My response to the latest distraction tactic from the Right Wing fanatics: "Wake Up Americans"

by Bruce Monson, Summer, 2003

 

Unless you are one of the stalwarts still conducting your correspondence via the snail mail method you will probably know what I'm talking about when I say that every week or so someone (or perhaps multiple someones) will see the need to demonstrate their "patriotic duty" by including your email address among the multiple dozens of others on their "mass mailing" lists, and treating you to the latest God-inspired evidence for the moral decay of society (of which your heathen ways are no doubt a major contributor...), or another four legs good, two legs bad diatribe showing how great the Republicans are and how bad everything non-Republican is.  

One recent one that seems to be popular among the missionizers is titled, Wake Up Americans.  It's presented as a letter to "Bill & Hillary," but as I explain in my response, the real point of the production is to distract people from the shenanigans going on in Washington by the current administration.   Like most of these types of propaganda, it was written anonymously with a heavy emphasis on emotional tirades and sensationalism, and conveniently selective about history and current events.

Here is the "letter" as I received it:

Bill &Hillary:
Worse than you thought & worth remembering and this came from a Democrat

Dear Mr.  Ex President Clinton:

I recently saw a bumper sticker that said, "Thank me, I voted for Clinton-Gore." So, I sat down and reflected on that, and I am sending my "Thank you" for what you have done, specifically:

1.  Thank you for introducing us to Jennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Dolly Kyle Browning, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broderick.  Did I leave anyone out?

2.  Thank you for teaching my 8 year old about oral sex.  I had really planned to wait until he was a little older to discuss it with him, but now he knows more about it than I did as a senior in college.

3.  Thank you for showing us that sexual harassment in the work place (especially the White House) and on the job is OK, and all you have to know is what the meaning of "is"
is.  It really is great to know that certain sexual acts are not sex, and one person may have sex while the other one does NOT have sex.

4.  Thank you for reintroducing the concept of impeachment to a new generation and demonstrating that the ridiculous plot of the movie "Wag the Dog" could be plausible after all.

5.  Thanks for making Jimmy Carter look competent, Gerald Ford look graceful, Richard Nixon look honest, Lyndon Johnson look truthful, and John Kennedy look moral.

6.  Thank you for the 73 House and Senate witnesses who have pled the 5th Amendment and 17 witnesses who have fled the country to avoid testifying about Democratic campaign fund raising.

7.  Thank you, for the 19 charges, 8 convictions, and 4 imprisonment's from the Whitewater "mess" and the 55 criminal charges and 32 criminal convictions (so far) in the other "Clinton" scandals.

8.  Thanks also for reducing our military by half, "gutting" much of our foreign policy, and flying all over the world on "vacations" carefully disguised as necessary trips.

9 Thank you, also, for "finding" millions of dollars (I really didn't need it in the first place, and I can't think of a more deserving group of recipients for my hard-earned tax dollars)
for all of your globe-trotting.  I understand you, the family and your cronies have logged in more time aboard Air Force One than any other administration.

10.  Now that you've left the White House, thanks for the 140 pardons of convicted felons and indicted felons-in-exile.  We will love to have them rejoin society.  (Not to mention the scores you pardoned while Governor of Arkansas)

11.  Thanks also for removing the White House silverware.  I'm sure that Laura Bush didn't like the pattern anyway.  Also, enjoy the housewarming gifts you've received from your "friends."

12.  Thanks to you and your staff in the West Wing of the White House for vandalizing and destroying government property on the way out.  I also appreciate removing all of that excess weight (China, silverware, linen, towels, ash trays, soap, pens, magnetic compass, flight manuals, etc.) out of Air Force 1.  The weight savings means burning less fuel, thus less tax dollars spent on jet fuel.  Thank you!

13.  And finally, please ensure that Hillary enjoys the $8 million dollar advance for her upcoming "tell-all" book and you, Bill, the $10 million advance for your memoirs.  Who says crime doesn't pay!

14.  The last and most important point - thank you for forcing Israel to let Mohammed Atta go free.  Terrorist pilot Mohammed Atta blew up a bus in Israel in 1986.  The Israelis captured, tried and imprisoned him.  As part of the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians in 1993, Israel had to agree to release so-called "political prisoners".  However, the Israelis would not release any with blood on their hands.  The American President at the time, Bill Clinton, and his Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, "insisted" that all prisoners be released.  Thus Mohammed Atta was freed and eventually thanked the US by flying an airplane into Tower One of the World Trade Center.  This was reported by many of the American TV networks at the time that the terrorists were first identified.  It was censored in the US from all later reports.  Why shouldn't Americans know the real truth?

What a guy!!

If you agree that the American public must be made aware of these facts, pass this on.
God bless America and THANK YOU (once again) for spending my taxes so wisely and frugally.

SINCERELY,
A US Citizen
PS.
Please pass along a special thank you to Al Gore for "inventing" the Internet, without which I would not be able to send this wonderful, factual e-mail.

AND THE REST OF THE STORY Hillary Rodham Clinton, as a New York State Senator, now comes under the "Congressional Retirement and Staffing Plan," which means that even if she never gets reelected, she STILL receives her Congressional salary until she dies.  (Would it not be nice if all Americans were pension eligible after only 4 years?)

If Bill outlives her, he then inherits HER salary until HE dies.  He is already getting his Presidential salary until he dies.  If Hillary outlives Bill, she also gets HIS salary until she dies.  Guess who pays for that?

WE DO!

It's common knowledge that in order for her to establish NY residency, they purchased a million dollar-plus house in upscale Chappaqua, New York.  Makes sense.  They are entitled to Secret Service protection for life.  Still makes sense.

Here is where it becomes interesting.  Their mortgage payments hover at around $10,000 per month.  BUT, an extra residence HAD to be built within the acreage to house the Secret Service agents.

The Clintons charge the Federal government $10,000 monthly rent for the use of that extra residence, which is just about equal to their mortgage payment.  This means that we, the taxpayers, are paying the Clinton's salary, mortgage, transportation, safety and security, as well as the salaries for their 12 man staff -- and, this is all perfectly legal!

When she runs for President, will you vote for her?

WAKE UP AMERICANS and take Charge of your own country!

 

As I read the Clinton-bashing tirade (and, no, I most certainly was not and am not a Clinton fan) there were three questions that kept popping into my head:

The first question was (and it's a long one), with so much death (including many thousands of innocent civilians and more than 200 U.S. soldiers, and counting...), destruction and destabilization occurring in the world today; with world opinion having gone from near universal pro-American support and sympathy to near universal anti-American defiance and fear of imperialistic warmongering within the space of only two years following 9/11; with our civil liberties being systematically chopped away to the point that by the word of just ONE man ANY American citizen may be arrested, searched and detained without cause and held INDEFINITELY, without council, without family contact, without charges, without a trial before a jury of his peers, and may even be stripped of citizenship and deported (It’s happening as we speak, and we have the gall to talk about Cuba?); with the FCC deregulating communications controls even more, thus allowing the few mega corporations that currently own most of the television, radio and mainstream newspapers to control EVEN MORE, thus further undermining the ability of dissenting views to be heard (and this includes supposedly "public broadcasting" like PBS and NPR which are also being targeted, not to mention the efforts currently underway to regulate content and pricing for internet service providers); with our economy in the tank, and getting worse, and all while the large corporations are enjoying massive "tax breaks" in a time when the defense budget is now greater than that of the rest of the industrialized world combined, and our deficit has gone from a "balanced budget" only three years ago to a projected ONE-TRILLION DOLLAR increase!; with Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block "to do" list for the Bush administration (watch for this in the NEXT term, if Bush wins. That is how they will try to "resolve" the "deficit crisis," by privatizing these Federal programs); with tens of thousands of Americans losing their jobs, salaries, benefits and 401K's through "cutbacks" and recession; with health care and prescription costs continuing to climb while medical coverage is being siphoned away, including ironically enough the medical coverage for retired veterans; with all of these issues and dozens of others I have not mentioned, I am really wondering WHY this person would be generating a chain-letter whose purpose is to presumably "wake up Americans" by directing focus toward Clinton and the past rather than Bush and the present? Indeed, with the next presidential elections on the horizon why would Clinton even be an issue at all, especially considering that he wasn't even part of the LAST election? Hmmmmm, we’ll get back to that later.

The second question was, why would this person actually go so far as to implicate Clinton for 9/11 ("thank you for forcing Israel to let Mohammed Atta go free"—Aside from the red herring imagery suggesting that Clinton all but demanded Atta’s release himself, which is silly, he also displays an appalling ignorance about what the "OSLO Agreement" actually did.), but conveniently stops short of casting critical inquiry toward the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations for their multi-billion-dollar escapades of funding, arming and training of these same "terrorist groups" in Afghanistan during the 1980's, the same "freedom fighters" (as we referred to them at that time) that produced Osama bin Laden and Co. that would later "fly jets into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11"?

The third question was why we should continue to relive the Lewinsky scandal? Shall we really believe that this anonymous "U.S. Citizen’s" son was traumatized and morally scarred because "oral sex" was mentioned? I wonder why it is that "oral sex" (which is perfectly legal and as far as I know hasn't killed anyone--except for maybe heart failure during the act in the case of those with heart disease) performed on a FORMER president should command such ongoing attention five years later, but the fact that our CURRENT president is an alcoholic and a felon with THREE ARRESTS on his record, one for DUI (oral sex may be legal, but drinking and driving most assuredly is not), theft and disorderly conduct, should somehow get swept under the carpet, right along with Bush's two underage daughters being "detained" (that’s code for arrested) TWICE for alcohol possession, and Dick Cheney's TWO drunk-driving arrests? Why is that?

If this is really all about the transgressions of former president Bill Clinton, then why dilly-dally around with Monica-gate? After all, we can talk morals till cows fly, but at the end of the day the fact will still remain that a blow-job in the Oval Office (or is that "Oral Orifice") somehow pales in comparison to images of U.S. soldiers coming home to grieving families in flag-draped coffins, and thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians cut to ribbons by our glorious "shock and awe" weaponry. Or as Marueen Farrell brilliantly puts it in her excellent and extensively researched article, THE ATTACK HAS BEEN SPECTACULAR,

"Given that thousands of Iraqis and more than 200 Americans have already lost their lives (even as US soldiers are ambushed and murdered daily) and that the illegal occupation of Iraq is expected to last somewhere between 5 and 60 years, weighing the consequential trauma of Monica's soiled blue dress against the long-term consequences of Bush Doctrine-related fabrications is like wondering if Martha Stewart is as criminally diabolical as John Wayne Gacy."

Note: It would be well worth your time to read this article in its entirety.

Still, I would agree that Clinton is not innocent. So why not focus instead on some of the truly serious meat on him? Examples are certainly not lacking that would warrant Clinton and many in his administration being held accountable for acts of state terrorism and war crimes, that is had they been done as leaders of countries that do not have the military clout to exempt themselves from international war crimes tribunals. The bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan with 12 Tomahawk missiles immediately comes to mind. That one factory supplied 90 percent of the medications used to treat most deadly diseases in this desperately poor country. The civilian toll has been devastating. Try to image the impact on this country if all of our pharmaceutical companies were suddenly destroyed by hostile missiles in a single day! Aside from the outrage at being attacked, we would also have dialogues likes this: Sorry Mrs. Jones, but little Sarah is just going to have to power-through that bacterial meningitis because we have no antibiotics to give her...

Ironically, just as the failed "intelligence" that has the current administration fumbling over itself trying to locate those devastating WMDs that Hussein supposedly could have deployed against us "at 45 minutes notice" (and which we knew "where they [were] located"), we were also "certain" that this factory in the Sudan was producing "chemical weapons." Turns out we were wrong. Oops. Sorry. As a consequence of our "mistake" we are going to further subject you to a freeze on 24 million dollars of your assets while we figure out how to doctor this incident up to make us look like the good guys! Other examples under Clinton would be our less than kosher activities in Haiti and Somalia, among several others.

So why won’t you see such examples examined and acted upon? Well, because to open such a can of worms would also open the door to the FAR WORSE examples of state terrorism and war crimes performed under the direction of many previous and current president(s) along with persons within their administrations! People like Nixon, Kennedy & Johnson (if they were alive), Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr., Dick Cheney, just for starters. Clinton would apply, and Bush Jr. most certainly applies, given his blatant disregard for international law and imperialism resulting in thousands of dead civilians.

In fact, there are multiple dozens of examples of despicable operations our government has directed or been directly involved in that other "war criminals" and "terrorists" have similarly done and been condemned and convicted for by the World Court and other tribunals, but because the U.S. calls the World Court a "hostile forum" whenever the topic of U.S. atrocities come up, we just continue on with the behavior with an above the law arrogance. Even today this is a critical international issue, and the current Bush administration (Financial Times, 5/8/03) is refusing to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) unless its citizens are "exempt" from war crimes prosecutions by that court! Sounds a bit like our take on nuclear nonproliferation doesn’t it? It’s okay for US to have nukes, but it’s not okay for YOU to have them.

Which brings us back where we started, asking what possible motivation could our anonymous friend have for not only his focus on Clinton, but selective focus on Clinton, while simultaneously leaving disturbing questions about the incumbent safely tucked away?

The answer to these questions is very simple--DISTRACTION! With the 2004 election campaign already underway, the one thing the Republican contingent does not want people doing is looking at the ACTUAL record of the Bush administration, and just how badly things have gotten under its tenure; and further, how much worse it looks for the future under the foreign and domestic policies it has thus far imposed. But as long as you can keep people talking about nonsense like Monica Lewinsky and not talking about the things that are profoundly affecting the quality of their lives today as well as their future and their children's’ future, it will already be too late when they actually do "Wake up" to discover that they had been caught looking the wrong way when they were hood-winked.

Bruce Monson

www.freethoughtfirefighters.org

Adherence to Life BEFORE Death