Opinion 5/26/2006

A FEW COMMENTS ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION.
by Keith Shirey

I write these words in a state of near despondency modified by some hope for the future.  Junior Bush is the worst president in the history of the republic and we might take years and years to recover from his incompetence and immoral policies. His tragically inadequate responses to the burning issues of our time, such as global warming, may doom the human race. His violent neo-con gang infested Administration reminds one of the ethics of the Bloods and Crips.  His wrenching attempts to correctly use the English language are symbolic of his staggering ineptitude.  President Bush is stumbing along on a mysterious road in his bizarre spiritual journey.  Manifesting a somehow strange, messianic determination to shape the world in his image of America, he has said that God wants him to be President and has guided him in sending the troops to die and be maimed in Iraq.  God, he thinks, also has directed him in the killing of up to 100,00 Iraqis since the illegal invasion and occupation of that country. Whether  Bush thinks he is in league with Infinite Goodness when he invents  his pathetic,  disconnected, contradictory, and lying rationales for the temporary conquest of that third rate power is unclear.  Of course his appeals to God, patriotism and fear are the usual transparent staples to manipulate the masses.  It is politcal rhetoric long associated with demagogues, tyrants, and dictators. Whether Junior is the sidekick of the horrifying Dick Cheney, or the other way around, I leave it to the reader to decide. 

That Bush's administration is threadbare is no news.  But, of course, worse, it is clear that the Emperor of our (informal?) empire is buck naked.  He wears only cowboy boots whose soles are covered with the manure of dog poop, not cow manure, acquired on his phoney Texas ranch. The ranch is a kind of Disneyland purchased before his Pirates Of The Caribbean adventures abroad  and designed to convey a "just plain folks" brush clearing facade for this Andover and Yale preppie.  While his macho posturing still appeals to some red necks in the red states, most of us have caught on to what he is:  All hat and no cattle.  He is a swaggering braggart of the worst Texas sort.  His boiling passion for war seems to be engendered by an Oedipal need to outdo his daddy.  His bullhorn noises on tbe site of 9/11 had a certain masculine beefiness, but, alas, this Glorious Leader has turned out to be only a dimwitted sissy.  He isn't man enough to admit his mistakes. When asked,during an interview to name one error he had made, he couldn't admit to one!

The administration's major political triumph, if it can be said to have any triumphs at all, is to invent non-solutions to non-problems or problems that, under our constitution, should be properly left to the states to deal with, if they merit any attention at all.  Too, the Administration and its meddling, rabble rousing spokespersons are want to make pronouncements on matters that ought to be in the realm of the private.  These are such issues as same sex marriage, stem cell research, promoting celebacy, birth control, the morning after pill, homosexuality, religion, the nature of God, the purpose of human life, creationism vs. evolution, etc.  One is reminded of what occurred in the Solomon Islands in relation to the movie, the Da Vinci Code  The Solomon Islands has no movie theaters, but that didn't stop prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare, from proclaiming that the Da Vinci Code would be banned from movie theaters on the islands.  Certainly a non-solution to a non-issue!  One suspects that the Bush Administration had a hand in the decision.

 Perhaps the non-endearing symbol of the Bush Administration is Don Rumsfeld.  In public he attempts to sound witty but comes across as wacky.   He is brash and sometimes micheivous in a kind of charming way.  So, he is full of fun but also very full of shit.  Our troops have been forced to live out the most anguishing consequence of his, Junior's and Vice's policy choices.  Historically, Rummie has imposed his will on a spineless press corps like a strong, deft pianist playing a keyboard.  Recently things have changed, just a bit.  Unfortunately, Rummie's frequent, ominous publicly poetic moods portend the death of more of our troops, who  - as we all know now - Rummie sent to war without adequate armor. 

An intelligent press corps would have never called him "Rumstud," but would have spotted his self-indulgent meanderings and lies for what they were.  To better understand Rummie's narcissistic personality disorder, note that, in his self-indulgent public performances, his stories and commentary are always about Don Rumsfeld; he somehow manages to put himself at the center of the universe. 

 Junior and Rummie offer a kind of rhetorical parody of the usual offerings from standard issue politicians because their words are so obviously forced, heartless, and devoid of human sympathy.  They both speak ebulliently (albeit haltingly, with a kind of desperation, in Junior's case) about an unreality  of freedom in  Afghanistan (a narco state), and Iraq (in the throes of a civil war) and about an America, whose government actually is of, by and for the rich under these republicans, whose infrastructure is collapsing, whose industrial base is gone, whose middle class is disappearing and where 1 of ever 137 Americans in prison, making it a kind of semi penal colony for the under educated and racial minorities.  I do not make these statements lightly. For example, " . . .the American worker has suffered from wage stagnation, the wide-spread confiscation of benefits (including pensions they once believed were guaranteed), and a permanent state of employment insecurity," as New York Times Columnist Bob Herbert pointed out on 5/25/06. It used to be that education and training guaranteed one a good job.  Not so anymore.  The private sector is not able to generate enough good jobs for educated and well trained Americans.  For documentation, read "The Disposable American" by Louis Uchitelle.  Also see Kevin Philips, "The Politics Of The Rich And Poor.

Someone once said that we all respond differently to politics, but all humans respond the same to a red hot poker.  Bush and the Republicans and their policies are this red hot poker whose heat we feel but cannot hide from.  Tolstoy along the same lines said, "What makes us happy is different, but what makes us miserable is very, very similar."  Perhaps an oil addicted, credit card indebted, TV immersed, corporate media controlled, and fearful populace will awaken and understand that their beloved country is not longer a democracy, but a corporate plutocracy, and take their country back from Bush, Rumsfeld and the republicans.  Of course in this, our former democracy, a referendum today, on what is just and right, is comprised of who is voted to be the next American Idol and whether that election was rigged.  Yet, there are enough of us who "get it" to take back our country.  I think we will in 2006 and 2008. We damn well better.