I helped kill an innocent family. I helped destroy people’s medicine. I helped support terrorism.
Sad to say, I did all this without buying any drugs. I did it by working, earning money, and paying taxes.
But I’m not worried, because we now have a majority leader in the U.S. Senate who understands my concern. I’m not happy about my work going to fund the Pentagon’s attacks and provocations around the world. I had been considering stopping working, since I don’t know how to move my official residence to the Bahamas. I even debated actually moving to the Bahamas. But that was all before Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee took over for Trent Lott of Mississippi as majority leader, completely changing the Republicans’ positions on everything.
I was, of course, thrilled to hear about this change, since I detested the Republicans’ old positions on everything. When I read Bill Frist’s website and found him quoting himself as follows, I assumed he must have me in mind:
“One of the most sacred things that a person can give is their time and labor. Imbedded in the drive to increase federal spending is a fundamental lack of respect for the labor of others, a lack of appreciation for the fact that each tax dollar has a sacred component, a piece of a person’s life that has been taken from them for an avowed higher purpose. As a conservative in elected office, if I am to retain the trust of millions of hardworking Americans, I must, without apology, recognize the nature of this trust and continue to pursue tax cuts.”
What could Frist mean but that we would slash the outrageous budget of the Pentagon? The old Republican positions had already slashed the budget of every constructive program, especially those that might benefit working people or minorities. Surely the new position in the Frist era was to slash the bigger budget of the destructive department of our otherwise quite limited and underfunded government. He couldn’t possibly want to cut even further the areas of government one would expect a racist like Lott to go after.
I eagerly clicked on the “National Defense” section of Frist’s website, assuming he was using that phrase in the common manner to mean “International Attacks.” What I found confused me:
“I have worked hard to put the teeth back in our armed forces because it is clear that the our [sic] troops on the front lines will be the first to pay if we are not prudent custodians of our defense resources,” he quoted himself as saying. This was followed by more comments that sounded even less like budget cutting:
“Senator Frist