September 21, 2001 "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." - George W. Bush, succinctly describing the New America. Dissent will not be tolerated. You will submit and wave your flag and sing your song or you are One Of Them and we will make an example of you. Just ask Bill Maher. September 21, 2001 Since You Weren't Listening... In the growing national rush to masturbate over President Bush's speech last night, I would like to take this moment to point out some choice quotes from the address last night. Remember, speeches like this are like ads. Nothing is put into them by accident. Every word, every phrase, every nuance is calculated to achieve the desired effect. And boy, did it work. Everyone's jumping on board except for a few of us America-hating leftist cynics. Well, this column won't be illegal under the Homeland Security provisions for at least a few more weeks yet, so let's dig deep, with a cynical eye, at what Our Leader said last night. The comedy will follow. All of this was brought upon us in a single day, and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack. Rhetoric. Buildings were under attack, not freedom. But this lays the groundwork for the inevitable "we good them bad" dichotomy that is to come. But its goal is not making money. Its goal is remaking the world and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere. See, the American goal is both of these things, not just the second one. That's why we're better. And tonight the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban. Deliver to United States authorities all of the leaders of al-Qaida who hide in your land. Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens you have unjustly imprisoned. Protect foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers in your country. Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. And hand over every terrorist and every person and their support structure to appropriate authorities. Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating. These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate. The key words here are "all", "immediately", and "permanently". With this statement, Bush asks for the impossible to be completed, gives no timetable for when it is to be completed, and provides himself with the excuse he needs for whatever action he decides on. It's like your boss calling you into his office, ordering you to "bring him all the files", and telling you you'll be fired if you don't. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. In other words, it will not end. Can someone, somewhere, please explain to me how an entire nation of people, at least half of which viewed Bush as an incompetent, bumbling, privileged, drunken fool who only got into power on a fluke and Daddy's name, now suddenly think he'll be able to lead a successful campaign to eliminate terrorism from the planet? Anyone? Bueller? It may include dramatic strikes visible on TV and covert operations secret even in success. Even if it looks like we're failing, we're secretly succeeding... um, in ways we can't tell you about. You wouldn't know her. She lives in Canada. We did it at summer camp. Yeah, that's the ticket. I ask for your patience with the delays and inconveniences that may accompany tighter security and for your patience in what will be a long struggle. Pay no attention to the federal agents shoving plungers up the asses of the swarthy just on general principle. We will come together to give law enforcement the additional tools it needs to track down terror here at home. We will spy on all of you, because we want to, and that pesky probable cause kept getting in our way. The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war. And we know that God is not neutral between them. You like freedom, don't you? And justice? That's me, baby. Even God's on my side, really. Better not say anything bad about me, because after all, you don't oppose freedom, justice, and God, do you? Because then you'd be in favor of cruelty, fear, and Satan. There's the iron fist in the velvet glove, people. Ignore my commentary, even. Just focus on the quotes. They're all verbatim from the transcript. Cut and pasted. Your president said these things. Think about them. Ask yourself what they mean. Ask yourself what they -might- mean. Then ask yourself if you really want to throw your unconditional support behind this. And now, comedy. Bush Accidentally Destroys Earth Due to a misunderstanding, George W. Bush accidentally brought the combined wrath of the world's military on the planet Earth last night, resulting in its complete destruction. The world's generals were confused by Bush's repeated pronunciation of "terror" as "Terra", a product of his Texas upbringing and his limited mental capacity. Caught up in the patriotic anti-terrorism fever instilled by the last week of propaganda, military forces immediately set out to eliminate Terra, succeeding at just after 2am Eastern Standard Time last night. "Quiet Anger" Turns to Quiet Riot The nation's quiet anger turned into a quiet riot on Wednesday when Topeka, Kansas was turned into a small war zone. "It was horrible," one spectator reported. "I could feel the noize from blocks away, and when I got there, girls were rocking the boys. It was wild... wild... wild." Authorities are unsure how the "quiet anger", coined by President Bush last week after reading "Geopolitics On A Third-Grade Reading Level", turned so violent, so quickly. Current speculation is that a sympathetic reaction to the molten steel from the World Trade Center affected the brains of the people of Topeka. "It's as if the metal health drove them mad," one psychiatrist explained. Microsoft Flight Simulator Changed Out of sensitivity for the victims of the World Trade Center tragedy, Microsoft announced today it would be modifying its popular Flight Simulator program to remove all references to planes and buildings. News reports following the terrorist attacks last week demonstrated that you could, if you chose, use Flight Simulator to simulate flying a plane, and even simulate flying that plane near, and in some cases into, buildings. The new version of Flight Simulator, simply called "Advanced Simulator", removes all those unnecessary, insensitive references to planes and buildings, and instead puts a happy little fishie on the screen. Hello, fishie! You don't support international terrorism at all, you cute little fishie. The fishie is your friend. As with earlier versions of Flight Simulator, the fishie will be compatible with advanced joystick/rudder/pedal setups, however, all the sticks, buttons, levers, and pedals will do is simulate a tap on the simulated screen. After receiving complaints from people claiming that a finger crashing into the rectangular tank was too eerily similar to the plane crashing into the World Trade Center, the above feature has been removed by Microsoft between the previous paragraph and this one. In addition, since that last paragraph was written, Microsoft has received complaints that the happy little fishie, moving freely in three-dimensional space, was much too plane-like in this time of grief and sensitivity. The happy little fishie has been killed, and replaced by a lumpy rock.