For those who were out enjoying their Labor Day weekend, you may have missed the NY Times article from this weekend that has some very interesting and delusional musings from Mister Bush. One such musing is about his “fantastic Freedom Institute in Dallas that will be “promoting democracy around the world”.
And since Mister Bush has done such a good job at this over the past six-plus years, the halls should be filled with many shining examples of the “freedom and democracy” that Bush has been promoting around the world. Luckily, I was able to get my hands on a time machine (something about a DeLorean and 88 MPH keeps sticking in my mind though) – and I am able to share with you some of the wonderful exhibits in Mister Bush’s “fantastic Freedom Institute”.
The first thing that caught my eye were the huge wooden doors in the shape of an open Bible, because when God tells you that you were meant to lead your nation, you have to show your gratitude. And when I walked through the main entrance, I noticed the “Freedom Park for Children” on the right, so (being that it is the future and I have children at the time), we wandered over to the “Freedom Park”.
There is the waterboarding area, where you can go for a quick ‘dunk in the water’. There is the human pyramid jungle gym that children of all ages can have fun climbing on. And there is also the “squirting Freedom at the Koran” game, where you can shoot a water gun filled with a yellow liquid at a Koran target 10 feet away.
We moved on from the “Freedom Park for Kids” area over to the “Why America is the Freest and Totally Kicks Ass” Exhibit, which has some interactive sections as well as some other interesting tidbits. Here, we got to see just how free and democratic the good old US of A is. There is the Climb the Corporate Ladder Exhibit – if your income is over $500,000, then you can start on the 5th rung and climb all the way to the top while pushing cardboard “workers” off of the rungs as you step over them. Alas, if your income is below $500,000, you have to climb down to the floor below to start and can only make it back to where you started.
Other notable exhibits include Voting for Freedom, the “Free Speech Zone” – which was actually a soundproof box that you could walk into and say whatever you wanted, the “Privatization Simulator” a game which lets you take over a city and see the impact to your corporate cronies’ bottom lines from privatizing various sectors at the expense of the general population, and my kid’s favorite one, ”FISA SHMIZA” where you actually get to eavesdrop on other people in the “fabulous Freedom Institute”.
We then made our way over to the shining beacon of the entire Institute – the Iraq section. Here, the fruits of Mister Bush’s labor are on full display. Walking through the Purple Finger doorway to get to this area was interesting, especially since the finger that was purple here wasn’t the same finger that I remembered the Iraqis using when they voted.
Here, you could be the prosecutor in a mock trial of Saddam, or hear firsthand accounts of the freedom that the Iraqis enjoy – like freedom to conserve energy, freedom to relocate from one place to another and of course, the to travel out of the country. Permanently.
The last section we looked at before my kid got sick from eating all of the “freedom fries” “freedom toast” and “liberty soda” was the one called ”Democracy and Freedom – hand in hand around the world”. Here, there were many examples of Freedom™ being spread to all corners of the globe. We were able to take a simulated rendition flight to a secret location and witness firsthand the “democracy” that was spread during the Bush years.
There was a lot on the budding freedom and democracy in Darfur that Bush singlehandedly turned around with his laser focus on the matter. There was an entire wing on Afghanistan and the major human rights advances under Mister Bush’s administration. There was another wing on the rest of the world – focusing on the expanded freedoms enjoyed by the people in the very democratic countries Bush made priorities of with respect to his policies. Countries and areas such as Palestine, Iran, North Korea, China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
It really was a shame that my “future kid” got sick and that our time was running out before we had to head Back From The Future. All in all, it was quite a spectacle. You gotta hand it to Mister Bush and Mister Rove. They really know how “fantastic” Freedom can be.
All the rest of us have to do is wait until the $5 billion for the construction is diverted from the US Treasury, and then we can all enjoy the fantastic Freedom Institute for ourselves.