to put this as simply as possible

[rm]

Because of a variety of things, I use all sorts of calculated rhetorical devices nearly constantly in my communications. As I've pointed out before, it is more effective to say "my mother never loved me" than "sometimes, I thought my mother never loved me." Also, I took Latin from a young age, and it taught similar things, and alliteration besides; it is perhaps the most singularly important thing I learned before the age of twenty.

The lead story on the local news tonight was that the government is trying to find a legal way to postpone the national elections in November. That they were trying to find a way to do this only if necessary, in the event of a terrorist attack, was a garbled footnote to the story, and while you and I can argue whether that's tactical journalism or not (and in most cases, that's something I'm going to be a lot more informed about than you are), this is significant, this is unprecedented, and this is frightening.

I am afraid, and this is not a rhetorical device.


Shortly after 9/11 I wrote a piece about Before, During and After, that was so heavy handed its appalled my artistic sensabilities ever since. But I'll tell you something, whatever happens on election day this year? That's when After begins. These last four insane years have been either a prelude or an intermission. Hopefully, as voters, we'll get to decide which.

Comments

[rahalia-cat.livejournal.com]

You have every right to be afraid. Speaking as a member of the Rest of the Free World, I'm just as bloody afraid as you. Every single damn thing I've been hearing about the Bush administration in the past few months is beginning to smack of putative tinpot dictatorship; something that belongs more in somewhere like Zimbabwe [ has Bush been reading one of Mugabe's treatises on Your People, and How to Suppress Them? ] as opposed to the largest and most powerful world nation.

For me to get this worried about upcoming elections in a country that isn't even mine is a first, I can tell you. I only hope that enough people with a thread of common sense in their bodies either vote this idiot out if elections take place, or take to the bloody streets and scream for their rights if they don't. If one man tries to control a democratic nation, then it can no longer call itself democratic.

[editrx.livejournal.com]

As another person who is usually able to make a very informed opinion about journalistic integrity or slant of an article, I'm with you in the frightened category. (My first "job" in journalism was doing clipping for a large political institution [technically I was employed underage by the WH], back before we had the ease of computers: I had to read about twenty+ newspapers before dawn in D.C. The last two years completely out of mainstream journalism has been a welcome break, frankly.)

It's interesting to see the tidbits that were dropped to journalists, in interviews, and in official WH briefing reports in the last week: there's a trail there that can be pointed to when and if need be.

I think it's a trump card being planted.

[orobouros.livejournal.com]

I am also afraid.

What began as a minor irritating buzz in my head in November, 2000, was magnified 700fold the morning all hell broke loose. Not a day goes by that I don't feel it in my head. The fog. The fear. The muddle. The whatever-you-want-to-call-it.

Not fear of "Islam" (which I'm discovering despite some of its more fanatical followers, is actually a very beautiful religion in many respects, unlike what we've been taught).

Not fear of "terrorist attacks"

But fear of my own government. Fear of what this country has become, and is continuing to evolve into.

I am not incapacitated by this fear (indeed, I'm not even to the point of putting on a tin foil hat to drone out the mind control signals), but I am FUCKING TIRED OF IT. I am FUCKING TIRED OF LIVING THIS WAY, and FUCKING TIRED OF THE BRAINFOG.

There will come a time when we, the people, will have enough. And I am hoping beyond hope, that the day we decide this, and make it official will be in November, on schedule, as planned.

Because, if that does not happen, I will begin the process of exiting this absurd little drama.

And I don't know if I'll come back this time.

*sigh*

Sorry. It's weighing heavily on me too right now. I needed to get this off my chest.

The image that keeps sticking with me right now is that of Bush's inaugural procession, with the demonstrators, in Fahrenheit 9/11. I hadn't seen that footage until the film. I can only wonder and hope that the crowds will be even bigger in the event the election is postponed/cancelled.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I was there, in that crowd, and that footage was the first time I'd seen it other than when it happened.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Likewise, and likewise. I want to frame-step through all of that when the DVD comes out to see if I can see now anyone I saw then.

[editrx.livejournal.com]

That footage (of protests at the inauguration) were carefully not shown on any major news outlet, not even stills.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

You scare me in a way that I need to be scared.

Also : I don't think I'm alone in this need.

[rosemarymint.livejournal.com]

This 'presidency' has had the truth sanitized from the beginning -- it makes me feel like we are living in Moscow in 1967. Next on the agenda.. disposing of the 'nonbelievers'.

This is a nation that fears their government -- except that the fear has been diverted towards nameless, faceless and unknown terrorism that has yet to occur. Frankly, isn't that was terrorism is all about? Instilling fear into a mass population? The terrorists didn't have to do anything -- our own government did it for them.

I'm scared to death -- not of the terrorists, but of my government.

And, as I told Kevin, I will be at my polling place at 8am on November 2. If no one is there to let me vote, then I will sit there until someone is.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

As I stated in my 2nd ever LJ post, my 2nd thought on September 11, after I heard the news was that if the attack was by foreign terrorists, the US was going to become a deeply unpleasant place, I have never been less pleased to be correct and I am quite worried. I don't particularly trust democracy under the best of circumstances, but the thought that we might lose what little actual self-determination we have is far worse.

[starkyld.livejournal.com]

i'm likewise completely and utterly afraid of my government. if someone had told me in early 2000 what the next four years would be like, there would be no way whatsoever that i would have believed them. i'm really, really, REALLY hoping that this falls into the "intermission" category.