Use It or Lose It
Ivins, Molly
Small Favors Molly Ivins Use It or Lose It My friends, consider the immutable truth known to all Texas liberals: Things can always get worse. And if they do, these will turn out to be the Good Old...
...Actually, he didn't...
...We were "premature anti-fascists" before World War II, we spoke and some of us acted against Joe McCarthy, we helped as best we could during the civil rights movement, we actually stopped the war in Vietnam, with a little help from some Vietnamese people...
...Molly Ivins, co-author of "Bushwhacked," writes in this space every month...
...he very sensibly suggested that we may well be in the "Watch on the Rhine" phase, and that it behooves us all to draw some lines in the sand...
...I felt that way about the electioninAfghanistan last year, too, but it didn't dislodge a single rapist warlord...
...Now is the time for all good citizens to come to the aid of our country, and it won't help if you all cower in places like Madison and the Upper West Side, having hot fantods over the approach of fascism...
...the guardians of our freedom from terrorism asked this seventy-something-year-old woman with snow-white hair in the classic Texas "big hair" do...
...Sooner or later, we will catch Zarqawi, and I venture to prophesy that won't make much difference either...
...And with very few exceptions, really, we can still walk into the middle of the town square and express our views without fear of arrest or imprisonment...
...And for Lord's sake don't leave your sense of humor behind because this could get serious and then we'll need to laugh...
...Of course, we're not allowed to say that anymore, the ukase has come down: It is now personalization of Social Security and putting the money into personal accounts...
...Would you mind if we hand-searched you...
...I still hope all works out well in Iraq...
...To the barricades, team...
...Come on, team, suck it up...
...I just don't expect it to, which is what you get when you match optimism with experience...
...Natan Sharansky, currently the favorite author of George W. Bush hisself, proposes this standard for international legitimacy: "Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm...
...I am referring to them as "the accounts formerly known as private," though I think it's a hell of a note when the GOP considers "private" a dirty word...
...In Iraq, we've already had "mission accomplished," then when we caught Saddam Hussein everything was going to calm down, next the all-important transfer of sovereignty was going to cure all our problems, then we were going to break the back of the insurgency at Fallujah...
...Which caused Ann Richards to announce that she was drawing her line in the sand over body searches at the airport, on account of she had recently had her crotch hand-searched by zealous minions of the Department of Homeland Security...
...As that great philosopher Jimmy Buffett writes, if we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane...
...The only thing standing between you and raising hell is fear itself...
...Then there's the President's plan to privatize Social Security...
...The First Amendment, use it or lose it...
...That's a good one...
...In the best guesstimate of how many Iraqis we have killed, the British medical journal Lancet says 100,000...
...And if they do, these will turn out to be the Good Old Days and think what a fool you'll feel like for not having enjoyed them to the max while still you could...
...As for getting beat up, unless we stumble into a crowd of brown-shirted Freepers, the worst we'll get is yelled at...
...Well, we did destroy Fallujah...
...Brother Ronnie Dugger, at the fiftieth anniversary celebration for The Texas Observer, the Lone Star version of The Progressive, gave his peerless speech on the topic of "Doomed, doomed, doomed...
...Friends, soulwise, these are trying times...
...The opportunities for irony, satire and simple delirious daffiness have never been better...
...Here's our problem: It's really very difficult to convince people you are killing them for their own good...
...They had detected by the metal-seeking wand that Ann's body shirt had three metal snaps in the crotch...
...Look, we're liberals, we've been there, we've done that...
...OK,soit'sazoo again.Inever root for bad things tohappen, and found the Iraqi election moving, inspiring, and hopeful...
Vol. 69 • March 2005 • No. 3
