We Are Confused

TheFundamentals is confused.  This essayist is confused.

Is it journalists, baseball players, or Islamic fundamentalists that we are supposed to fear?

We obviously need help, from an informed and honest source on this fear that is driving the complete, thorough and vigorous shredding of our constitution.

Could it be us and our neighbors who we are supposed to fear, watch, and report any suspicious behavior to “the government?”  Is it geeky kids who reveal how the government spies on us that we should fear?  Or is it the government that is spying on us we should fear?  Could someone please tell us who we should fear?

And who is supposed to be “supporting and defending” the constitution?

Is it us regular folk or is it the 100 senators, 435 congressmen, 1 president and 9 supreme court judges who take an oath to “support and defend” the constitution?  And what happens if they violate their oath?  Are they indicted?  Can they go to jail?  Who will sit in judgment of the 9 supreme court judges when they don’t do their job? The 100 + 435 who also aren’t doing their job?

Is it the Muslim brotherhood we are supposed to fear?  Or is it the military in Egypt that has the heavy weapons and the state sponsored militia and the American weaponry and other forms of “defense” armament that is now killing the Muslim brotherhood?  And which one of these groups, if one prevails, will bring peace and dispel fear in the future?

Are we to fear those who support the very idea of a military coup or are we to fear those who are being gunned down by the military?  We honestly don’t know who to fear.

As long as we are asking for some help in these matters, here are some more questions about our confusion.

Are we supportive of the Shia Muslim or is it the Sunni Muslim?  Can we tell the difference?  Do we support both?  One sometimes; sometimes the other?

Do we plan on bankrupting our country to fight them all?  Do we plan on shredding every freedom and every individual guarantee of our constitution in this fight?

Last question – here is the late Mr. bin Laden’s stated list of objectives in his jihad (Muslim war against nonbelievers):

·         Destroy America’s freedoms

·         Bankrupt America

·         Get America out of Muslim territory

·         Stop America’s support of Israel

·         Destroy Israel

·         Establish new caliphate for the millennium

 

Last question concerning our confusion, sometime ago, Mr. Obama’s predecessor hung out a banner that proclaimed – mission accomplished.  What mission was he addressing with this proclamation?   We are not asking whether it or anything was accomplished – we know that answer.  We are just confused about the mission? 

 

Someone once said it along these lines – those who trade freedom for security end up with neither.  Is that “neither” the Bush/Obama/Clinton mission? 

Extra credit - last question.  Who said, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary?"  No, it was not David Axelrod!