Kerry still won't shut up about his "faith" and about finding and killing terrorists. Simplistic pablum that he seems to believe. As <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1016-22.htm" source="Common Dreams" author="Howard Zinn">Our War on Terrorism</a> point out: <bq>[What] Bush's war on terrorism, and ... Sharon's, and ... Putin's ... have in common is that they are based on an enormous deception: persuading the people of their countries that you can deal with terrorism by war. These rulers say you can end our fear of terrorism---of sudden, deadly, vicious attacks, a fear new to Americans---by drawing an enormous circle around an area of the world where terrorists come from (Afghanistan, Palestine, Chechnya) or can be claimed to be connected with (Iraq), and by sending in tanks and planes to bomb and terrorize whoever lives within that circle.</bq> Kerry is seemingly comfortable with that rhetoric as well. We can't, as a country, seem to get away from a war footing. We can't find leadership that doesn't believe that war is a big part of what America is and does. At least Kerry believes that we should spend some money first on education and health care, then blow the shit out of dark people. Bush skips straight to war. It's fascinating watching a man who has rolled the US into two full-blown wars which have killed tens of thousands of civilians tell us how it's "hard to go to war" and the "every life is precious". On the other hand, Kerry, also as a typical politician, paints a picture of a world in which there exists absolute evil: terrorists. An intractable cancer of the world that can be eliminated by brute force alone. With Bush, you can see the slavering fervor in his eyes when he talks about the <iq>evildoers</iq>. With Kerry, there is at least the possibility that he's just appealing to the kill-hungry American masses who see no problem with laying untold numbers of non-Americans to waste in the name of domestic security. Won't somebody please think of the children? American children, I mean. Duh. The Bush administration has spent four years whipping the country into a war-mad frenzy so that it seems almost impossible to win a legitimate election <i>without</i> mentioning all of the war shit you're going to do to make <iq>America safe</iq>. There are a lot of people who think that you can eliminate all enemies somehow; that it is possible to cow your enemies into a position in which they meakly accept our table scraps while no longer harboring a single though of violence. That would require a good deal more control over every facet of people's lives than we have now. Palestinians are far more controlled by their enemy than Al Qaeda (shadowy Bond-esque organization that it is) is by the US. And still they continue with resistance. That world could exist. We are dragging our knuckles towards such a world. Mr. Orwell described such a world in gory detail in 1984. A world in which the dominant powers are perpetually at war and in which truth plays no part whatsoever. Or, rather, reality (measurable objective reality) plays no part; where truth is simply whatever the government says. Listen to anything that Bush says, and you'll see that it has very little to do with objective truth. His speeches, are, at best, descriptions of a world he wished existed. He thinks that he can make it exist by just saying that it does. For many people, that seems to be enough. <a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_10_17.php#003697">Talking Points Memo</a> quotes the New York Times, which described a conversation with a Bush aide. The interviewer was accused of living <iq>in what we [the Bush administration] call the reality-based community,</iq>. That community is defined as people who <iq>believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.</iq> Non-zealots, in other words. <bq>'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.'</bq> <a href="http://uggabugga.blogspot.com/">Uggabugga</a> was kind enough to dig up a similar quote: <bq>Our task is not to study economics but to change it. We are bound by no laws.</bq> ...this one uttered by <iq>one of [Stalin's] economists, S.G.Shumilin</iq>. So, though Kerry also promises four more years of wars, he also seems to bring the promise of a country in which two plus two will, once again, equal four.