Things have been sort of boring recently around the Hines household, and we haven’t gotten any visits from the Secret Service for, gosh, ages. So I’m going to live dangerously and not only imagine George Bush’s head on a stick, but also write about it in my weblog. Which I just did.
I’ve just committed in narrative form the same sort of horrendous offense against the president that brought a 15 year old high school student to the attention of both the local police and the Secret Service. Except this boy reflected his imaginings in artwork, and I’ve described mine in words.
In liberal company I’m usually the one who responds to seemingly paranoid conspiracy theories—“The Republicans are planning to steal the 2004 election through Diebold electronic voting machines!”—with some sober skepticism: “Come on…That doesn’t make sense; we’re still a nation of laws, not a Latin American dictatorship masquerading as a pseudo-democracy.”
However, the more I learn about the current administration’s lies, cover-ups, dissembling, manipulations, and mangling of the Constitution, which includes this action of the Secret Service (don’t high school students enjoy a right of free expression?), the more I wonder whether the most paranoid among us have good reasons to see Black Helicopters and Jack-Booted Thugs hidden behind every corner.
As a friend of this boy’s family said in the CNN article, “If this 15-year-old kid in Prosser is perceived as a threat to the president, then we are living in ‘1984’.” Maybe we are.
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