Guest Commentary
Welcome to Wonderland!
by the bushoccupation.com staff

Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2001 (bushoccupation.com via APJP) -- You are now leaving the United States of America.

Welcome to Wonderland.

You haven't gone insane. Yes, we had a coup. The mainstream media is telling you we didn't, and the democratic Senators refused to do anything about it. It was still a coup. The Republicans now control all three branches of government.  This was how they seized power: by destroying the institution of the supreme court.

They feel God is on their side. This makes them dangerous. This makes them lawless. This makes them, perversely, completely immoral. They will destroy any institution -- in order to preserve it. As Oliver North spit in the face of Congress to preserve 'democracy', so too the current Republican party will discard votes to protect the validity of their election.

Because they care only about one thing. Winning. And they are willing to win, by any means necessary.

Remember Willie Horton. Remember arms for hostages. Remember the tax cut for all Americans that will benefit only the wealthiest five percent. Remember Bush's cousin calling Florida for Bush at Fox. Remember the lies about Gore. Remember the free ride for Bush.

They want to enrage us. The text of the supreme court decision was designed to make us incoherent with rage. They used the equal protection clause to disenfranchise black voters, as a kind of sick joke. They are laughing at us. They are sticking their fingers in our eyes. They are paying us back for the last 20 years of progress.

They want us to be shrill. So they can marginalize our response. The only way they can pretend this is business as usual, politics as usual, is to engender hysteria on our part, and then laugh it away.

This coup isn't politics as usual. It requires a different kind of response. 

Our anger is real. It is justified. We must not let it fade away. The media wants us to go back to sleep. The congressional Democrats are playing a long-term game, laying low, giving this idiot enough rope to hang himself. 

They can play their game -- but we must also play ours.

Let them take the high road. Let us use our anger. Not in petty, or small, or hateful ways, but in sincere expressions of pain, anger, and sober, reasoned, rage.

We have a right to demand their apology. When they refuse, we have the right to call them what they are.

Racists. Women-killers. Wealthy elitists. We must play the race card -- it's one of the few cards they haven't' stolen from the deck. We must engage in what they call 'class warfare' -- and talk about social justice. The game has changed. We're fighting for our lives and our country.

Their code words don't define us. They don't get to tell us when to heal. They don't get to tell us when we stop hurting. Ultimately, they don't respect us. They think we are wimps, that our morality is situational, that we go along to get along, that we will compromise with them every time they scream at us, shut down the government, dredge up scandals, call us godless scum.

We will stand our ground. Today, we stop giving them the inch. Today, we ignore their scandals. We will focus the spotlight on their scandals. We will use the tools that they have created to bring them down. There will be time to elevate the dialog when we have retaken two out of three branches of government--and not one second before.

We must employ their own devices against them. We are the real Americans now. We are the ones who count votes. We are the ones who represent the middle class. We are the ones with principles not fabricated on the spot to advance our cause. We are for fiscal responsibility. We are the ones who wanted to censure Clinton and move on, so that government could do its job. We are the ones who knew the government shut down was insanity

And you know what? The people are on our side. They elected Al Gore, after all.

So we cannot give in to despair. 

Because now, for the first time in a long time, it is very obvious -- to anyone whose heart isn't encased in ideological cement -- that God is on our side. We must match them verse for Biblical verse. We must react to their rage with our rage. We must fight this fight within the rules of the game as it is now played.

We cannot reward them for cheating. Because we know they will do it again if they get away with it. They want to use their tax cut to fund the next campaign against us. We can't let them do it. We can't let the coup become self-sustaining and permanent.

And you know the funny thing? They will respect us more the harder we fight back. I've seen it in their eyes.

And I've seen fear, too.  Because they know what they are capable of. They remember the Oklahoma City bombing, of course. They remember clinic bombings and the lynching and the gay bashing and shooting the doctors to death in front of their families -- these incidents they say are 'regrettable -- but understandable.' They understand rage.

When they see our rage, they have to wonder, how far will we go?

We have the people on our side -- and we don't murder, engage in domestic terrorism, or otherwise break criminal law to win the day -- but let them wonder. 

It will do them good.

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