Welcome to the Warnacular
By Laura Flanders -

We were still reeling from the Bush lexicon. Now here comes
the Warnacular. In less than a week, many familiar terms
have taken on new meanings. Here's a partial list:

The United States = "America"

America = "the Civilized World."

An attack on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon has
become an attack on the American "way of life."

Anyone who hates America hates freedom and democracy. Why
might someone be motivated to carry out last week's attacks?
"Obviously he's filled with hate for the United States and
for everything we stand for... freedom and democracy," Vice
President Dick Cheney told Tim Russert on Sunday's "Meet The
Press." He went on, "It must have something to do with his
background, his own upbringing." Nothing to do with
U.S. policy. Cheney wants us to believe that parents are to
blame.

Speaking of democracy. Democracy, these days =
Bipartisanship. What does bipartisanship mean? Why,
Democrats agree to everything Republicans want, of
course. It's unanimous when the vote is 420 to 1 and that
one is a an African-American female from the peacenik Bay
Area.

Allies are states that support the U.S. president no matter
how unilaterally he acts. Will critics of the U.S.A. be
called racist or anti-Semitic?  Probably that comes
next. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

The biggest news this week is that patriotism has become
holding on to, or better yet, buying stock. Anyone who sells
on New York's newly reopened trading floor, is "betting
against America," says Richard Grasso, chairman of the New
York Stock Exchange and a chorus of newly dubbed "civic
leaders" (which is to say brokers and corporate executives,
Warren Buffett et al.,) agree.

What will make us safer? Security comes from permitting the
FBI into our phone conversations and releasing the CIA to
work with "unsavory characters," yeah, even human rights
abusers and possibly terrorists.  It's worked so well in the
past. For safety's sake, the U.S. must "not rule out", as
John McCain of the Senate Armed Services Committee put it,
the possibility of using nuclear weapons against any country
at any time.

If we the people let it happen, "War Powers" will become the
power to get the media to declare that we are in a
war. Grief will have become a cry for killing.

Normalcy (which has entirely replaced normality for some
reason) will be all we long for. And Normalcy, it seems, is
to carry on doing exactly what we did before. Exactly what
got us here.

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