Signs and Wonders
by Karen Kwiatkowski When the muffler fell off my 15-year-old Subaru Justy a few weeks ago, I started driving the good car to work. It has a radio. Oh, the wonderful things I am learning from Sean Hannity! For one thing, the Iraq occupation is a success. Not a blazing success, but a damn fine thing. According to Sean, we are made noble by the experience, and the Iraqis have already become passionate democrats. Just look at the demonstrations they held on the four-year anniversary of our takeover of the capital! "They couldn’t have protested like that under Saddam!" he crows. Had they done so, it is likely Saddam would have responded much as we have done. Note to self, old Saddam would scribble: Continue daily bloodshed, increase domestic intelligence collection and terror levels in targeted neighborhoods. Arrest more "terrorists" and place them in secret prisons, apply physical and psychological abuse early and often. Never let them see a lawyer, a humanitarian agency, a relative, or the inside of a courtroom, until I, and only I, say they can. Ensure courts and federal judges are completely on board. Another thing I have learned from my new friend Sean (such a Great American!) is that anyone can be an enemy of the people. Enemies of Americans, and of American Freedom are lurking just about behind every bush, er, shrub, er well, you know what I mean. Sometimes people are the enemy because of their dangerous religious beliefs, sometimes from their strange ideas and theories, and sometimes just because they are Democrats. I mean, when Congressmen Frank Wolf, Joe Pitts, and Robert Aderholt visited Damascus just a few days earlier than that Pelosi woman, and it was all good. They were – unlike Pelosi, of course – just discussing U.S. ties with Syria, and creating a healthy dialogue in a time of troubles. And I know from one of Sean’s irate but devoted female fans that Pelosi was wearing a burqa, for God’s sake! Yes, I know burqas are different from what Pelosi was wearing when she met with President al-Assad, but who freaking cares! We are in a war with the Bad Guys, for American Freedom and the Future of our Children. George W. Bush was peeved by Pelosi and nothing else matters. Listening to Sean Hannity, I now understand what is truly important. What is important is that Republicans, preferably Rudy Giuliani, maintain iron-fisted control over the state from secure facilities in Washington, D.C. This is the imperative – although I must say, after listening to Sean talk to important people and Patriotic American Citizen Callers, it seems like Hannity may be in good stead if the Republicans fall from grace. The good old days of Patriotic Talk Radio, combating the indescribable ever-present evil of the Liberal Media could be just the thing to liven up the show. Maybe I was hearing things again, but some of the callers to Sean’s show sounded remarkably the same, day after day. No matter what, Sean will fight the good fight to keep our Nation Free, no matter how many evil, flag-waving Islamo-fascists declare their intent to organize a great and powerful military, come to Washington, make us silent and invisible with the burqa, create a centralized state symbiosis with the American military-industrial complex, and exhibit obscene levels of strangely xenophobic expansionism, just like real fascism. Remember, Sean himself would be in Iraq, or maybe Afghanistan, fighting the bad guys himself, if only he could. But well, there’s his age, his wife and kids, and that nagging 15 pounds he just can’t seem to lose. And that intellect and reasoning ability! What a burden it must be, knowing as Sean does that the Army is looking for more than a few smart men. But Sean humbly fights the good fight for Republican Freedom on the airwaves. His pals Rush and Neal Boortz – older and wiser – have both seen faint change in the wind, and they realize that freedom (small "f") and its associated anti-state, anti-war libertarianism are dangerous ideas that may in fact be gaining favor, spinning power away from Washington, away from Fox News and Clear Channel Central Command. It’s helpful to know what the state is thinking, and what keeps it up at night. There is a lot from Sean Hannity about the dangerous nature of unapproved ideas, and the disruptive force of questions that challenge any state narrative. Conservative confidence in militaristic statism – iconized by Sean and others on American airwaves – seems something of a veneer, more swagger than stalwart. And that’s good news for the rest of us.
LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, has written on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for MilitaryWeek.com, hosted the call-in radio show American Forum, and blogs occasionally for Huffingtonpost.com and Liberty and Power. Archives of her American Forum radio program can be accessed here and here. To receive automatic announcements of new articles, click here. Copyright © 2007 Karen Kwiatkowski |
April
12, 2007