corrente

TV doesn't "bring the world into our living rooms," it persuades us that everything we see on the tube is fiction. A look at life in the midst of Operation Ameriki Freedom:

(via Juan Cole)

--3,300 Americans died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week. This is an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.

--Deaths occur all over the country, including in the capital of Washington, DC, but mainly above the Mason Dixon line: in Boston, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco.

--The grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the Mall are constantly taking mortar fire.

--Reporters for all the major television and print media are trapped in five-star hotels in Washington, DC and New York, unable to move more than a few blocks safely, and dependent on stringers to know what was happening in Oklahoma City and St. Louis. The only time they venture into the Midwest is if they are embedded in Army or National Guard units.

(I almost left that last one out, because except for the "embedded" part it's pretty much what news coverage looks like anyway. Ahem, to continue...)

--Private armies totalling 275,000 men, armed with machine guns, assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hide out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the country. They completely control Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal troops cannot go into those cities.

--During the past year, the Secretary of State, the President, and the Attorney General have all been assassinated.

--The entire US is wracked by a crime wave, with thousands of murders, kidnappings, burglaries, and carjackings in every major city every year.

--The Air Force routinely (daily or weekly) bombs Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and other urban areas, attempting to target "safe houses" of "criminal gangs", but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies.

--Platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia are holed up in Arlington National Cemetery, and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial.

--There is virtually no commercial air traffic in the country. Many roads are highly dangerous, especially Interstate 95 from Richmond to Washington, DC, and I-95 and I-91 up to Boston. If you get on I-95 anywhere along that over 500-mile stretch, you risk being carjacked, kidnapped, or having your car sprayed with machine gun fire.

--No one has electricity for much more than 10 hours a day, and often less. It goes off at unpredictable times, causing factories to grind to a halt and air conditioning to fail in the middle of the summer in Houston and Miami. The Alaska pipeline are bombed and disabled at least monthly. Unemployment hovers around 40%.

--Survivors of militia actions at Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing have been brought in to run the government on the theory that you need a tough guy in these times of crisis.

--Municipal elections were cancelled and cliques close to the new "president" quietly installed in the statehouses as "governors?" Several of these governors ( Montana and Wyoming) were assassinated soon after taking office or resigned when their children were taken hostage by guerrillas.

--The leader of the European Union maintains that the citizens of the United States are refuting pessimism and that freedom and democracy are just around the corner.