Let Them Eat Prozac!

"New ways to harm our country and our people."

by Alan Bisbort

Source: Hartford Advocate, August 12, 2004.

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." - G.W. Bush, 8/5/04

Wouldn't you know it. The one time when the truth passes the lips of a Bush, it's an accident. While the media played his latest gaffe like all the others -- isn't our prez a hoot! -- his misstatement is actually the guiding philosophy of the Republican Party. He and his gang of neocon sociopaths have harmed our country and our people so thoroughly that many Americans are now inured to it. It's accepted as part of the national scene, like a Red Sox collapse or celebrity crash diet.

It's one unbroken chain of harm: Lost jobs, terror alerts, record gas prices, 54 U.S. dead in July in Iraq, our environment, public health and education left unprotected. And the biggest hoot of all is that the Republicans are "running on their record" in November. Who said irony was dead?

The prevailing attitude was summed up by Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt. Sheybani recently suggested that American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones -- or take Prozac to get over their unhappiness. "Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?" she said.

Since 40 million adult Americans don't have health insurance, the Prozac solution proffered by self-appointed Dr. Sheybani isn't within the means of the unhappiest of our workers. Prozac, without insurance, is expensive, even as a generic. Sheybani might also consider that anxiety-riddled workers are less dangerous when left to their beer and satellite dishes, which have kept them sated and distracted up until now. A few beers, a few minutes with Fox News and they'll keep voting against their best interests, keep equating patriotism with the amoral corporate hucksters, keep believing Saddam was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Taken as directed by a physician, Prozac is designed to lift such delusional scales from one's eyes. Not worth taking a chance, Piggy Sue.

The only other solution offered to overworked and underpaid Americans by the prevailing power structure was one suggested by Tom Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in a recent speech to an exclusive California business club. Donohue told the millions of Americans who've lost their jobs, will lose their jobs, can't find work or have to settle for low-paying jobs with no benefits to "Stop whining!" The remark was greeted with warm applause from the upper crust to whom it was delivered. To Republicans in 2004, bashing American workers is like Strom Thurmond's ancient cry for racial purity and lynch parties. "Stop whining," said Donohue, "the benefits of offshoring jobs outweigh the cost."

And what are those benefits?

Because those benefits can be summed up so simply, they are often ignored as part of the "new ways to harm our people" strategy: to make the rich richer, middle class poorer, and the poor so miserable they kill themselves or each other, thinning the herd to make room for the unaborted fetuses Republicans profess to love so much. Though it is provable, beyond a reasonable doubt, that four more years of Bush will be an unmitigated disaster for America, almost half of the people who stand to be harmed the most will refuse to believe it. They will, if they vote at all, mark their ballot for the man who read My Pet Goat for seven minutes to a class full of children while the nation suffered through the worst terror attack in history.

This weird paradox is embodied by a guy on my block, a diehard backer of Bush, whom he affectionately calls "George W." This guy works hard in the outdoors every day for a living and unwinds each evening with several beers. He often begins rhapsodizing about the 300 bucks he got from "George W" last year as a tax "rebate," and other related themes. He blissfully lives with the delusion that "George W" is looking out for the little guy.

This guy is an otherwise good neighbor and I normally let him go on. But this time I launched a five-minute recitation of all the reasons why he would be insane to vote for "George W" again. Well, just because I back Bush doesn't make me a bad person, does it?"

The self-pity embedded in that remark took me aback. Here are the sort of people who've keyed my car for its anti-Bush stickers, called me a "Saddam-loving" traitor, threatened me and my family, and now they want pity, they want to make nice. Sorry, neighbors. When Bush loses in November, we won't forgive and forget. Or make nice. If you're unhappy with that, maybe Dr. Laura will write you a scrip for Prozac.

© 1995-2004 New Mass Media
reprinted from The Hartford Advocate