like local firefighting units, police squads, emergency health rescue teams, etc. Can anyone explain why membership dues are required to receive access to the public service that is firefighting?

And what about doing the right thing? I’d almost be surprised if this occurred anywhere else besides the Bible Belt. But now that I think about it, holding back a service for what amounts to a morality lesson is just the sort of thing that rural Christians would do in a situation like this. It’s almost Mafia-esque in its brutality. “Shoulda paid us that money, mister. Now your stuff’s all burned up.” What sort of amoral person stands by in front of a vehicle full of water with hoses and nozzles attached to it in front of a burning house and doesn’t object to non-involvment based on a late payment? I mean, after Bibaldo Rueda offered, on the spot, to make good on his missing dues, was it still necessary to watch his garage burn itself out? To me, this reeks of more evidence of the hypocritical morals of America’s “Righteous Region”.

Washington State police forces have seized enough marijuana plants in 2005 to place cannabis as the state’s #8 agricultural product. Am I living on the wrong side of the country or what? [New Jersey, the “Garden State”, is developing its open spaces so fast into housing developments and crippling sprawl that eventually our agricultural commodities will consist of the greens buyable in places like 7-Eleven and Wawa.] To a degenerate like me that equates a toke off of a joint with a sip from a beer, that certainly seems to be the case. Instead of buying the over-priced junk that’s available from local sources, maybe I ought to be heading west to set up my own private operation. After all, the reduction in National Guard forces for the war in Iraq [still not part of our nation] has left a lot of our home turf under-defended at the moment. What better time than when priorities have been shifted from one worthless war to another? In fact, given the recent “revelations” about drug money and sponsoring terrorism, growing my own fields of ganja could be the most patriotic, American thing that I could think of to do my part in the war on terror.

It’s a hard life, burning embassies and effigies. After hours of chanting and shouting through the streets (instead of working, schooling, or some other equally useless activity that might invigorate your economy and lift your people out of squalor), what is a Muslim to do while resting up for tomorrow’s burn-shout-burn-chant-burn-march-burn schedule? Apparently, it’s ‘Roses of the Prophet Muhammed’ for everyone! That’s right, everybody, ridiculous and pointless name changes of popular foods aren’t just for Republican Congressmen anymore.

Oddly enough, this is a protest I can put my support behind. It’s economics, the new battleground. Sure, I hate the idea of a Danish paper having to bow down to some unjustly-enraged fanatics over free-speech content. But in terms of progress for Muslim society, well, this is a big step. Man-on-the-moon big, relatively speaking. Instead of exploding into violence like they have done up until now, this should have been the first move by these Muslim nations. When you want to show the world that you and your country are capable of dialogue, peaceful discussion, and cooperation to relieve a growing problem, economic protests are one way to make yourself heard when governments seem to not be listening to you. This was the complain of the Danish Muslim group, who had run out of regular channels to pursue when the Danish government did not respond to their statements of being offended. The exact opposite of this approach? Everything the Muslims have done up until this point. You know, burning embassies, attacking foreigners in the street (always a great way to encourage economic investment in your country by foreign groups!), and otherwise reducing the population of straw men and foreign flags using pyrotechnics. That, I would venture to guess, is just about the best way to prove to everyone who calls you ignorant, uneducated, and backwards just how grossly ignorant, incredibly uneducated, and totally bass-ackward you really are.

CNN reports here that the White House has approved the sale of a British company responsible for the secruity of ports in at least 7 American states, one of which is my own home state of New Jersey. Now, without going too left-wing or anything, can I ask exactly what credentials the Bush Administration can still submit in support of its record of “keeping Americans safe”? I refuse to accept any of the actions in Afghanistan or Iraq as proof of that, since despite all the assertions of democracy-growing and stability-generating, these actions have swelled the ranked of the jihadists and terrorists, not decreased them.

To me, it seems as thought Bush and Co. want a very pourous American-Mexican border to facilitate the cheap labor market that drives American jobs out of existence. Making it easier to enter the country is not security. The removal of public oversight from intelligence tactics also does little to enhance security. In fact, it just makes it easier for potential abuse. And now we get giving control of operations at major importation hubs to an Arab company that is based in a company known to support the terrorists of September 11th? What is it about these situations that allows half the country to see very obvious risks while still permitting the other half to see absolutely nothing wrong with this? Or is a President and his Party’s inability to hold the line on access to American soil by non-citizens and potential enemies something that only non-Republicans can pick up on?