Blast from the Past
by Bill Shein

Recently, while cleaning up my computer's hard drive, I discovered an e-mail that I sent exactly five years ago today, just a few weeks before President Bush took office. A friend had e-mailed details of a "terrifyingly realistic" dream, and this was my reply.

From: Bill Shein
To: [Name Deleted]
Date: Jan. 4, 2001
Re: Your frightening dream

Thanks for the e-mail describing your nightmare about our future under President Bush. Scary stuff!

Clearly, you're worried about whether Bush's policies will have damaging, long-term effects on America and the world. While I know you're not a fan of the president-elect, let me at least explain why your dream is just a dream.

First, your fears about the threat of terrorism are legitimate. But President Clinton's national security team has aggressively briefed the incoming administration about the threat from groups like al-Qaida. If Osama bin Laden is determined to strike in the United States, you can be sure that memos about it won't be ignored — now or in the future.

Remember, too, that the final report of the Hart-Rudman Commission — chartered two years ago by the Defense Department to examine homeland security issues — will be presented to the administration in just a few weeks. It will detail numerous ways to secure the nation, and Bush's team is simply too experienced to fail to act on it immediately.

Next, regarding your dream's scene about Bush's policy toward Iraq: The United States would never invade another country based on fabricated or misleading evidence of an imminent threat. It's even more inconceivable that it would happen without support from the United Nations. Why? Because it would set global cooperation back by decades, and that would weaken our ability to address to urgent transnational threats — like terrorism. Why would a president want to do that?

Now, you know the part of your dream in which the executive branch secretly spies on Americans, without any judicial oversight, and President Bush denies that it represents the grabbing of "dictatorial" powers? That's just crazy. I mean, did you watch an Oliver Stone movie before bed? Because if an American president is ever forced to deny that he's becoming like a dictator, the nation is probably already in deep trouble.

And who could imagine — even in dreamland — that Congress might debate whether torture of human beings should be permitted? And that Vice President Cheney would argue in favor of torture? It's simply unthinkable.

On the economic part of your dream — by the way, what kind of nerd dreams about economics? — it's just not possible that in 2005, fully one-half of American workers will be earning less in inflation-adjusted dollars than they were in 2001, especially after four years of economic growth. For that to happen there would have to be a dramatic reorienting of economic and tax policy to favor big business and the wealthy, and the American people won't allow that to happen.

Let's also address the scene in your fantastical dream where President Bush uses obscure "bill-signing statements" to declare that he will ignore laws that serve as a check on executive power. If that was to happen, say, with reference to a new law against torture, no doubt CNN would play its "breaking news" theme and announce that a constitutional crisis was unfolding in front of our eyes. Am I right?

Finally, why can't you have fun, normal dreams like mine? Kate Beckinsale stops by for tea, Bono invites me onstage to sing "In the Name of Love," I patent my idea for an addictive numerical puzzle game called "Sheinoku" before anyone else, becoming a billionaire who is fancied by Kate Beckinsale? Because your kind of outlandish political nightmares can't be restful or restorative.

P.S. I got a good laugh from your dream's warning that Enron is "little more than a financial house of cards." Ha!

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Bill Shein's e-mail archive was recently featured on "Ripley's Believe It or Not!"

(This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle newspaper on January 4, 2006. Join a discussion about this column in Bill's blog. And read Bill's previous column, "My New Year's Resolutions").