Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Halloween in July: Scaring Kids and Voters

By Kurt Nimmo

Big deal. So a right-wing christer appointed by Bush to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission says he wants “guidelines” to postpone the election if Osama pulls off a terrorist attack because he hates our freedom. Our freedom—some call it a duty—is to vote every four years for a few rich and mostly white guys who dress and talk like each other and call themselves Congress and the Executive branch of the United States Government.

I don’t necessarily see how postponing this charade would be a bad thing. Or put differently I don’t see how it would make a lick of difference. If Bush puts a kibosh to the election because a former CIA agent in Afghanistan or Pakistan threatens to blow up Washington—or New York or Baltimore—it will be business as usual the same as it would be under the “leadership” of the other rich white guy who says pretty much the same thing and has pretty much the same policies.

Around fifty percent or more of us wouldn’t care anyway because we don’t vote. Elections are, like, boring, and besides nothing you do will change anything, dude. Now, if you don’t mind, can we turn on the Sopranos?

If on the other hand they were to postpone or cancel the Super Bowl or Everybody Loves Raymond or CSI there would be a lot of pissed off people in this country ready to march in the streets. Call it a Freedom to Watch TV movement.

If Osama really wanted to hurt the American people he would bomb ABC, CBS, NBC, Home Box Office, Showtime, Warner Brothers, Comedy Channel, Fox Entertainment Group, etc. He wouldn’t bomb Washington or kill people as they line up outside the local middle school or senior citizen center waiting to cast their vote for Tweedle Kerry, Tweedle Bush, and Senator Trial Lawyer or Representative Bug Exterminator.

If you take a deep breath you can smell Karl Rove all over this cancelled election scam. Karl and his dirty tricksters know Americans are scared silly over terrorism and the prospect of Freddie Kruger Osama bombing the local gymnasium and its Republican-owned touchscreen voting computers just may make them stay away on Election Day.

Pulling off a Halloween booga-booga turr’ism scare on the American voter would leave Bush’s core to tip the balance—most notably the whacked out end-timers who don’t mind the idea of dying so long as they believe it is Jesus calling them to the Rapture. Diehard Bushites would also rush in to fill the vacuum because a lot of them are far less lily-livered than Democrats. Plus they are driven by a visceral hatred of Tweedle Kerry and the Democrats who they consider Osama appeasers. Rush told them so.

So close is the “race” between the dress-alike Tweedles that it would only take a few million votes to get Bush back in there for another four years.

In other words, the election does not need to be cancelled.

Karl knows that if you scare off enough Democrats and Bush haters on Election Day Dubya can pull the election out of his hat. Diebold voting machines and striking a few hundred thousand “felon” Democrats from the voting rolls can’t hurt either.

Of course it does not hurt to have “guidelines” in place for canceling the election just in case Bush’s ratings go down even more between now and November. It also helps to have CIA-trained “sleeper cells” ready to do something terrible in October. Karl Rove and the Bushcons know it’s a good idea to have options available—and the best option is to not actually do anything except put on a white sheet and go wooooooo-wooooooh. Kids and voters are so easy to scare.

Meanwhile Condi can safely poo-poo the idea of a cancelled election. She knows it will not happen—not unless absolutely necessary—and the idea of terrorism at the polling places is enough to get her boss back in there for another four years of interminable neocon madness and perpetual war. Condi and Ashcroft and Karl and Wolfie and Scooter and all of the Bushites are laughing and slapping high fives. Stoopid Americans, they snigger. So easy to scare. Booga-booga.

Look at them run!

Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He is the author of Another Day in the Empire: Life in Neoconservative America, a collection of essays published by Dandelion Books. Visit his weblog at KurtNimmo.com.

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