HOW HORROR CAME TO US

A Political Satire

By Peter Fredson

One day there lived a spoiled, impetuous, impatient, shallow, reckless, irresponsible lad that was somehow given religion, promised he would become rich and powerful, and that he could help kleptocrats and True Believers rule the world.

Several hundred of them got together, thinking the young lad was pliable, gullible and sufficiently dumb to serve as their poster-boy. They also knew he had a rich and powerful daddy and had lots of “right” ideas for maximizing profitability and ensuring dominion. The True Believers said, “If you will let us make Christianity the only religion of the U.S. and let us post our icons, symbols, dogma and commandments, we’ll give you cash and fully committed votes.

The corporate lobbyists said: “If you let us make maximum profit, and take away all those restrictions on wages, hours, safety, and pollution, we’ll make you a leader.”

The neo-cons, old crony frat-boys said: “We want to dominate the world and get rich, and if you help us get into power, then we’ll install you in any office.”

The military-industrialists said, “Hey, war may be hell but it sure can be profitable for the “right” people.”

Well, the callow shallow young lad, being persuaded he might become the Julius Caesar, or Richard Nixon, of his times, agreed to sell his personality and do whatever the rich and powerful people wanted him to do. The first step was to get him reborn, fully washed of alcohol and coke, hide his service record and any other criminal tidbits, and launch him as a junior version of Jesus Christ, with toothy grin, swaggering walk, monkey pants, lady-like gestures, and other features appealing to cretin-like masses.

He had an unwholesome gang assigned to him as his cabinet, but they were there to keep him from displaying any outright stupidities that might attract unfavorable public attention, and to keep him from upsetting any pre-established arrangements preventing them from ruling their part of the world. If he got into trouble explaining any anomaly he was to smirk and his followers would be satisfied.

His daddy, cronies, evangelists, lobbyists, militarists, corporate executives took control of the legislative process, bought the entire Republican Party apparatus, lock, stock and barrel, and started to dismantle the judicial system. Millions of True Believers were told by several hundred thousand evangelist charismatic constructionists and dominionists how to vote and that they would go to hell if they didn’t vote as told. And so it was.

The voting cards, with hanging chads, hung just enough to get political appointees on the Supreme Court to declare this personable but inarticulate lad as President with full access to military hardware and possession of the briefcase with the nuclear trigger. That is when the civil horror became reality.

The Vice-President got together some of his richest cronies in Energy Corporations to help him on legislation about, (what a coincidence,) Energy. They discussed the fact that this country runs mainly on oil, and that oil is a finite resource, largely controlled by A-rabs and Latin American zoot-suiters. Such people were obviously unsuited to extract oil and were unreliable in the degree of compliance to demands of the righteous U.S. plutocrats.

The Energy Executives were terrified that the Europeans might switch from pegging oil at the dollar and go to the Euro. This could ruin the fortunes of bloated plutocrats...a terrible situation indeed. They decided to launch an offensive and secure their positions.

All of this coincided with the goals of neo-cons and military-industrialists. The strategy was to seize oil from the rag-heads, because U.S. oil somehow got under their sand. They also decided to seize large tracts of land for permanent bases where they could house permanent numbers of soldiers with the latest and most murderous equipment to launch an invasion against any one of the A-rab states that had oil...except for Saudi Arabia where the President’s family had long secure connections and could get all the oil he wanted, at a profitable accord.

Next, they would build a huge embassy with thousands of sycophants, all bullies coached by another irascible fellow, (Rove, Wolfowitz, Rummy, Morton, etc.) all gung-ho for threatening preemptive actions, and take control of the entire Middle East. Then they would all (the several thousand co-conspirators) live happily ever after, going from country to country, creating new regimes at will, brandishing flags and crosses and talking about their “brave boys.” All True Believers would chant Hallelujahs, militarists would pin on medals, executives would wallow in wealth, and neo-cons would rule the world.

A young Muslim was offended at the high-handed tactics of the young president, and his daddy, and wanted the U.S. out of Muslim lands. But the President refused to accept any responsibility for anything that has ever transpired since the Creation, gave him the finger, sloughed him off, denigrated him, and in effect told him to shove it where the sun don’t shine.

9/11 we now know should not have been a surprise, but the shallow callow young president was on one of his interminable vacations paying attention only to the fine art of brush cutting. Then a team assembled by the young Muslim showed how offended he really was and that he demanded some attention to his problems.

The President was reading a children’s book during the Twin Towers disaster, promptly took refuge in the nearest bunker, as did the Vice President, then he took full credit for doing something heroic and has mentioned the 9/11 disaster about a thousand times since..always telling people he would protect them, but never specifying how, except for using duct tape and pretty color symbols to let people know when they should feel absolute terror and when they should go shopping. He was a master exploiter of religion, patriotism, politics, economy, environment, and anything else he could clutch his hands on.

In order to catch the young Muslim who arranged the 9/11 disaster the President sent troops to a foreign country to destroy the training camps, and in the process seize control of the foreign country for his own purposes. In the process he let the young Muslim escape.

Then, because he was authorized by the Supreme God of the Universe to judge EVIL, he declared that a completely different Muslim was responsible for all the EVIL in the Middle East. He told the Muslim to get out of office, or take the consequences of being stubborn. The Muslim leader told the President to jump into the Euphrates River.

Whereupon the President accused him of having pilotless planes to drop nuclear bombs on Crawford, Texas, or vicinity, definitely launch bacterial warfare which would be very unhealthy for the poor children of Brooklyn, or even launch enough gas to kill all the fish in the Hudson River. He also was accused of seeking aluminum tubes, and using yellow cake, biological labs, and demagogic rhetoric.

The entire sycophant cabinet of the President appeared on TV, and Radio and wherever they could get in a word, danced their war dances, rattled sabers, threatened death and destruction, and otherwise behaved like normal Americans do. Even a respected Military leader obeyed the will of his master and launched phony charges to request urgent military action.

The Muslim denied all EVIL intentions, denied all WMD’s, denied wanting to nuke Crawford, and had the temerity to bring up previous business arrangements of the Presidential family in regard to guns, ammo, poison gas, and other profitable niceties.

So the President, in effect, said “I’ve got planes, bombs, missiles, lots of troops, humvees, great big tanks and lot and lots of automatic weapons, night vision equipment, and I’m going to bomb and strafe you rag-head Muslims back before you got civilized. I’m going to shock and awe you till you can’t tell up from down. I’m going to destroy your homes, your factories, your roads and bridges, your mosques, palaces, markets and anything else that pleases me. You can’t do a damn thing about it.”

“And if you even try to come over to my country to do anything to us, oh boy we will wipe up the earth with you. Just try it, you infidel bastards. If you think the Crusades were rough on you, let me tell you that was just like a walk in the park. We will absolutely destroy you and your silly religion. Just try attacking us, you bastards, bring it on. Nyah, Nyah!”

“And by the way, our oil is under your sand. It belongs to us and we’re gonna take it. And we’re gonna make you take it outta the ground and put it into our ships for our use. And we’re gonna take any land that looks good to us and build great big bases there that’ll shut you up permanently, with all your stupid A-rab friends. And we’re gonna run whatever factories we can get running and let you work for us below minimum wage because you bastards are inferior humans, sub-humans, and you’re lucky that we let you live, you creeps. Not only that, but you tried to kill my daddy and you tried to look up Condi’s dress, so you gotta die.”

So the President invaded the Muslim’s country, found no WMD’s but confirmed his religious judgment of EVIL which made it all worth while. He then set up a puppet regime, gave it sovereignty so they could do anything he told them to do. He found he couldn’t leave because by killing Muslims THERE, they wouldn’t come over HERE.

He also decided on the genial strategy of staying a failed course by emitting press reports, by fake reporters, that everything was going well and that soon, in a few days, months, years, he would win the peace and spread democracy and liberty via cruise missiles over the entire Middle East, maybe North Korea too.

So he had his pictures taken in front of waving flags, lots of flags, tons of flags, flag fluttering over his car, his house, his ranch, his horse. He frequently referred to his “brave boys” and told the public that any criticism of him would put the lives of his “brave boys” in danger. When the flag waving stopped, he brandished crosses, had public prayer, emitted executive orders for National Day of Prayer or Bible Reading, while insisting that he never intrudes his beliefs on anyone, except possibly to modify the constitution at the request of Jerry Falwell.

That was hardly a Horatio Alger story, nor a Frank Merriwell tale, but is worthy of a Rudyard Kipling just-so tale of HOW ROAST PORK WAS INVENTED. And so the callow shallow impetuous impatient irresponsible person, who refuses to acknowledge any mistake, any error, or issue any apology to anyone at anytime, who feels no remorse but has speechwriter do it for him, will fade into the sunset, with his purple imperial monkey pants, while he swaggers on a two-bit ranch feeling the hardship of his assigned task, but declares “it was all worth it.”

Posterity is likely to be very harsh with him, or perhaps sweet Oblivion may reign. Whatever!

Truly, “All Hat, and No Cattle.”