I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight (3 page)

The Bush administration will be sorry they won this battle, for they now look forward to losing the war. Ultimately, a government cannot defeat its people, no matter how much power they assume or how corrupt they are. For us, there is only opportunity. Now we have the chance to challenge everything, fight everything. The possibilities
are endless. All the polls, all the posturing, all the opinions that we endured during the election provide us with a valuable education on how we think and act as a country.

There are a huge number of us on the same side. We had no idea how many of us there were before. We constitute roughly half of the nation, probably more. If we refuse to concede to apathy, then we can roll up our sleeves and get dirty.

And the Republicans don't know how much fun we can have being nasty.

Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think. It is vital to mourn for the victims of this government, but not at the expense of losing our sense of humor. Our ability to laugh coincides directly with our ability to fight. If we can make fun of it, we can transcend it.

With many lives at stake in a full-blown war being fought by our kids in Iraq; with cataclysmic errors in national security causing our civil liberties to be severely crippled; with too great a divide between the haves and the have-nots, culminating in the worst economic situation in nearly eight decades; with the threat to women's rights by insane religious fanatics who seek to ban abortion and therefore do away with equality; with the aberration of freedom that is the Federal Marriage Amendment and the dehumanization of gay and lesbian Americans; attacks on Social Security . . . If we can make fun of it, we can transcend it.

Unfortunately for the Republicans, this is not an action film, and therefore having the Terminator on your side is no advantage. Might
does not equal right, just as we must wake up to the hard, cold realization that the majority should not be allowed to rule simply because it is the majority. The majority is responsible for slavery, segregation, lynching, denying women and minorities the vote, Japanese internment and a million other injustices and inhumanities. Fortunately, this majority holds power by a very small margin. There are certain things the majority has no right to mess with, certain things that are definitely worth fighting for—worth defending, and worth offending.

If we just don't allow ourselves to sit back and let the only-just-barely majority rule, then we have the advantage. Everything they try to do can be shot down, because we are watching. We are everywhere, and we know that now. It's an exciting time, and I have to say I'm thrilled at the possibilities, because now what is in front of us is the big show where the Bush administration goes down, Bangkok style, on their constituency and on themselves.

So whatever warrior rituals you might have, I suggest that you do them. Whether it is carbo loading or drinking down a dozen raw eggs, putting on war paint or applying your reddest lipstick, drawing pictures of Republicans on the walls of your cave and stabbing them with your spear, dressing yourself up in animal skins and taking lots of hallucinogens, listening to AC/DC or Public Enemy or Heart cranked up so loud it distorts, come on! "BARRACUDA!!!!!"

Do whatever it takes to get your war on. We need soldiers to fight the war at home. We gotta represent our 'hood, where justice, peace, equality and freedom live.

We have a date to rumble with stupidity, ignorance, prejudice,
laziness, hatred and greed. Victory is sweet, but revenge is sweeter, and we will know both sooner than we think.

I am tired of holding out for a hero. I believe that as a generation that has yet to claim this as our nation, just by being ourselves and demanding what we want we can be profoundly heroic. In those fateful words that fake American hero George W. Bush stole from real American hero Todd Beamer to justify the abominable Iraq war, "Let's roll!"

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

"my attitude toward peace does
not depend on which war we are
discussing. i think that words
should do the work of bombs."

M
y attitude toward peace
does not depend on which war we are discussing. I think that words should do the work of bombs. Killing only begets more killing. At some point, one side has to be the bigger one, and just turn around and go home. It's surrender, but it isn't the coward's way out. And if it is, who gives a shit? I'm a coward, then. But, fuck, I'm still alive. I can still use my legs, and get the fuck out of here.

My Korean heritage doesn't sway me one bit. I'm not even sure where the Korean Peninsula is, or why there was a war there, or what side we were on or why my ancestry should have anything to do with my belief system today. I am
super
American. I've even got a flag. I sleep wrapped up in it,
The Who
—
The Kids Are Alright
style. I love America. I'm not moving. It's cool. I just don't like seeing dead people. I'm just like that kid in
The Sixth Sense
. I see dead people, and I don't like it.

Get this crazy shit over with. Stop the fantasy that we need to be defending freedom, because we don't even have freedom in our own country yet.

What right do we have to appoint ourselves the freedom fighters of the world? If we are so good at it, where's it at? I don't see no gay people getting married. I don't see no innocent people in jail getting released. I don't see no freedom of speech, nor do I see health care reform, let alone equal rights for anyone. All I see—that's right—is dead people, and ads for Viagra, Cialis, Levitra and Enzyte.

So many drugs for those unable to get it up, and keep it up. I am superglad about your four-hour erection, but I was wondering, where is that cure for AIDS? Yeah, AIDS. Remember that? We were kind of needing a cure, like, really, about more than twenty years ago. All this research money has been spent on keeping Bob Dole going like the Energizer Bunny. How's this helping us with the problem of entirely too many dead people, and that we are making more of them every day?

And our government, who we are bound to by the fact that we elected them, does not seem to care one bit. They are unfazed by any amount of travesty, loss, tragedy, death, destruction. They call these acts "abhorrent," but have yet to find the words to apologize. I know that Cheney is at the White House with his thesaurus, so that George W. Bush will be able to learn himself one new word a day, to describe how bad shit is, but, really, all he needs is "sorry." Why is that so hard?

Why is all this so hard? Why do these old men need it so hard?

public enemy #1

O
kay, we got Saddam Hussein. Under the Styrofoam, beneath the rug, in a spider hole, and he came out looking like a crazy homeless man, or former president James Garfield, however you choose to see it. He was caught in what might well have been his grave, because he was really lying under ground, breathing through a tube, without high-speed Internet access or ranch dressing, knowing he's missing all those great holiday parties, knowing what hell must be like. I was watching the footage on the news channels over and over, and on and on, 'til the break of dawn, and they keep looking in his mouth, picking through his hair. He just looks like one of the patients in
Awakenings
who wouldn't wake up no matter what Robin Williams would do. Then there are the makeover pictures, before spider hole, after spider hole.

I'm fully aware of Saddam Hussein's evil reign, and I believe that his capture is righteous, in that there is a need for humanity to bring an enemy to justice and avenge a wrong, but where will this justice land us? What justice will serve us as Americans? Please know that the capture of this heinous murderer is something that I do agree was a long time coming, but the media fucking makes it look like President George "Dumb and Dubya" Bush went down into that dirty grave himself and dragged him out by that long, white, Rip van Winkle beard. It builds up Bush like Indiana DUMBFUCK Jones, and he's
not. He didn't go out there with a bullwhip and wearing a leather bomber jacket and kick anybody's ass. Bush is no hero. He didn't do shit. Shit: he didn't do it.

It was not our right to have become the world's bully and start this war in the first place. If this war truly was intended to free the people of Iraq, then it should have been started over a quarter of a century ago. If this was about saving Iraq for the emancipation of the Iraqi people, not oil, then Saddam Hussein would be a long-forgotten name. Remember the shah, anyone?

What it boils down to is this: the conservatives removed the feather from Saddam's ass and stuck it in their own dunce cap, and where does that leave us? Capture or no capture, Bush still thinks that same-sex marriage should be illegal. Bush still thinks that we need to preach abstinence to high school students instead of telling them what to do realistically about sex. Bush still thinks that the Spanish language is called "talkin' Mexican." Bush still believes that abortion is wrong, and therefore it's not the choice of the individual woman involved. His jurisdiction includes everybody and your mama's uterus. Bush still stands by the edict that even if about ten percent of the soldiers responsible for the capture of Saddam—the real heroes, the men and women at the heart of the operation—are homosexuals (more like ninety percent if lesbians were involved), he has the nerve to uphold "Don't ask, don't tell." And you
know
there were lesbians involved. The dykes do you a mean hide-and-seek, and they don't Play.

Abomination, that Bush would do this and still call himself a hero.

Bush is a liar and a thief, and uses God's name like they grew up together in the 'hood, like they got thug love. Bush still believes in the joining of church and state, which is antithetical to why this nation was born in the first place. Bush still is our own worst enemy, and now that Saddam Hussein has been captured and photographed in his big baggy underwear, that shoots Bush up the charts to Public Enemy #1.

the war on errorism

G
eorge W. Bush was once again talking about how the war in Iraqis worthwhile because, basically, we're there. Of course, we're there because of weapons of mass destruction that do not exist. And Bush is still using billions of taxpayer dollars to build himself a platform from which to say, "You know I'm right. I'm right. I'm so right. I am! I am!!!!!"

This is just another stoopid bid for attention that is digging Bush into an even bigger hole, and proving once again that he is innately, genetically incapable of admitting that he's the idiot that he is. Of course, there's the possibility that he has no idea how dumb he is, in which case we're fucked.

Unbeknownst to us, we've been sent on a suicide mission, like landing a manned rocket on the surface of the sun. He's leading a fight against terrorism, when, really, we're fighting errorism. This fool has fingered the wrong countries, the wrong people, the wrong everyone
and everything, and in so doing has risked the lives of thousands of American children. Don't you think the soldiers look like they came straight from their high school yearbooks, too young to be over in Iraq, fighting for no reason?

Bush has been so wrong-headed in every decision he has made in the Oval Office that it should be called the "Obtuse Office" because he be so dumb the room changed shape. The walls buckle further with each statement he makes, as if to try to squeeze him out of the seat of commander in chief.

The famous ghosts who haunt the White House gather in the Red Room to gossip about him night after night. Mary Todd Lincoln keeps opening up the windows, hoping that Dubya will just fall out one of them, which scares me, actually, because then Dick Cheney would be in charge, and which would you rather have, Dumb or Evil? I guess I would go with Dumb, but, you know, it's just revisiting that same old question, "Is the presidential office half full or half empty?" Dolley Madison's high-pitched wails in the White House's dark corridors are intended to upset his slumber, but, of course Dubya doesn't notice. He just snores, sawing logs all night long, because, you know, he's so stupid he probably suffers from sleep apnea and breathes with his mouth open. And JFK walks the ceilings, pacing back and forth, wondering whether the nation will ever be returned to itself.