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# Your just desserts — served up cold, honest
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/your-just-desserts-served-up-cold-honest/
- Published: 2006-04-11T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T23:52:56.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By INCITES BY ED SILVERSTEIN*

You deserve them. Especially you young people whose obsession with your iPods, Blackberries, Game Boys and camera phones has infected you with an apathetic brain rot that precludes your ability to comprehend that your entire future is being sold out in order to further enrich a small group of aging, white, male sociopaths.

You deserve them because you sat in a silent stupor as our country was reduced to a second rate banana republic when the presidential election was stolen by a cabal of racists, theological fanatics and rapacious CEOs. Nor did you utter even the faintest peep of protest when that same clan of conspirators ushered in electronic voting machines that defied exit polls by a consistent 3 percent in favor of their chosen candidate while deliberately omitting a paper trail that could evidence their deceit.

You deserve them because you let them use lies and smear tactics that even a cast member of Survivor would be embarrassed by, to discredit opponents who were decorated veterans. And when they slashed services and benefits for veterans, your only response was to wave your China-made American flags in rabid support of their audacious claims that they were the party of Patriots and their opponents did not support the troops.

You deserve them because your outrage was reserved for a presidential peccadillo, while ignoring the compromising of our national security by a president who approved the outing of an undercover CIA operative and the endangerment of the lives of her entire network of spies, out of petty vindictiveness against her husband who had the gall to tell the truth about the president’s lies.

You deserve them because your voice was absent when the president took a month-long vacation after being advised that Bin Laden was going to use passenger jets to attack our country, then gave him high approval ratings for spending seven minutes reading to school kids after learning that Bin Laden had done just that.

You deserve them because you permitted your brain to be persuaded that it was OK to wage war against one country for the actions of another. Worse, you passively accepted revelation after revelation that exposed that the war had been planned long before a single twin tower had fallen, that the intelligence had been intentionally manipulated, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that $9 billion vanished into thin air or into the deep pockets of the corporate cronies swimming in billions in no bid contracts, that a troop of 12-year-old Girl Scouts could have done a better job of prosecuting the war than those whom we elected and that we have spent $300 billion (on our way to a trillion) to start a civil war, create a new theocracy that prays for our demise and to provide the best recruitment and training of terrorists that (lots of) money can buy.

And you parents — so protective that the only form of social intercourse your kids are permitted is sterile play dates, whose fear of compromising your child’s delicate egos dictate that even losers get trophies, whose fear of exposure to the indelicacies of the real world require home schooling, where is the spitting rage that your government has mortgaged your kids future with a $9 trillion in national debt, not to mention that “Leave No Child Behind” left the funding behind.

And the rest of you, so engrossed in “American Idol” that you failed to notice the corporate coup that allowed big energy, pharma, insurance, farming, media, autos and banking to divvy up our hard earned tax dollars inflating profits to record levels while repaying us with under funded pensions, the elimination of health care and sending our jobs overseas.

And then there’s the evangelicals, fundamentalist, holy rollers and extremist, who turned a blind eye as poor and elderly were starved out and prisoners were tortured, to insure the far more important religious doctrine that members of the same sex never be permitted to marry.

You deserve this government because you didn’t yell, bitch or march when they retreated into the shadows of secrecy, lied, cheated and stole, invaded our privacy, failed to protect us in the aftermath of natural disasters, destroyed our environment for short term profit and retaliated against anyone who chose scientific reality over expedient falsehoods or religious dogma.

You deserve this government because most of you don’t have the slightest clue that any of this is going on.

So you got the government you deserve and because of that, when you turn around and realize that everything you held dear, everything you took for granted, is gone, then you’ll have gotten the fate you deserve as well. (Ed Silverstein)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 11, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/041106.pdf?ref=smdp.com)