more Letters to the president from his ardent admirer Belacqua Jones

Open Letters to George W. Bush

Monday, August 27, 2007


Dear George,



I was glancing over the Pentagon's Strategy for Homeland
Defense and Civil Support when I noticed a slight tear in the steel chain of
security you've draped across America's shoulders to protect the Homeland
from itself. The document envisions an "active layered defense."



That is the problem: a layer is a layer because it is not
an integrated whole. Every agency charged with the internal security of the
Homeland has multiple other duties to perform. The Pentagon is busy losing
a war; the Department of Homeland Security is busy losing New Orleans, and
the FBI is busy trying to boot their computers. We have no agency able to
devote one-hundred percent of its time to protecting the Homeland.



My recommendation is to create an uberagency whose sole
responsibility is ensuring the total security of the Homeland. To show the
public that this agency is serious, you would do well to call it the Secret
State Police.



Some of your minions might have some qualms about
including both "secret" and "police" in the same phrase because of the
negative connotations this phrase evokes. Remind them that America's
historical memory extends back roughly twenty-four hours, so it will not be
a problem. On the plus side, the designation includes "state" and "police"
which evoke the image of the friendly state trooper changing a tire for a
grandmotherly old lady.



The Secret State Police's duties would extend beyond
preventive prosecution. They would also shore up our perfection as a
nation. America is the greatest country in the world, the land of freedom
and opportunity. Anyone who would criticize the United States is obviously
a mentally unbalanced malcontent badly in need of treatment, so our Secret
State Police would be responsible for humanitarian therapy as well as
enforcement.



America has reached a unique stage in her historical
development. Because you possess the moral purity of the simpleton, you are
the State, the living incarnation of our values. "With us or against us" is
not a macho call to arms but a call to a morality that will not rest until
it has rid the earth of evil. So let us begin with the purification of our
own citizens so we may be in a position to purify the earth.



Your admirer,

Belacqua Jones



http://blogs.salon.com/0004024/2007/08/27.html



Thursday, August 30, 2007


Dear George,



Everyone wants a strong country and a strong leader. However,
most people don't realize that there is more to strength than strength.
There is intelligent strength and there is stupid strength. Empire requires
stupid strength to flourish because stupid strength is a prerequisite for
success. The driving dynamic for empire is paranoia. This is as it must be
because fear gives a man and a country the nasty edge they need to flourish.



A good analogy is the gunfighter of the Old West. The fastest
gun in town was, of necessity, paranoid. He knew the families of those he
had shot down were out to get him along with every wannabe fast gun looking
to make a reputation by outdrawing him. (Actually, the Swiss have the right
idea: be the slowest gun in the West and make a fortune selling
pocketknives.)



Other components of stupid strength are hubris and bull***.
Only when a man or a country have an inflated sense of their own worth will
they thrive. Stupid strength needs the strut and posture of the steely-eyed
gunfighter walk-down. Hubris is hubris because it thrives on delusion. You
have the perfect bled of hubris and bull*** in the magical buzzwords that
make all things possible, "National Security." This has to be the greatest
scam going since Augustus Caesar convinced the Romans that he was a god.
It is given force by our practice of aggressive policies that leave threats
to our well being in their wake. It has a beautiful circularity to it: we
*** over a country, get it good and pissed off and use its righteous anger
to justify the building up of our defense establishment.



This blending of paranoia, hubris and bull*** came together in
a measure introduced by Mad Joe Lieberman condemning Iran for its complicity
in "murdering" our troops. What a terrifying discovery Mad Joe made: that
people are killed in wars. Now a sane person would say, "Duh!" War is all
about murder. That's how you win them, by murdering more people than your
enemy does. Give all our trash talking, Iran would have to be brain dead
not to give the insurgents a leg up. Fortunately, sanity has no place in
stupid strength. The Senate certainly understands this since Mad Joe's
measure passed on unanimous vote.



Stupid strength is a shell game that thrives on the induced
ignorance of the proles. While the public looks for the bean of
Islamofascism, they never notice the bean of Christofascism that is
beginning to sprout.



Stay dumb, George, and the power will always be with you.



Your admirer,

Belacqua Jones



http://blogs.salon.com/0004024/2007/08/30.html



Friday, August 31, 2007


Dear George,



Listen to the whiners carry on about how the subprime debacle was a
criminal act. If they had their way, America's financial geniuses would be
outfitted in orange jumpsuits and hauled before a Nuremburg Tribunal.



The naive fools do not understand that since the beginning of time all
commerce has been criminal. It's biblical. Cain created the first
monopoly when he slew Abel. It was justifiable homicide. Abel lived off
the land as a herdsman; Cain was developing it as a farmer. Sure God was
pissed off, but he obviously got over it since settlers have been
slaughtering nomads ever since.



You nailed it when you blamed the borrowers for signing documents they
didn't understand. If they didn't understand they should have asked and
been willing to accept whatever song and dance the lender fed them.
Moreover, if they couldn't read them, then it was their fault for not paying
attention when they were in school. It's all a matter of personal
responsibility. A man is a victim because he lacks it.



The subprime market was all about the freedom and equality that are
the integral components of LibertyR. The rich are free to accumulate
wealth; the poor are free to accumulate debt. The anguish of the poor
lubricates the wheels of commerce. America has grown strong on their
suffering.



Ruination has a salutatory effect. As more poor find themselves out
on the street they will come to understand that they are dealing with a
power that transcends all, and they will come to know their place in the
grand scheme of things. Nothing disabuses a man of democratic notions like
sleeping in a doorway.



Your admirer,

Belacqua Jones




http://blogs.salon.com/0004024/



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