It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of
a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into
privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing
algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the
planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.
These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times. Presidential words from George W. Bush's photo-opportunity on October 27, 2003 - that's yesterday, folks - The best way to describe the people who are conducting these attacks are cold-blooded killers, terrorists. That's all they are. They're terrorists. They don't care who they kill. They just want to kill. They hate freedom. They love terror. They love to try to create fear and chaos. And what we're determined in this administration is not to be intimidated by these killers. Is it just me, or is this kind of simplistic attitude toward America's opponents across the world growing thin? What's really telling is that these statements are offered in response to reporters' questions about what Bush's plans are for stopping the violence in Iraq. Asked for a plan, and Bush says, "They just want to kill." It still astonishes us that Bush really believes that the people fighting American soldiers occupying Iraq are motivated by nothing other than some kind of general pure evil. The more Bush talks like this, the more he sounds like General Boykin, Bush's aide who tells us that we're fighting Satan. We can't help but thinking that if we had a President who could understand foreign policy in terms more complex than "good guys" and "bad guys", America might actually have a reasonable plan for how to regain its security. Kill Bad Guys is not a plan. It's a comic book. Return to the Irregular Times Main Page
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