The War Metaphor

The war metaphor has been badly overused-- war on drugs, war on poverty -- but it still holds up in some cases. Dean Baker's Huffington piece, for example, describes The War on Public Sector Workers this way:

Politicians across the country are using heaping doses of the politics of envy to try to arouse the anger of workers. However, their targets are not the corporate CEOs pulling down tens of millions of dollars a year in pay and bonuses. Nor is it the Wall Street crew that got incredibly rich inflating the housing bubble and then took government handouts to stay alive through the bust. The targets of these politicians' wrath are school teachers, firefighters and other public sector workers.

The Republican's war on women is also very real, although it is often a bi-partisan war. It includes austerity and budget cutting which has pushed millions of women out of their jobs and crushed the living standards of their families. Most of the public sector workers listed above are women. Then there's the revived assault on the rights of women to make decisions about their own health care, contraception and abortion.

All good reasons to join the March 28th  National March Against the War on Women.

No metaphor here --the real war makers are coming to town for their May 20-21 NATO Summit. The mayor, still stung after Obama pulled the G8 Summit from his realm, is turning Chicago into a Potemkin Village, only made of barbed wire and barricades. Lynn Sweet writes in today's Sun-Times:

The Secret Service has an extensive shopping list to fortify the Chicago NATO summit, from barriers to withstand a vehicle going 50 mph to 8-foot-high fences that can’t be climbed. The specifics are contained in a bid request from the Secret Service, a document called “sensitive but unclassified.” 

Visiting heads of state won't be able to see the massive protests over these 8 ft. high barricades or see protesters getting beaten and arrested outside. They'll have to watch it all on TV. They certainly won't even hear about the protests back in the neighborhoods were autocrat Rahm is closing the city's mental health clinics.

 On the bright side, I assume the taxpayers won't have to foot the bill for hookers for the Secret Service guys.