Warren Pease feels life after 9/11 hasn't changed much.
He feels that having your plane hijacked by terrorists or getting anthrax in the mail remains about the same.
However he DOES feel many other things have changed and here are some of them:

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So here's a few of the things we know about American politics post-September 11.

* Bush popularity ratings hover around 90 percent, as does support for the "war against terrorism." This despite the fact that the economy's in the tank, prospects for recovery any time soon are grim, and more Americans are out of work than at any time since Bush the Elder held office.

* The federal government, by successfully positioning dissent as tantamount to treason, has reestablished lock-tight control over the behavior of ordinary American citizens. And those 1-800-snitch lines are ever so charming, recalling as they do the very essence of McCarthyism and Stalinism.

* Legislation positioned as "anti-terrorism" - that also severely curtails or eliminates most First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections, and probably those guaranteed by the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth as well - is fast-tracked through Congress and signed by a salivating resident, as John Ashcroft rubs his hands in glee and imagines a new American Inquisition designed to resolve the secular humanist question once and for all. Next week: Yellow stars for everyone with a stated religious affiliation other than First Degree Bible Thumper.

* After the $1.3 trillion tax rebate bribe, there is absolutely no money left to fund social programs, which the resident maintains is a good thing since that wastrel liberal Congress now has its hands tied and can't fund social programs. Nonetheless, $40B in war financing here, $15B in airline bailouts there, another $100B or so in tax incentives to pay off some more campaign obligations, and pretty soon we're talking real money. Which means real deficits, the resident having blown the best present an outgoing president ever left his successor, an actual budget surplus.

But that's OK; deficits are just another time-honored way to reward the rich, since the feds borrow money from the investor class in the form of T-Bills and pay the interest with tax revenue extracted from those who lack the correct set of write-offs. Therefore, deficits have become a key element in transferring wealth ever upward and, as such, comprise a cornerstone of neoconservative economic ideology, the mythology of GOP fiscal responsibility notwithstanding.

* After a decade of DOD downsizing and ambivalence about the role of the military, the US finally finds a worthy successor to the Cold War and an enemy capable of building the necessary public consensus to justify another cycle of engorged defense spending. And since DOD functions as a combination high-tech subsidy and boon to the investor class - with a jobs program thrown in to make regional constituencies happy -- it meets all the criteria for upward wealth transfer and therefore is one of the few federal programs that's exempt from the time honored cliche that you can't fix problems by throwing government money at them.

Systemic social problems like poverty, homelessness, hunger and the like apparently must fix themselves. But since the rich by definition don't suffer from these maladies or use the pathetic safety net that inadequately attempts to ameliorate their effects, these issues are simply off the agenda.

* And the Parasite-in-Chief has it all figured out. We simply need to assert our patriotism by flying the friendly skies and shopping till we drop.

According to many, a right wing coup took place in this country late last year. Genteel and bloodless though it was, endowed as it was with the full majesty of the law and the appearance of integrity, most people recognize a good screwing when they see one.

Some would say, Goff among them, that the other shoe dropped on September 11 and that those atrocities were, in fact, Phase 2 in a carefully scripted scenario designed to give the coup the legitimacy it requires to advance its agenda: Domination of oil supplies and delivery conduits; suppression of domestic dissent; continued use of military power to advance US economic interests abroad; continued enrichment of the ruling classes; and the coronation of George II as Pope of the Planet.

In Phase 2 - employing proven marketing methods in a process described here (http://bushandcheneysuck.com/War-on-sale.htm) - the public is assaulted for days by an uninterrupted 24 X 7 televised ad campaign which, whether by design or by inevitable cause and effect, coalesces public opinion around war and revenge.

The American public is presented with the most ghastly, nightmarish images of real death and carnage ever captured on videotape. Within minutes of the actual events, we're given the very devil himself, presented as an amalgam of Hitler, Tojo and Stalin all wrapped up in the robes of a fanatical Islamic fundamentalist Arab millionaire.

As Phase 2 plays out, the country rallies around the administration, the flag, and the concept of protracted war against terrorism. It willingly sacrifices liberty for security, despite Benjamin Franklin's warning. And the free-floating angst of ordinary American citizens creates the rationale that finally legitimizes the primacy of the national security state and consigns the Bill of Rights to the dump - right next to the debris from the World Trade Center.

The Office of Homeland Security rounds up the usual cast of undesirables and carts them off to the Gulag. Which won't be so bad, I suppose, since all the interesting people will be there and the androids will be busy attending obligatory book burnings and witch trials and Bush for Intergalactic Czar rallies.

In Phase 3, by the way, it's 2008 and Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. And Osama bin Laden's image is broadcast on millions of TV sets daily as Americans everywhere gather in screaming, frothing, full-blown lunacy for the Two Minutes Hate, then head back to their sterile, useless lives in service of Pope George II, who's busy playing with his Tonka tanks in the official White House sand box and can't come out right now.

On a personal level, in assessing the external factors that place me at risk here in late October 2001, I'd have to say that the odds of my contracting anthrax or being on a plane that's hijacked and rammed into a building are exactly the same today as they were on September 10.

On the other hand, the odds have increased significantly of my ending up on some McCarthy-like black list - or worse - simply because I've written the above and will persist in thinking the way I think - or thinking at all. As they say, even paranoids have enemies.

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Today's quiz: How much evil would an evildoer do if an evildoer did do evil?

Copyright SRC, Inc. 2001. All rights reserved.