OT: George W Bush, a closer look, a scary picture
John Manning
A second Bush term? Simply unfathomable
By D.G. Bowman
Democratic Underground, October 25, 2003
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/10/25_bush.html
Above the empty vapor that is President
Bush swirls the incredulity of those
rational Americans who simply cannot fathom
how anybody aside from war profiteers,
religious fanatics, corporate vultures and
environmental predators could possibly vote
for the re-election of such a dangerously
unsuitable man.
How could such a thing happen? How could
this incurious fraud get another four years
(unless it's behind bars)? It defies the
norms of civility and reasonableness. It
beggars the imagination.
Yet the possibility hovers above us,
terrifyingly so. Does the deadly (not to
mention immoral and illegal) occupation of
Iraq mean nothing? Does the looting of the
Treasury send no signal? Does the
breathtaking assault on our air and water
and natural spaces fail to resonate?
There's plenty to be alarmed about, and
there's plenty of ammunition, but not
enough bells are jangling.
And what about the pretender himself?
Vindictive, pampered, childish, petty,
semi-literate -- surely not the sort of man
who should be leading the world's lone
superpower.
Yet there he sits, a poster boy for
nepotism, smirking and strutting and
playing Napoleon, despoiling the office
that rightly belongs to the honorable Al Gore.
Do we not want someone in the Oval Office
who is engaged in the drama around him, who
appreciates history and culture and nuance,
who doesn't feel the need to play dress-up
on a flight deck or burnish a faux cowboy
image at a stage-managed Texas "ranch"?
Have our presidential standards really sunk
this low?
We wonder, slack-jawed, at what is wrong
with that other half of the populace. Are
they too much in the grip of Wal-Mart and
NASCAR and "Joe Millionaire" to appreciate
what's happening right under their noses?
Has the oft-lamented "dumbing down" of
America really hit bottom? At the other
pole, has the Darwinian detachment of our
haughty rich really become that entrenched?
Do they really want society's safety net
shredded for good? No wonder Europe shakes
its collective head.
We have numbers. We have facts. We know
that more than half the nation voted for
the other candidate in 2000, and we know
that theft occurred.
The laundry list of Bush's offenses is
plain to see, and it continues to grow --
as does the body count from Iraq. Yet an
alarming number of our fellow citizens
still cling to the fantastic notion that he
is an exemplar of "Christian" kindness,
honesty and decency, when in truth he is
nothing of the sort.
He is among the greatest charlatans in
American political history -- perhaps the
greatest. The fact he's abetted by a
fawning press corps makes his guy-next-door
facade all the more infuriating, not to
mention nauseating.
The cognitive disconnect surrounding George
Dubya straddles all segments of society,
from blue-collar Joe Sixpack to Mr. and
Mrs. Struggling Middle Class to (not
surprising, considering how Junior's
economic policies benefit them alone) Mr.
and Mrs. Gilded Fat Cat.
The atmosphere in Bush's America is
Orwellian to the extreme; it's as if we're
living in a mirrored universe, where war is
peace, desecration is conservation and
bankruptcy is prosperity.
It's as if Pod People have sprung up among
us, people with bared fangs, people with no
empathy for their fellow beings, people
egged on by raging, venomous GOP hypocrites
such as Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and
Michael Savage.
Sadly, they include our friends and
relatives, people who should know better.
What do they want? Why do they support this
destructive little man? Money? Religion?
Tax cuts and Armageddon? Don't rich folks
also need clean air and water?
One can blame the cheerleading corporate
media, of course -- the sad truth is the
Fourth Estate has indeed gone from
tenacious watchdog to obsequious lapdog --
but I suspect it goes deeper than that. Any
reasonably intelligent American can get the
truth about Junior's right-wing radicalism
simply by reading or listening to
alternative news sources.
When presented with the facts, though,
Bush's True Believers do what the
administration's neo-cons did when
presented with intelligence that didn't
square with their Iraq invasion plans: They
blame the messenger. They get surly and
defensive. With their binary mind-set and
rigid "moral" codes, they neatly parcel
things into "us" vs. "them." "Good" vs.
"evil." "Patriot" vs. "traitor." It's
myopic and messianic, and it defies all
logic and common sense.
One might take solace in the possibility
that those who voted for Junior three years
ago thinking he was a moderate "uniter" now
see through his extremism, and will opt for
ABB (anybody but Bush) the next time
around. Such a turnaround will have to be
substantial, however, because of the very
real threat of GOP-engineered vote fraud --
just one more thing to worry about in the
Age of Dubya and Co.
This is a tired topic, of course, but we're
a tired nation, groaning under the yoke of
the Bush juggernaut.
Much of what I've said here has been vented
elsewhere, but I think it bears repeating.
Get up on your rooftop and start shouting.
Keep sending articles to that stubborn
co-worker. Keep on talking to that
hoodwinked friend or sibling.
Unless we convince our fellow Americans --
the ones who aren't at the coddled top of
the economic ladder, and the ones who don't
let blind religiosity cloud their thinking
-- that this bumbling patrician in cowpoke
clothing is dangerous not only to them but
to their grandchildren's future, then we
truly are finished as the world's oldest
representative democracy.
We've been warned, and amply so. As the
saying goes, we'll get what we deserve.
D.G. Bowman, a former longtime editor at
The Seattle Times, is a writer and editor
in Waikoloa, Hawaii. He detailed his
gradual and empowering transformation from
Republican to Democrat in the October 2001
issue of The Washington Monthly. Abraham
Lincoln - "who would probably sue the
current GOP for the slanderous use of his
name" - remains his favorite American
president. He can be reached at
for....@verizon.net.