This Revolution Will NOT Be Terrorized | Mary Lyon -- From The Left

Mary Lyon -- World News Trust

Aug. 14, 2006

The line actually was "the revolution will not be televised" -- a compelling, rhythmic rant from 1974 by African American musician/poet/agitator Gil Scott-Heron. Hopefully, he'll forgive me for adjusting the wording just a little. This revolution will NOT be terrorized.

I REFUSE to be afraid. It just goes on and on and on -- terror plots, couple of dozen arrests -- one of those arrestees, as of this writing, already released.

I just REFUSE to be afraid. I have a hard time even believing this is completely on the level, considering who's making hay (or trying to) with it at the moment. But then again, the Bush administration's habit of crying wolf about another dreaded terrorist attack -- much of it later proven to be so much bushwah -- had rendered me just a little bit too jaundiced. So jaundiced that, when I hear of events like the huge alleged terror plot being busted in Britain, my first reaction is one of suspicion. I can't help but be skeptical that maybe this is just being made up -- to scare us into submission again.

Am I being paranoid after all? Well, look at the timing of this. It wiped all the Connecticut Democratic primary postmortems off the map, at just the time when Democrats themselves were showing new strength and guts. They'd just given "the best Democratic friend the republi-CONS ever had" the heave-ho, denying him shoo-in status as a fourth-term returnee to the Senate. The voters preferred Ned Lamont, who built his successful campaign on Joe Lieberman's epoxy-like embrace of all things Bush and GOP, especially of the war. It was a signal. A shot across the bow. A sign that a giant had been awakened, and that Democrats were fighting back -- the dealer having dealt us aces, and the public opinion pollsters adding all kings. And -- hmmm... all of a sudden, the afterglow is rudely interrupted by screams of "TERROR!" "TERROR!" "TERROR!" Hmmm indeed. Sorry, that's just a little too convenient for me.

What a coincidence -- or is it -- especially when the White House started making insinuations about more ferocious terror threats BEFORE the actual news broke of the plot-busting achievements of British intelligence (tipped off, perhaps?). Congressman John Conyers evidently is suspicious, too.  In his blog, http://www.conyersblog.us /, he details various signals strongly indicating that the White House evidently “had planned to profit politically from this event well before the arrests were made public.”

All the republi-CONS are now running around like chicken(hawks) with their heads removed, squawking about TERROR!!! TERROR!!! TERROR!!! You HAVE TO vote for us!!! This just proves it!!! Or those icky bearded guys with the icky accents are gonna gitcha!!! Never mind how great, efficient, and successful our way of running things here make the Keystone Kops look. Never mind how everything our leaders said, everything they so breathlessly warned about, and everything they promised (cakewalks, anyone?) turned to be bunk. Never mind how the growth and flourishing of terrorist cells, which Bush and friends guaranteed our invasion of Iraq would stop cold -- have both been kicked up by more than a thousand notches BECAUSE of Iraq. The war has only accomplished one thing: showering all feelings of anti-Americanism and each of those logarithmically increasing crowds of angry America-haters with fountains of Miracle-Gro. OOPS! Probably can’t go there, either. It’s a liquid, after all.

I’m sick of this. Sick and tired of it. Yeah, SURE I’m motivated to keep handing the keys to the wrecking ball crane to the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. The way the republi-CONS in Washington are parading around, thumping their chests about the foiled British terror plot, you’d think THEY’D done it, instead of MI5, MI6, and the New Scotland Yard. Besides, I can’t help noticing the smell. Something here just smells. The timing’s simply too perfect, too convenient. Especially when we DO have an almost six-year track record of this kind of harem-scare ‘em bait-n-switch that seeks to distract the American people from the continuing stream of GOP-related bad news and GOP-initiated bad decisions, every time there’s another story about another such case. I’m not playing anymore.

I’m not playing. I refuse to be manipulated -- not that I ever really was. One thing this Bush crowd has taught me is to be suspicious. Follow the money. And MOST critical of all -- consider WHO BENEFITS. Who’s benefited from all this? Who benefited from September 11th, after all? Who was down on his luck in DC, just secured the loss of his party’s Senate ownership by treating then-Republican Jim Jeffords of Vermont with just a little too much arrogance? Who was widely regarded as being rudderless, not even a full year into his term -- when BOOM! September 11th smacks us all in the face (about which he was warned repeatedly while he fiddled on his leisurely month’s vacation), and all of a sudden, he’s a sun god, with even the staunchest former opponents lining up behind him and handing him all the power and anything else he cares to demand, from their positions of supplication on their knees.

Who benefits when the arrests in Great Britain and the busting of what’s described as a September 11th several times over -- come mysteriously after a huge anti-war/anti-Bush victory in Connecticut? It more than eradicates the significance of Ned Lamont, except to give brain-dead newsreaders like CNN’s Chuck Roberts the go-ahead to question, on the air, whether this means Lamont is the “al Qaeda candidate.” QUIT PANICKING, dummy. Unbunch your panties. He ISN’T. Put down the talking points freshly faxed to you from the RNC. It’s all just a little too convenient.

The really sad thing, to me, is that I’m even driven to going here, to begin with -- to this place of the deepest suspicion and distrust. I’m in a place now where I just can’t bring myself to accept at face value ANYTHING my government tells me. I know better, and too much. If ANYONE in the Bush administration tells me the sun rises in the east, or even that I consistently vote Democratic, my first instinct is to seek out a second opinion. At this point, I’m not even completely sure the British terror bust is completely on the level, considering how Tony Blair is still joined at the hip to George, and in my mind, equally tarnished. I know too well his track record as an enabler of the worst decision made by the worst president in American history, so I’m not exactly racing to trust him now. Especially since what his side of the Atlantic did to foil this apparent terrorist attack has only given more weapons to the Bush crowd -- to manipulate for their own selfish, greedy, short-sighted, warmongering political agenda. Tony’s just handed them another prize from the goodie bag, which they’re now enthusiastically using to scare the bejeezzus out of unsuspecting and still-trusting Americans, keeping them off-balance and unable to think straight.

Well, I ain’t buyin'. I DAMNED WELL am not going to sit quietly by and let any of them try to keep me scared. As Gil Scott-Heron’s lyrics put it so well, years ago, “You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.” By now, NOBODY should -- including me. I’m in revolt mode. And will NOT be terrorized.

Visualize IMPEACHMENT!!!

And then go DO something about it.

Mary Lyon spent the first 25 years of her adult life as a broadcast journalist, at Los Angeles radio stations KRTH-FM,KFWB-AM, KHJ-AM and KLOS-FM, the NBC, ABC, RKO Radio Networks,and KTLA-TV.  She retired from day-to-day broadcasting in 1996, after covering Hollywood for nine years in radio, TV, and print, for the Associated Press.  She wrote and illustrated "The Frazzled Working Woman's Practical Guide to Motherhood," and is presently at work on a new craft book for kids and friends.  A lifelong Democrat who began her political involvement in the Student Coalition for Humphrey-Muskie, andTom Bradley's first L.A. Mayoral campaign, Mary currently is a weekly columnist for www.democrats.us -- from the Left.