30.EPILOGUE.43d:  April 8, 2003.
"The War Party 2:  Gasping For Air."

SCENE:  Same place, just a  little later.

BRIAN:  Americans think they're loved.
BOB:  They don't realize how hated they really are.
BRIAN:  They have no idea of what the world actually thinks of them.
BOB:  The only people who care about American freedom are Americans.
BRIAN:  And maybe some Canadians and maybe some Europeans.  In theory.
BOB:  But ultimately, the rest of the world doesn't give a shit.
BRIAN:  When people immigrate to the 'States they don't do it because they love Freedom, Justice, And The American Way....
BOB:  They do it because America's rich.  They do it to make a quick, fast, easy buck, get rich themselves and then buy a mansion and lotsa cars.
BRIAN:  The rest of the world doesn't love American ideals, they love American money.  They love American luxury.
BOB:  But Americans are told over and over-- by American institutions-- how great they are, how flawless, how much the rest of the world wants to be like them.
BRIAN:  When that's just not the case.
BOB:  Americans don't realize they are hatred.  They think they're loved.  And they don't understand why they're hated.
BRIAN:  Actually, aside from a lot of the arrogance many Americans display when they travel, sometimes I don't get why they're hated so much, either.  But that's because deep down inside I do know that American democracy is probably the best kind of democracy there is.  Even if it's horribly flawed.
BOB:  I think it's because they just seem like they want to walk around the world, doing whatever the hell they want and damn the consequences.
BRIAN:  Yeah, but that's sort of the arrogance thing.  And in case any American is out there reading this who disagrees with me-- not all Americans are hopelessly arrogant, but a lot of them are.  I have seen that firsthand.  I have American relatives, and on the whole they don't seem to have any real perspective.  They think that because they're Americans they should be able to walk all over everyone else in the family-- at least the older ones do.  The younger ones I don't really know all that well.  But, the older ones-- well, I've got this one cousin who owns a broken down ranch, kept his wife (she's my real cousin-- he's a cousin by marriage) pregnant until she had an equal number of sons and daughters, drives a big rig, lives with these enormous, stinking dogs that piss and shit all over the house, collects guns, frequently beats his wife, weighs about 350 lbs. and has Elvis sideburns-- a total piece of white trash.  A completely stereotypical "ugly American bag-of-shit" (to paraphrase William S. Burroughs).  And one of his daughters is in the military, and so is one of his sons.  The son is currently having his soul extracted and brain reprogrammed by the militia.  The daughter, I think she's just a plain ol' soldier.  But he-- big fat daddy-- he just thinks he can waddle all over everything and everybody.  He's loud, angry, violent, and grotesque.  He's exactly what people think of when they want an American stereotype to hate.
BOB:  Sounds like you've got issues.
BRIAN:  Maybe just a bit.  But, leaving aside bloated masses of arrogant and conceited ignorance, I also kinda sorta think a lot of people maybe kinda sorta hate America and Americans because they're all so capitalistic, though.  And I, quite frankly, don't really have a problem with that-- the capitalism.  I know the French, for example, hate American globalization and lean more towards a socialistic system-- but I'm really not like that.  I like a little socialism, like heathcare, but on the whole I'm a capitalist.  I like my stuff, I like my luxuries.  You only live for so long and that's it, so you should strive to be comfortable.  And if it hurts other people-- well, that kinda sucks, but I am-- when I get right down to it-- looking out for myself first.   So, if that makes me a Greedy Capitalistic Americanized Pig, so be it.  However, that still doesn't mean I'm in favour of this whole Iraq "war" against whatever the tv's saying it's a war against today.  It still seems to change whenever I flip channels.
BOB:  Why are you against the war, anyway?
BRIAN:  Because it's confusing and pointless.  I don't like Saddam Hussein, I've said it before and I'll probably keep saying it, but America's "objectives" (if you can even call them that) in this "excursion" are vague, ill-defined, and for the most part illogical.  It seems like this war is simply an excuse to blow some shit up.  And that wastes money, puts the world economy in a state of dangerous flux, and fills the airwaves and bandwidth with reams of propagandistic data-noise from all sides.  It just seems like a media event for no other reason than it sells airtime.  The weapons of mass destruction thing didn't pan out, the Al Qaeda connection is bogus, and maybe even the oil thing is kind of moot-- especially if Hydrogen power comes to the foreground in the next 10 years, like it's poised to.  There is no purpose behind this war beyond the testing of missiles, and so it's meaningless.  I-- and I'm pretty sure the rest of the world, minus maybe some Australian Bushmen-- already know that American missiles can blow up lotsa crap real good.
BOB:  What about the liberation of the Iraqi people?
BRIAN:  That's just a happy accident.  Much like the freeing of women when the USA toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan.  They didn't really give a damn about the women of Afghanistan, but used the mistreatment of the Afghani women to spin-doctor an ugly situation into something positive.  Suddenly, the USA is freeing women and pretending like that was their objective all along-- when it wasn't-- and the general public buys it because the general public has a memory-span of ten seconds and swallows whatever it's fed.  Same with the liberation of Iraq.  That idea came out of nowhere because it started happening accidentally and now the USA is pretending that was the whole point of the war.  But it's not.  The actual point is completely unclear-- and now if the actual objectives are actually ever revealed, it will seem as if they were made up on the spot by part of the propaganda machine.

Pause.

BOB:  And, of course, now there's SARS.  Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.  Which was a totally unknown thing, and seems to've originated in Hong Kong.  And now it's here.  Gives you a fever.  Makes you gasp and choke to death.  It's a kind of pneumonia.
BRIAN:  Which doesn't have a single thing to do with the War in Iraq.
BOB:  I wouldn't say that.  It's being focussed on because of the Iraq war, I think.
BRIAN:  Meaning?
BOB:  It's what we're being told to think about when we're too tired to think about war.
BRIAN:  I was worried about SARS-- I really really was-- I was totally scared-- until I realized more people die of the sniffles every day than have ever died of SARS ever.
BOB:  I really liked the one press conference I saw in the news.  There was a health official talking about SARS and about just how gosh-danged dangerous it was and all, and then one reporter asked how the SARS threat compared to the threat of, say, the common cold, and then-- just as the health official was starting to speak-- the picture faded away to the newscaster who started talking about epidemic numbers.
BRIAN:  Hmm.
BOB:  And, of course, if I were of a paranoid mind I just might believe that the station faded away because the health official was about to say that the common cold is actually a greater health risk than SARS.  And, of course if that knowledge got out, then there'd be no more news coverage.  And then maybe people would start focussing on the war in Iraq, again-- which, for some reason, someone doesn't want the people to do.  If, that is, if I were of a paranoid mind.
BRIAN:  Oh, of course.  If you were paranoid.
BOB:  But what reason would the Canadian media have for blowing this SARS thing out of proportion, and diverting attention away from the war?
BRIAN:  I have no idea.  You tell me.  You're the paranoid one.
BOB:  Because SARS is so obviously is being exaggerated by the media.
BRIAN:  I like all the pictures the news programs show of all the people in Hong Kong wearing face masks and air filters.
BOB:  Yeah.
BRIAN:  It's so cool.  Whenever they talk about SARS they show all these pictures of people in Hong Kong wearing face masks and air filters.  And they always completely neglect to tell the viewer that wearing face masks and air filters is common practice in both China and Japan-- if not other Asian countries-- whenever anyone has a cold, or the flu, or allergy attacks, or anything.  So at any given time you can walk down the streets of these places and see dozens, if not hundreds of people wearing face masks and air filters.  They've been doing it for decades.  And it has absolutely nothing to do with SARS.
BOB (laughs):  I know.  I know.  My dad was, like totally freaked out by it.  He thought, like, "Oh my God!!  It's so bad in China people are wearing masks."  Until I told him that sure, people are probably wearing masks, now.  But they also wear masks all the time anyway.  And besides, that looks like generic stock footage that looks like it's about 7 years old.  And so the presence of face masks in Asian countries has little or nothing to do with the quality of contagion of any epidemic.
BRIAN:  But, people are scared, now.  And I think-- shock-- horror-- maybe 6 or 7 people have died of SARS in Canada so far.

Long pause.

BOB:  So how about that wacky Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf?
BRIAN:  I think he should get a talk show.
BOB:  I mean, I understand that propaganda works both ways.  But, seriously.
BRIAN:  He even has his own website: http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/  Well, it's not actually his own site, but it's a fan site.
BOB:  You've gotta love somebody who perpetually denies that there are no Americans in Baghdad when there most clearly are.  And they're also busy wrecking the place.
BRIAN:  That does take gumption.
BOB:  And saying that the Americans are surrendering when-- well, like I said.  They're, sort of in Baghdad, wrecking the place.
BRIAN:  Well, I guess, it's good that he has hope.
BOB:  Yeah, without hope, you got nuthin.'
BRIAN:  Yeah, you're right.  I mean, G.W. Bush has hope.  Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf has hope.  Tony Blair has hope.  Saddam Hussein has hope.  And I'm sure Osama bin Laden has hope, too.  If he's even still alive.
BOB:  I'm filled with so much hope I'm running a fever, I'm coughing, I can't breathe and I think I'm gonna puke up my colon....

Next:  Bob pukes up his colon....