11 September 2001>Commentary>Welcome to the Warnacular 2001

Welcome to the Warnacular Laura Flanders . ZNet . 20 September 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.