fool’s paradise

People like this declare it’s their right to drive gas guzzlin’ pick-ups which they plaster with “God Bless America” flag stickers and “Support the Troops” ribbons. They holler at minimum-wage earning station attendants about rising gas prices as they load up on beer and bait for weekend campouts with horses and four-wheelers they couldn’t afford unless they remortgaged their homes. If the occupation causes them a speck more discomfort the tenor of their true feelings about Iraqis will go from guarded whisper to indignant roar and that furnace blast would burn the noble sheen right off the War Party’s plans for permanent war, a healthy development for public discourse in general, and why “kick their ass, take their gas” has yet to gain approval from propaganda central despite its popularity. The ink stain William Lind prescribes for Iraqis suffers the same bipolar “why do they hate us” defensiveness of the “nuke ’em now” crowd even as the reasons fill Iraq’s morgues to bursting due yet another in a long history of imperial conquests waged in the name of social engineering by the United States.