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Friday, October 29, 2004

Billmon's back, and so is Bin Laden 

The spinners are spinning the latest tape from Bin Laden, it's three days until the election, I'm having an outbreak of paranoia like a bad Herpes virus, and Billmon apparently has found the next whiskey bar, because he's back:
http://www.billmon.org/

"If anyone had any doubts about which candidate al-Qaeda prefers in this election, I think you can put them to rest now. This tape -- coming hard on the heels of "Azzam the American" -- is obviously designed to have U.S. voters as obsessively worried about the terrorist threat as possible when they go into the voting booth next Tuesday. Osama, like Bush, understands the electoral value of zapping the deeper reptilian centers of the brain. Call it hypothalamus politics. Or, as one member of the media idiot chorus cheerfully told CNN a few days ago: "Fear works."

In a way, this move is even smarter than an actual terrorist attack on American soil -- which al-Qaeda might not have been able to pull off anyway. A real attack would have been an unpredictable gamble. It might have given Bush a huge boost, but it's at least conceivable it would have had the opposite effect, by underscoring the hollowness of the endlessly repeated Republican claim that our cowboy-in-chief has made us all safer.

Osama's video bomb, on the other hand, is a brilliant example of "virtual" terrorism. It's perfectly designed to keep the media tape loop spinning from now until next Tuesday, with minimal risk of a backlash. It not only wipes the missing explosives story off the map (that is, until they do the same to some unsuspecting Americans) it also allows the GOP to turn every remaining campaign event into a bin Laden hate rally. It is, in short, the definitive October surprise."

I agree with Billmon that the release of this tape is designed to affect the American election, but I'm not sure yet just which way the intended effect, Bush or Kerry? Americans are not the Spanish people; the threat of terrorism is likely to steer Americans towards fascism, not away from it. And yet, whose to say this won't drive Kerry into a more hardline point of view on the world scene, and encourage the growth of fascism within his administration, if he is elected?

I had the worse nightmare last night, and with this event coming on the heels of my dream, I have to admit to being a bit freaked. My dream went like this:

I was with a liberal, politically minded co-worker. We were outside, and the wind began to howl like a hurricane. We both said, "Oh no." A large dark hand emerged from the wind and moved as if to swat me. I went inside where I watched from the window, feeling scared and queasy. On a bookshelf in my home was a helmut with a nazi insignia on it, and a jar of cream, I think facial cream. I thought at some point that I might be called to expose my life for some reason. As I watched from the window, a long limousine drove up and parked outside...a beautiful woman in high heels stepped out of the limosine; I felt she was from the other side, beyond death. She reached into my home and took the facial cream off of the bookshelf and took it with her. It was then I noticed there were dummies in the shape of female heads in her limousine with wigs sitting on them.

My interpretation: fascism will rise in the U.S., and I will be called to go underground, in disguise, to fight it. Fuck. This sucks big donkey dicks.

Billmon didn't "want to go there", but I will, and say the globalization forces are making their presence felt through Bin Laden and are attempting to push this election in a certain direction, only, I'm not sure yet in which direction. Suffice it to say though, that you can just about count on some sort of terrorist attack on our soil in the near future. "They" aren't done yet. "They" are only beginning.

Whose to say what a terrorist attack on our soil would do to a Kerry administration? Nudge him towards fascism as well? Quite possibly. Do I feel a draft?

Kerry has threatened tougher action on the beleaguered city of Falluja. I think he has every intention of continuing this war and possibly expanding it; why wouldn't he crack down on American citizens if he felt it necessary to consolidate his power? I'm remembering an old axiom, or is it a new one: trust no one in power...

Meet the new boss...same as the old boss???