I was talking about a Higher Power with someone and she said, “I have a hard time believing that there really is something out there that cares about me.”
The language she used brought questions to my mind. Questions by themselves are often more valuable than answers because they challenge our assumptions and take us beyond what we think we already know.
Here are the questions. Where exactly is “out there”? How far “out there” would God, or the Divine, really be? Above the clouds? Farther than the moon? A few light years? A trillion light years? A few feet? Six inches?
And ultimately, if this Reality is “out there” somewhere, no matter how far it may be, can it ever really be in contact with me, with us, over “here”?
If I touch something, or if something or someone touches me, doesn’t that mean there is no distance between us? And with literally no distance between us, what becomes of “in here” and “out there,” “you” and “me”?
If you ask these questions long enough, you will begin to understand what those wily old Chinese masters meant by “putting a second head on top of your own.” The chasm opening up beneath your feet marks the difference between spirituality and religion.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Techno-Hubris
How civilized do you think the human race really is? It depends on what we mean by “civilized.” I happen to be a student of history and politics. And when I survey the events of the last century, I see two world wars and dozens of other bloody conflicts, the proliferation of weapons that can destroy all life several times over, environmental destruction on a scale that seriously threatens to make us extinct, and a catalogue of genocides, cruelties and oppressions that would have made our 19th century ancestors turn insane with horror if they could have foreseen it all. If nothing else, such awareness should foster a sense of humility. But let’s stop for a moment and listen to what technology guru Ray Kurzweil has to say, according to a recent article in Rolling Stone:
“In our lifetime, Kurzweil believes, machines will not only surpass humans in intelligence - they will irrevocably alter what it means to be human. Cell-size robots will zap disease from our bloodstream. Superintelligent nanotechnology, operating on a molecular scale, will scrub pollution from our atmosphere. Our minds, our skills, our memories, our very consciousness will be backed up on computers—allowing us, in essence, to live forever, all our data saved by supersmart machines.”
Okay, Kurzweil is a lunatic. But Freeman Dyson is a highly respected scientist, one of the leading modern writers on physics. Here he is in the New York Review of Books a couple of years ago:
“Within a few more decades, as the continued exploring of genomes gives us better knowledge of the architecture of living creatures, we shall be able to design new species of microbes and plants according to our needs…Green technology could replace most of our existing chemical industries and a large part of our mining and manufacturing industries. Genetically engineered earthworms could extract common metals such as aluminum and titanium from clay, and genetically engineered seaweed could extract magnesium or gold from seawater. Green technology could also achieve more extensive recycling of waste products and worn-out machines, with great benefit to the environment. An economic system based on green technology could come much closer to the goal of sustainability, using sunlight instead of fossil fuels as the primary source of energy. New species of termite could be engineered to chew up derelict automobiles instead of houses, and new species of tree could be engineered to convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into liquid fuels instead of cellulose.”
Kurzweil thinks that immortality is a good idea, even though population has exploded beyond a sustainable level. Dyson, the more reasonable one, thinks that manipulating genes will solve our problems. His error seems less obvious. In fact it’s the same error. They both believe that humanity can be trusted to wield technological power in a benevolent fashion, and even that technology is a kind of agency in itself. But the history of technological advancement proves them wrong every step of the way.
A fool can sometimes teach us more than an intelligent man, if he makes a fundamental error more clear. Kurzweil with his “singularity” (and believe me, there are enthusiasts out there who really buy into this stuff) does us a service precisely in this way. The error is simply egoism and its corollary, intellectual pride—the belief that self-interest and reason is all we need. Technocrats simply refuse to see that there is an element of human nature that is independent of their goal-oriented model of control.
It’s not that technology is bad. Of course it isn’t. The problem is that human culture has not matured sufficiently to handle the almost god-like powers of modern technology. Instead we’re using them to kill each other and ourselves. The problem that faces us is actually the same that faced the ancient philosophers who puzzled over the problems of political life. How do we foster a civilization based on love, respect, and mutual cooperation, rather than the habitual structures of power, domination, and greed? Reason plays a part in this, but so do emotions. Without taking human emotional needs into account, we have no vantage point from which to understand love and hatred, peace and war, kindness or cruelty.
The techno-fix will not work. I wish it would, because it would be so much easier. But for a species that doesn’t understand its limitations, that chooses arrogance over humility and ignorance over self-awareness, in short, for an uncivilized creature, a barbarian in a suit and tie, technology will only reflect the emptiness and vanity of his soul. The task is to free ourselves from our inner chains, and only then can we use our tools with wisdom, and for the good.
“In our lifetime, Kurzweil believes, machines will not only surpass humans in intelligence - they will irrevocably alter what it means to be human. Cell-size robots will zap disease from our bloodstream. Superintelligent nanotechnology, operating on a molecular scale, will scrub pollution from our atmosphere. Our minds, our skills, our memories, our very consciousness will be backed up on computers—allowing us, in essence, to live forever, all our data saved by supersmart machines.”
Okay, Kurzweil is a lunatic. But Freeman Dyson is a highly respected scientist, one of the leading modern writers on physics. Here he is in the New York Review of Books a couple of years ago:
“Within a few more decades, as the continued exploring of genomes gives us better knowledge of the architecture of living creatures, we shall be able to design new species of microbes and plants according to our needs…Green technology could replace most of our existing chemical industries and a large part of our mining and manufacturing industries. Genetically engineered earthworms could extract common metals such as aluminum and titanium from clay, and genetically engineered seaweed could extract magnesium or gold from seawater. Green technology could also achieve more extensive recycling of waste products and worn-out machines, with great benefit to the environment. An economic system based on green technology could come much closer to the goal of sustainability, using sunlight instead of fossil fuels as the primary source of energy. New species of termite could be engineered to chew up derelict automobiles instead of houses, and new species of tree could be engineered to convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into liquid fuels instead of cellulose.”
Kurzweil thinks that immortality is a good idea, even though population has exploded beyond a sustainable level. Dyson, the more reasonable one, thinks that manipulating genes will solve our problems. His error seems less obvious. In fact it’s the same error. They both believe that humanity can be trusted to wield technological power in a benevolent fashion, and even that technology is a kind of agency in itself. But the history of technological advancement proves them wrong every step of the way.
A fool can sometimes teach us more than an intelligent man, if he makes a fundamental error more clear. Kurzweil with his “singularity” (and believe me, there are enthusiasts out there who really buy into this stuff) does us a service precisely in this way. The error is simply egoism and its corollary, intellectual pride—the belief that self-interest and reason is all we need. Technocrats simply refuse to see that there is an element of human nature that is independent of their goal-oriented model of control.
It’s not that technology is bad. Of course it isn’t. The problem is that human culture has not matured sufficiently to handle the almost god-like powers of modern technology. Instead we’re using them to kill each other and ourselves. The problem that faces us is actually the same that faced the ancient philosophers who puzzled over the problems of political life. How do we foster a civilization based on love, respect, and mutual cooperation, rather than the habitual structures of power, domination, and greed? Reason plays a part in this, but so do emotions. Without taking human emotional needs into account, we have no vantage point from which to understand love and hatred, peace and war, kindness or cruelty.
The techno-fix will not work. I wish it would, because it would be so much easier. But for a species that doesn’t understand its limitations, that chooses arrogance over humility and ignorance over self-awareness, in short, for an uncivilized creature, a barbarian in a suit and tie, technology will only reflect the emptiness and vanity of his soul. The task is to free ourselves from our inner chains, and only then can we use our tools with wisdom, and for the good.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
On Wall Street today...
For years on the news we’ve heard “On Wall Street today…” followed by a recital of a bunch of numbers that the majority of us don’t have the time to understand. And when something happened in the world of any importance, we would hear how Wall Street reacted. After a while, it became evident to anyone paying attention that Wall Street ran this country and pretty much dictated the terms of the debates, such as they were. Even though the words “Wall Street” don’t appear in our Constitution, the reality of Wall Street was more important. This is really the essence of right-wing and so-called free market ideology.
Conservative social and cultural issues such as abortion are only battering rams to keep the people divided, and this should be obvious if you observe that the huge corporations that have benefited from right-wing political dominance are never averse to financing and disseminating cultural products that are anything but “conservative.” NewsCorp, for instance, which owns Fox, is in the pornography business, as is Time Warner and many other big players.
The ideology of Wall Street is that profit trumps all values. We may give lip service to “all men are created equal” and other sentiments from the era of the nation’s founding, but in practice the only motive that is considered valid without question is the profit motive. Regulation, therefore, contradicts free market ideology, as does government action towards any public good considered to be independent of profit, or potentially limiting to business. At the libertarian end of the spectrum we have the absurd naivete of Ron Paul, who thinks that the market would work just dandy if government did virtually nothing. People know that it’s dangerous nonsense, which is why libertarians never win elections. The Wall Street ideology, on the other hand, sees government as a clenched fist protecting corporate interests, maintaining economic hegemony through military might abroad while greasing the wheels for privileged elites to make money off the working majority at home. The people bought into this sucker’s game because it sustained enough of a consumer lifestyle to keep them docile, and kept us divided by scapegoating minorities and playing on fear—first of communism, later, of terrorism.
The unique moment we are experiencing now is the utter collapse of Wall Street’s claims to legitimate rule over our lives. Of course people are afraid of this. Our de facto rulers, the Big Daddies of America, were supposed to have things in hand. Now we’re expected to quake with fear at the prospects of losing our jobs, our homes, our lifestyles. But at the risk of alienating some readers, I have to confess a kind of grim pleasure at the spectacle of all these government “experts” and economists and financiers and media pundits going spastic in hysteria as they contemplate the collapse of their beloved hog trough, the American economy. No, I do not enjoy the suffering of the millions of ordinary men and women who are the real victims of their masters’ rapacity. And I certainly am not pleased to witness the complete lack of consequences for the thieves who speculated the banking and credit system into the dirt. But I do think this was all bound to happen, and the fact that it is finally happening marks a decision point for our country and the world.
One of my constantly reiterated themes since I started this blog has been the distinction between the conventional view of what’s happening as some kind of malfunction within an essentially valid political framework, and my own view that corporatist rule constitutes a criminal enterprise. I include so-called “centrist” approaches within my indictment, because the interests of the financial elites still obviate all other values. The United States treasury has simply been looted by the ruling class. A criminal element gained political and military power and proceeded to steal public wealth to enrich its own private coffers. And when the stealing reached a certain point, the system began to collapse. That’s the truth, and that’s what you won’t hear in the media or from politicians.
I’ve come to believe that one of the ruling ideas of the Cheney regime (not Bush, who was too simple-minded to do anything but obey his handlers) was that a Third World-type dictatorship would be eventually necessary in the United States if rule by economic elites was to continue. For 1% of the people to maintain a monopoly on the country’s wealth, what was left of democratic institutions had to be radically modified, ensuring military and political dominance world-wide. Thus a permanent war on terrorism, a permanent state of emergency requiring a “unitary executive” (a dictator) who would be above the law, torture and other forms of state violence in order to keep people in fear, and so forth, were all components of the rightist “vision” of the future. The enemy was not terrorism, but the American people.
The ascension of Obama represents a setback to that vision, a victory for the old-fashioned East Coast establishment with its ties to European capitalism, as opposed to the cowboy Reaganist upstarts who dreamed of total American dominance. But the danger of dictatorship is not over. The centrists who are now in charge still seek to prop up the rule of Wall Street, to somehow save the system which places profit above all other values. The alternative, we are told, is socialism, which is unthinkable, so we carefully refrain from thinking about it. The danger, however, is that these attempts to save Wall Street may only exacerbate the crisis, leading to a resurgence of neo-fascism, which will be sold to us as the only way out.
So this is an important time, because we can all see that the emperor is naked. There is a lot of anger against Wall Street right now, and that’s a very healthy thing. This anger needs to build into a demand for economic justice in which the mass of working people are released from the vise of this destructive and criminal system. Thieves must be identified as thieves and their ill-gotten gains taken from them, through taxation or other means, and redistributed downwards. Yes, I’m talking about spreading the wealth to the people who actually created the wealth—us. Our work created our country’s wealth. The bankers and speculators did not create their own wealth; they gambled ours. And lost. The vast sums devoted to military dominance need also to be redirected to our real needs—housing, education, health, infrastructure. Our anger at Wall Street can be a fuel to ignite these demands. They are not only reasonable, but necessary for the survival of our republic.
Conservative social and cultural issues such as abortion are only battering rams to keep the people divided, and this should be obvious if you observe that the huge corporations that have benefited from right-wing political dominance are never averse to financing and disseminating cultural products that are anything but “conservative.” NewsCorp, for instance, which owns Fox, is in the pornography business, as is Time Warner and many other big players.
The ideology of Wall Street is that profit trumps all values. We may give lip service to “all men are created equal” and other sentiments from the era of the nation’s founding, but in practice the only motive that is considered valid without question is the profit motive. Regulation, therefore, contradicts free market ideology, as does government action towards any public good considered to be independent of profit, or potentially limiting to business. At the libertarian end of the spectrum we have the absurd naivete of Ron Paul, who thinks that the market would work just dandy if government did virtually nothing. People know that it’s dangerous nonsense, which is why libertarians never win elections. The Wall Street ideology, on the other hand, sees government as a clenched fist protecting corporate interests, maintaining economic hegemony through military might abroad while greasing the wheels for privileged elites to make money off the working majority at home. The people bought into this sucker’s game because it sustained enough of a consumer lifestyle to keep them docile, and kept us divided by scapegoating minorities and playing on fear—first of communism, later, of terrorism.
The unique moment we are experiencing now is the utter collapse of Wall Street’s claims to legitimate rule over our lives. Of course people are afraid of this. Our de facto rulers, the Big Daddies of America, were supposed to have things in hand. Now we’re expected to quake with fear at the prospects of losing our jobs, our homes, our lifestyles. But at the risk of alienating some readers, I have to confess a kind of grim pleasure at the spectacle of all these government “experts” and economists and financiers and media pundits going spastic in hysteria as they contemplate the collapse of their beloved hog trough, the American economy. No, I do not enjoy the suffering of the millions of ordinary men and women who are the real victims of their masters’ rapacity. And I certainly am not pleased to witness the complete lack of consequences for the thieves who speculated the banking and credit system into the dirt. But I do think this was all bound to happen, and the fact that it is finally happening marks a decision point for our country and the world.
One of my constantly reiterated themes since I started this blog has been the distinction between the conventional view of what’s happening as some kind of malfunction within an essentially valid political framework, and my own view that corporatist rule constitutes a criminal enterprise. I include so-called “centrist” approaches within my indictment, because the interests of the financial elites still obviate all other values. The United States treasury has simply been looted by the ruling class. A criminal element gained political and military power and proceeded to steal public wealth to enrich its own private coffers. And when the stealing reached a certain point, the system began to collapse. That’s the truth, and that’s what you won’t hear in the media or from politicians.
I’ve come to believe that one of the ruling ideas of the Cheney regime (not Bush, who was too simple-minded to do anything but obey his handlers) was that a Third World-type dictatorship would be eventually necessary in the United States if rule by economic elites was to continue. For 1% of the people to maintain a monopoly on the country’s wealth, what was left of democratic institutions had to be radically modified, ensuring military and political dominance world-wide. Thus a permanent war on terrorism, a permanent state of emergency requiring a “unitary executive” (a dictator) who would be above the law, torture and other forms of state violence in order to keep people in fear, and so forth, were all components of the rightist “vision” of the future. The enemy was not terrorism, but the American people.
The ascension of Obama represents a setback to that vision, a victory for the old-fashioned East Coast establishment with its ties to European capitalism, as opposed to the cowboy Reaganist upstarts who dreamed of total American dominance. But the danger of dictatorship is not over. The centrists who are now in charge still seek to prop up the rule of Wall Street, to somehow save the system which places profit above all other values. The alternative, we are told, is socialism, which is unthinkable, so we carefully refrain from thinking about it. The danger, however, is that these attempts to save Wall Street may only exacerbate the crisis, leading to a resurgence of neo-fascism, which will be sold to us as the only way out.
So this is an important time, because we can all see that the emperor is naked. There is a lot of anger against Wall Street right now, and that’s a very healthy thing. This anger needs to build into a demand for economic justice in which the mass of working people are released from the vise of this destructive and criminal system. Thieves must be identified as thieves and their ill-gotten gains taken from them, through taxation or other means, and redistributed downwards. Yes, I’m talking about spreading the wealth to the people who actually created the wealth—us. Our work created our country’s wealth. The bankers and speculators did not create their own wealth; they gambled ours. And lost. The vast sums devoted to military dominance need also to be redirected to our real needs—housing, education, health, infrastructure. Our anger at Wall Street can be a fuel to ignite these demands. They are not only reasonable, but necessary for the survival of our republic.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Numbers Don't Lie
African Americans make up 13% of America’s population. The population of the American prison system, on the other hand, is roughly 50% African American.
The very first conclusion I draw from this fact is that our judicial system, within which I would include law enforcement and corrections, is institutionally racist. To put it another way, white supremacy is built into the judicial system as it operates today.
This is only the first conclusion. From there it is necessary to determine how we are to proceed in order to remedy the situation.
Unfortunately, only those people who are willing to consider the possibility that the status quo involves injustice will even come to this first conclusion. There is a sizeable and quite powerful segment of Americans, particularly in right-wing conservative circles, and more generally in the political establishment, who are unwilling to ever concede that the status quo involves injustice. Especially when it comes to race and race relations, these conservatives and establishment figures are determined to deny that there is anything wrong or unjust about American institutions, laws, or economic structures.
There is really no subtlety or nuance involved here, although the right wing has spent years trying to make it seem so. The simple question in this case is: why should the 13% of the population who are black furnish half of the prison population?
Once we’ve eliminated the possibility of chronic institutional racism, I would argue that the only other explanation is that there is something inherently wrong with African Americans—in other words, that they are racially inferior.
Since the civil rights movement, it has become less acceptable to maintain an intellectual position of white supremacy in public. Instead, conservatives have resorted to insinuations, code words, winks and nudges, directed at possible white constituencies who will respond with predictable fear and hatred, and then dutifully elect “tough” or “law and order” candidates.
Trying to reason from cause and effect is only a delaying tactic. If blacks are more likely to commit crimes, then why? Because of their race? Or does economic racism necessarily increase crime within the minority community? To admit the latter is impossible for the right-wingers, so they talk ad nauseam about personal responsibility, hoping you’ll forget about the lopsided statistics and settle into a complacent moralism. Nothing needs to be done, in other words, except wag our fingers at the poor black people and tell them to behave better.
The overrated gasbag Daniel Moynihan, a Democrat, began the fashion of blaming the problem on “culture.” African Americans had developed a dysfunctional culture, which led to single-parent families, drugs, and crime. Again, this begs the question, why? Are blacks simply racially predisposed to create inferior forms of culture? National Socialist doctrine, I would remind you, focused almost exclusively on culture as an indication of racial purity or impurity. The Jew’s culture was a primary threat to the German people, even more than Jewish money or politics. To try to explain racial disparity in terms of culture is to simply switch the terms of white supremacist arguments so that they sound more tolerant and civilized. We want to help these people develop a healthier culture, you see, so that they can succeed. At the same time, we don’t need to examine our judicial system or economic system with a critical eye, since the problem is “cultural.”
Every couple of decades or so, some white “scientist” or “researcher” will come out with a book or a study that proves statistically that blacks are inferior to whites. In 1994 we had a book called The Bell Curve, which actually created serious discussion and controversy. It was simply a resurrection of old fallacies in new and more sophisticated language, and mucked up with a lot of complex and ambiguous hedging about genes and intelligence and how that translated into “success.” Like the reemergence of the national id after years of attempted sublimation, white supremacist assumptions periodically resurface in order to justify the status quo.
This need to justify the status quo at all costs is a prevalent and widely held compulsion that applies across a wide range of issues besides race. It makes serious evaluation of our problems extremely difficult.
I ask again, then, and in this case the subject is racism: why are 50% of American prison inmates black, when black people are only 13% of our population? If you can’t start with the word “racism” (and then move from there into substantive discussions about how to change our society), I guarantee that you will end up twisting your mind into knots, all so that you don’t have to admit the problem—in short, so that you can stay comfortably asleep.
The very first conclusion I draw from this fact is that our judicial system, within which I would include law enforcement and corrections, is institutionally racist. To put it another way, white supremacy is built into the judicial system as it operates today.
This is only the first conclusion. From there it is necessary to determine how we are to proceed in order to remedy the situation.
Unfortunately, only those people who are willing to consider the possibility that the status quo involves injustice will even come to this first conclusion. There is a sizeable and quite powerful segment of Americans, particularly in right-wing conservative circles, and more generally in the political establishment, who are unwilling to ever concede that the status quo involves injustice. Especially when it comes to race and race relations, these conservatives and establishment figures are determined to deny that there is anything wrong or unjust about American institutions, laws, or economic structures.
There is really no subtlety or nuance involved here, although the right wing has spent years trying to make it seem so. The simple question in this case is: why should the 13% of the population who are black furnish half of the prison population?
Once we’ve eliminated the possibility of chronic institutional racism, I would argue that the only other explanation is that there is something inherently wrong with African Americans—in other words, that they are racially inferior.
Since the civil rights movement, it has become less acceptable to maintain an intellectual position of white supremacy in public. Instead, conservatives have resorted to insinuations, code words, winks and nudges, directed at possible white constituencies who will respond with predictable fear and hatred, and then dutifully elect “tough” or “law and order” candidates.
Trying to reason from cause and effect is only a delaying tactic. If blacks are more likely to commit crimes, then why? Because of their race? Or does economic racism necessarily increase crime within the minority community? To admit the latter is impossible for the right-wingers, so they talk ad nauseam about personal responsibility, hoping you’ll forget about the lopsided statistics and settle into a complacent moralism. Nothing needs to be done, in other words, except wag our fingers at the poor black people and tell them to behave better.
The overrated gasbag Daniel Moynihan, a Democrat, began the fashion of blaming the problem on “culture.” African Americans had developed a dysfunctional culture, which led to single-parent families, drugs, and crime. Again, this begs the question, why? Are blacks simply racially predisposed to create inferior forms of culture? National Socialist doctrine, I would remind you, focused almost exclusively on culture as an indication of racial purity or impurity. The Jew’s culture was a primary threat to the German people, even more than Jewish money or politics. To try to explain racial disparity in terms of culture is to simply switch the terms of white supremacist arguments so that they sound more tolerant and civilized. We want to help these people develop a healthier culture, you see, so that they can succeed. At the same time, we don’t need to examine our judicial system or economic system with a critical eye, since the problem is “cultural.”
Every couple of decades or so, some white “scientist” or “researcher” will come out with a book or a study that proves statistically that blacks are inferior to whites. In 1994 we had a book called The Bell Curve, which actually created serious discussion and controversy. It was simply a resurrection of old fallacies in new and more sophisticated language, and mucked up with a lot of complex and ambiguous hedging about genes and intelligence and how that translated into “success.” Like the reemergence of the national id after years of attempted sublimation, white supremacist assumptions periodically resurface in order to justify the status quo.
This need to justify the status quo at all costs is a prevalent and widely held compulsion that applies across a wide range of issues besides race. It makes serious evaluation of our problems extremely difficult.
I ask again, then, and in this case the subject is racism: why are 50% of American prison inmates black, when black people are only 13% of our population? If you can’t start with the word “racism” (and then move from there into substantive discussions about how to change our society), I guarantee that you will end up twisting your mind into knots, all so that you don’t have to admit the problem—in short, so that you can stay comfortably asleep.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Not Important
Rush Limbaugh says he hopes Obama will fail. Limbaugh says that Obama is unqualified. Limbaugh, blaugh, blaugh, blaugh. How do I know this? Because it’s reported on the news. Apparently, Rush Limbaugh is news. He has a radio show, you see, a conservative radio show, and, uh, it’s newsworthy.
Yeah, AM radio. That’s where it’s happening. That’s what all the kids are listening to. Hannity and O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs and lots of other guys have radio shows. AM radio shows. That’s the wave of the future, you know. AM. When I’m tired of listening to good music with good sound quality, there’s nothing I like better than to turn on the crackling old AM and listen to some bellicose ignoramus raving and whining about whatever he happens to be hating on that day. Mmm, good.
These people that report on what Rush Limbaugh says apparently think that he is significant. I’d like to know how some fucking tub of lard on AM radio gets to be significant. Honestly, these shows are the most boring piles of shit in the universe. I can predict every single thing on them. Everything is the fault of liberals. Nothing is ever the fault of conservatives. Liberals are a priori wrong on anything, no exceptions. Even if conservatives have controlled the White House for the last eight years, and the Congress for twelve out of the last fourteen years, none of the problems we have are attributable to them. It’s always someone else’s fault.
That’s it. I’ve summed up the content of every single AM right wing “talk” show in a paragraph. It never varies. Anyone who can listen to this crap day after day, year after year, and not be bored out of his skull, is lower than a moron. He’s a sheep.
Rush Limbaugh is over, and deep down he knows it. The more these parasites lose, the crazier they get. Look for even more insane blubbering in the months to come, and look for it to be reported on as if it mattered. It does not matter. The cretins sitting home during the day listening to AM radio are dying. People are turning away from the putrid stink of wingnuttery in record numbers. There are actual problems that ordinary people are faced with, and fat ugly demagogues have nothing to offer them but more of the same ignorant rubbish. Eventually even the media will stop paying attention to Rush Limbaugh, and then he and his friends will dissipate into the air like yesterday’s fart.
Yeah, AM radio. That’s where it’s happening. That’s what all the kids are listening to. Hannity and O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs and lots of other guys have radio shows. AM radio shows. That’s the wave of the future, you know. AM. When I’m tired of listening to good music with good sound quality, there’s nothing I like better than to turn on the crackling old AM and listen to some bellicose ignoramus raving and whining about whatever he happens to be hating on that day. Mmm, good.
These people that report on what Rush Limbaugh says apparently think that he is significant. I’d like to know how some fucking tub of lard on AM radio gets to be significant. Honestly, these shows are the most boring piles of shit in the universe. I can predict every single thing on them. Everything is the fault of liberals. Nothing is ever the fault of conservatives. Liberals are a priori wrong on anything, no exceptions. Even if conservatives have controlled the White House for the last eight years, and the Congress for twelve out of the last fourteen years, none of the problems we have are attributable to them. It’s always someone else’s fault.
That’s it. I’ve summed up the content of every single AM right wing “talk” show in a paragraph. It never varies. Anyone who can listen to this crap day after day, year after year, and not be bored out of his skull, is lower than a moron. He’s a sheep.
Rush Limbaugh is over, and deep down he knows it. The more these parasites lose, the crazier they get. Look for even more insane blubbering in the months to come, and look for it to be reported on as if it mattered. It does not matter. The cretins sitting home during the day listening to AM radio are dying. People are turning away from the putrid stink of wingnuttery in record numbers. There are actual problems that ordinary people are faced with, and fat ugly demagogues have nothing to offer them but more of the same ignorant rubbish. Eventually even the media will stop paying attention to Rush Limbaugh, and then he and his friends will dissipate into the air like yesterday’s fart.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Between the Lines
The U.S. was "suspected" of two missile strikes in Pakistan on Friday. "Suspected" only because the Pentagon never publicly acknowledges such things, but of course, who else would have launched a missile strike?
The American empire flexing its muscles in the Middle East never makes me feel any safer, regardless of whether the dead in this case are innocent civilians or (as is claimed) "suspected militants."
In the world of realpolitik, one always needs to read between the lines. Tom Hayden offers an interesting take in his Obama Notes:
"The night after Obama's torture order, I was at dinner with a human rights lawyer who worried that the right-wing would launch political attacks on Obama for "letting our guard down." With that in mind, I became certain that the following day's Predator attack in Pakistan, which killed at least 10-18 people, was as much political as military, a message that the Pentagon will keep on launching strikes against a sovereign country in keeping with "war on terrorism" objectives. The cold truth may be that those people died in Pakistan to make closing Guantanamo more politically palatable. Many more will die as America tries to exorcise and replace the war on terror mentality.
"Obama has good reason to worry about counter-pressures from the right and the intelligence community. One day after the executive order banning torture was signed, an odd article appeared on the New York Times' front page about a former detainee who has joined al Qaeda in Yemen. There was no apparent reason for the article's timing except the Obama announcement. The detainee in question was released by President Bush, and is suspected of involvement in car bombings in September 2007."
It would seem that a President advocating change needs to cover his back at all times, prone as he is to constant harassment from the militarists and their right-wing enablers in and out of government. When, for instance, a seemingly coincidental article in the NYT such as that cited by Hayden appears, you must assume a deliberate strategy on the part of some faction. This is what it's been like for a long time--the real maneuvering is secret, far from the phony narratives concocted to explain events to a passive TV audience. It's to be expected that the domination of politics by elites will take on a conspiratorial character, although not the neat and monolithic type as dreamed by believers in Illuminati and such. There are power struggles within the establishment, within the ruling class if you will, and that is the real story occurring behind the curtain of public events and pronouncements.
The struggle against the notion of American empire will continue to be the primary field of struggle for progressives. It will be long and difficult because we are opposed not only by the Republican right, but by the so-called centrist Democrats, including Obama, who are unwilling (for whatever reasons: self-interest, political expediency, or just fear) to advocate true peace, which would involve shifting away from old notions of hegemony. It will take many years for this gradual shift to occur, but ironically the one factor in our favor is the collapse of the financial system. The sheer cost of military dominance is becoming economically unsustainable.
The American empire flexing its muscles in the Middle East never makes me feel any safer, regardless of whether the dead in this case are innocent civilians or (as is claimed) "suspected militants."
In the world of realpolitik, one always needs to read between the lines. Tom Hayden offers an interesting take in his Obama Notes:
"The night after Obama's torture order, I was at dinner with a human rights lawyer who worried that the right-wing would launch political attacks on Obama for "letting our guard down." With that in mind, I became certain that the following day's Predator attack in Pakistan, which killed at least 10-18 people, was as much political as military, a message that the Pentagon will keep on launching strikes against a sovereign country in keeping with "war on terrorism" objectives. The cold truth may be that those people died in Pakistan to make closing Guantanamo more politically palatable. Many more will die as America tries to exorcise and replace the war on terror mentality.
"Obama has good reason to worry about counter-pressures from the right and the intelligence community. One day after the executive order banning torture was signed, an odd article appeared on the New York Times' front page about a former detainee who has joined al Qaeda in Yemen. There was no apparent reason for the article's timing except the Obama announcement. The detainee in question was released by President Bush, and is suspected of involvement in car bombings in September 2007."
It would seem that a President advocating change needs to cover his back at all times, prone as he is to constant harassment from the militarists and their right-wing enablers in and out of government. When, for instance, a seemingly coincidental article in the NYT such as that cited by Hayden appears, you must assume a deliberate strategy on the part of some faction. This is what it's been like for a long time--the real maneuvering is secret, far from the phony narratives concocted to explain events to a passive TV audience. It's to be expected that the domination of politics by elites will take on a conspiratorial character, although not the neat and monolithic type as dreamed by believers in Illuminati and such. There are power struggles within the establishment, within the ruling class if you will, and that is the real story occurring behind the curtain of public events and pronouncements.
The struggle against the notion of American empire will continue to be the primary field of struggle for progressives. It will be long and difficult because we are opposed not only by the Republican right, but by the so-called centrist Democrats, including Obama, who are unwilling (for whatever reasons: self-interest, political expediency, or just fear) to advocate true peace, which would involve shifting away from old notions of hegemony. It will take many years for this gradual shift to occur, but ironically the one factor in our favor is the collapse of the financial system. The sheer cost of military dominance is becoming economically unsustainable.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Final Philippic Against Bush
In the last week we’ve seen Bush give a final press conference and a farewell address. Before that there were some interviews, and in all these appearances Bush has sought to defend his record, his so-called legacy. It’s not enough that he leave office having been despised by close to 80% of Americans and—this is the remarkable thing—been despised by the majority for the greatest continuous length of time of any President in U.S. history. It’s not enough to simply exit quietly to enjoy his wealth and privileges while ordinary Americans sink into an economic morass. Bush must now try to justify himself. During his eight-year reign, he operated primarily in secrecy. Most of his speeches were made at military rallies, before captive audiences who were required to be silent and respectful. Or he would appear at carefully rehearsed events that were prepared by his handlers so that there would be no hard questions. Most of his interviews were granted to toadies, charlatans, and demagogues, such as Sean Hannity and other Fox “news” propagandists. So I find it unseemly, to say the least, to observe Bush trying to appear open and available in the final days of his regime. It is obvious that he was sealed in his bubble long ago, and that there is no possibility of contact with reality.
The “farewell address” (I shudder to use the same phrase to describe this pathetic piece of theater, when it brings to mind Washington’s great speech) was the usual carefully parsed pack of lies, among which was the following: “Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a friend of the United States.” Hundreds of thousands of deaths (by conservative estimate!), many hundreds of thousands of more displaced, a country in ruins, and the killing hasn’t stopped, even if Bush succeeded in paying off some of the militias to reduce violence as part of his phony “surge.” That’s what I see. But Bush’s Iraq is apparently populated by unicorns, rainbows and happy furry bunnies liberated by American kindness. There’s no grief for the murdered children, the shattered families, or even the deaths of American soldiers, because after all, they signed up.
The news conference I found more interesting, in a perverse kind of way. Bush on his own, without a prepared speech, is usually a weird experience, and revealing, if you have the stomach for it. Here his body language was sickening in itself—looking down, grimacing like a half-wit, that creepy little snigger that passes for a laugh in his mind, the way he shifted from foot to foot like a very bad boy who’s been caught and is trying to think of a good excuse—Bush is the anti-gravitas. There is no dignity in this man.
So let’s go to the press conference:
“I think Israel has a right to defend herself. Obviously in any of these kinds of situations, I would hope that she would continue to be mindful of innocent folks, and that they help, you know, expedite the delivery of humanitarian aid.”
Israel defending herself seems to mean the same thing as America defending herself in Bush World: smashing everything in sight with overwhelming military power, and to hell with civilians. In other words, Israel’s government is acting just like Bush, so any talk of being “mindful of innocent folks” is nothing but empty words for the public.
“And third, why haven't we achieved peace? That's a good question.”
Since you basically agree with whatever the Israeli government does, no matter what, that gives it carte blanche to do whatever it wants without any consequences. Your unilateralism has been disastrous for the Middle East. Your mindless policy of aggression has made everything much worse than it was in 2001 when you took office. And yet you pretend otherwise, against all the evidence. There hasn’t been a more feeble, or more futile, peace effort in the history of American Middle East policy than yours.
“The most urgent threat that he'll have to deal with, and other Presidents after him [Obama] will have to deal with, is an attack on our homeland.”
Where did you get this “homeland” word? Everyone I know has always said, “my country.” If you look back through all of our history, it always says “country,” not “homeland.” It’s really a German phrase, isn’t it? At first I thought this was some creepy way to instill a kind of proto-fascist thought-process into the citizenry. You know, dying for the fatherland and all that. Recently I realized that “homeland” implies that America owns other lands, foreign lands, like a colonial power. So it’s really a colonialist/imperialist style of terminology. Well, I’m sure you didn’t invent it. As usual, you adopted a way of speaking that you were instructed in.
“This [Republican] party will come back. But the party's message has got to be that different points of view are included in the party.”
That’s odd, because that’s not the way things were in your administration. You demanded absolute loyalty, ideological and otherwise, from the party, and they voted as an almost unanimous block for your policies. It was quite robot-like, really. So this sudden interest in diversity of opinions can’t be taken seriously.
“In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession. In the meantime there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth.”
The recession you are “ending on” is many, many times the severity of the situation you supposedly inherited. To compare the mild downturn which actually started in March 2001, when you were already in office, to what we’re going through now, which has already lasted longer than any recession in 25 years and will probably get worse, is nothing short of chicanery. You are a liar.
As for job growth, there were only 3 million jobs created in your two terms, as opposed to 21 million under Clinton. Then we lost 2.6 million jobs in 2008, the most since World War II. Are you blind?
“And so, I view those who get angry and yell and say bad things and, you know, all that kind of stuff, it's just a very few people in the country. I don't know why they get angry. I don't know why they get hostile. It's not the first time, however, in history that people have expressed themselves in sometimes undignified ways. I've been reading, you know, a lot about Abraham Lincoln during my presidency, and there was some pretty harsh discord when it came to the 16th President, just like there's been harsh discord for the 43rd President.”
Arrogant pipsqueak, you dare to compare yourself to Lincoln? You're a mental midget calling yourself a giant.
You know, I never thought of myself as that patriotic, not in the stereotypical way. But since Bush has taken office, I realize how patriotic I am, because I am so angry at the way he has trampled on the Constitution of our country and made a mockery of our traditions. Yes, I am furious, and I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror if I weren’t outraged by your actions. Just in the last few months your administration has pushed through regulations that allow mining companies to dump waste into rivers and factory farms to allow their animal waste to seep into the reservoirs. You’ve opened up two million more acres of public land in the West, in and around our national monuments, to oil drilling. You’ve removed protections from workers exposed to toxic chemicals. You’ve pushed through regulations that allow providers to deny treatment to people because of religious views. These are only examples from the last few months! Your entire eight years have been filled with nothing but this kind of thing, policies that hurt ordinary people all over this country. Many people are losing their jobs right now because all you cared about was giving more wealth to your rich friends. More will suffer from poverty. Many people have died needlessly because of you. And you wonder why there is anger! What could be more despicable than this willful unconsciousness of the suffering of others caused by your own actions?
“You know, Presidents can try to avoid hard decisions and therefore avoid controversy. That's just not my nature. I'm the kind of person that, you know, is willing to take on hard tasks, and in times of war people get emotional; I understand that. Never really, you know, spent that much time, frankly, worrying about the loud voices. I of course hear them, but they didn't affect my policy, nor did they affect -- affect how I made decisions.”
If you had really made hard, principled decisions we would be seeing some benefit from them. You might not be popular with the majority, but you would have a sizable minority in this country that would understand and agree with what you did. But there’s a difference between hard decisions and wrong decisions. You’ve consistently made the wrong ones, and to say that you’re unpopular because you’re principled is sheer vanity on your part. Do you really believe that over 70% of Americans just don’t understand how high-principled you are? That we’re all so stupid that we turned against you because you made tough decisions? We judge by the results, Bush, we see the havoc you’ve created, and the total failure on all fronts, and we judge by that. If you invade a country, for instance, and then make every wrong decision about how to secure that country, so that the infrastructure collapses and the country dissolves into civil war, while billions of dollars get poured into the toilet, do you think the people aren’t going to judge by those results? Most of the time you didn’t even make decisions, you appointed incompetent ideologues who made bad decisions that you didn’t keep track of. So spare us this idiotic nonsense about “your nature” and how you take on hard tasks. It’s a lie. You’re obviously lazy and inattentive, and the people know that.
“I wasn't kidding when I said Wall Street got drunk and we got the hangover.”
Your entire administration was about handing over our wealth to Wall Street. You outsourced the war to greedy contractors who ripped us off on an unprecedented scale. Yet you talk as if Wall Street was something different than you, something outside of you that you had nothing to do with.
“Clearly putting a Mission Accomplished on a aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say something differently, but nevertheless, it conveyed a different message. Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake.”
Yeah, you would consider anything that goes wrong with your public relations a mistake. But since you did whatever Karl Rove thought would be politically advantageous, there doesn’t seem to have been anything else going on except public relations. You flew onto that aircraft carrier in your little flight suit, and you thought you were really cool, I bet. Oh look at me, I’m a macho man. And six years later, and many thousands dead and maimed later, the only mistake in your mind was that banner behind you.
“I've thought long and hard about Katrina -- you know, could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. The problem with that and -- is that law enforcement would have been pulled away from the mission. And then your questions, I suspect, would have been, how could you possibly have flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge, and police officers that were needed to expedite traffic out of New Orleans were taken off the task to look after you?”
You seem to think that you’re just an individual with some sort of symbolic power. Don’t you realize that you were the President during Katrina? It is grotesque beyond belief that you would think that the problem with Katrina was you not visiting New Orleans right away. People were stranded there dying, and nobody came to help, you idiot! Five days after the levees broke, and FEMA didn’t even know that there were people at the Superdome screaming for help. You were the head of the executive branch. It was your job to help those people, and you failed miserably. And you continued to fail after that. There has been no commitment to recovery in New Orleans. Most survivors have either scattered to other places or are still living in trailers. You didn’t care, and it’s obvious from your feeble response here that you still don’t care.
“I believe that running the Social Security idea right after the '04 elections was a mistake.”
Destroying Social Security was a bad idea no matter when you would have proposed it. But it’s so typical of you that a matter of political timing would be your sole idea of a mistake.
“There have been disappointments. Abu Ghraib obviously was a huge disappointment during the presidency. Not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment. I don't know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were -- things didn't go according to plan, let's put it that way.”
How can you call Abu Ghraib a disappointment? It was a crime, and it was really just the tip of the iceberg concerning the widespread crime of torture, which you approved. Abu Ghraib was merely a result of the policies that you, Cheney, and Rumsfeld approved. And you continue to promote torture to this day. So I guess the disappointment was that the photos of Abu Ghraib were released. If there had been no photos, no publicity, you wouldn’t have been disappointed.
And by the way, words can't express how disturbing it is to have my government using torture and trying to justify it. What is this sick obsession with torture, anyway? Anyone with morals knows it's wrong. If you're not against torture, you're probably a sociopath. Yet those of us who oppose this were said to be anti-American, as if being an American meant having to endorse your sick perversions. I honestly believe you should be in a prison mental ward instead of strutting around the world stage.
Then it’s gruesome that you would say that you were disappointed by “not having weapons of mass destruction.” But it’s very revealing. Of course you wanted to find horrible weapons to justify your unilateral, illegal war. The weapons were of course just a pretext for the invasion, because you wanted to invade even before 9/11, so you used whatever made-up arguments you could, and you twisted the intelligence to fit your desire to invade. And that’s a crime. I remember how you joked about it later at the press dinner--where are those weapons, ha ha--just like you would smirk and laugh when talking about the war, even while people were dying. I've been ashamed to even look at you. It's as if you are the personification of everything soulless and cynical in this world, while pretending to be a paragon of virtue.
“And in terms of the decisions that I had made to protect the homeland, I wouldn't worry about popularity. What I would worry about is the Constitution of the United States, and putting plans in place that makes it easier to find out what the enemy is thinking, because all these debates will matter not if there's another attack on the homeland. The question won't be, you know, were you critical of this plan or not; the question is going to be, why didn't you do something?”
How bizarre that you would say you were worried about the Constitution. Yeah, I guess you were worried that the Constitution of our country was something that made us weak, so you sought ways to nullify it, in violation of your oath of office, in which you pledged to protect it. As far as the notion that torture makes it easier to find out what the enemy is thinking, I don’t believe you. Torture never served that end. It never led to any convictions or foiled any threats. The phony examples you’ve given have been debunked over and over, but of course that doesn’t stop you from continuing to lie about it. But in any case, if you don’t think torture is wrong, how can you claim to be moral, or a Christian? Whenever challenged on this, you sputter about how you’re protecting us and our kids as if you were the big daddy and we shouldn’t question you. As if this country, which has survived a civil war and world wars and many trials, needs to crawl under the bed and shiver in fear because of a few terrorists, and then hand our liberties over to some little tin-horn wimp squeaking about the homeland. You impudent, pathetic little man, did you really think that one terrorist attack meant that we had to scrap over two hundred years of our history and become a one-party dictatorship like China? Because that’s the way you acted. To call it hubris would be to dignify it. You are simply and appallingly ignorant of what the United States of America is about. When you talk about freedom I guess you mean the freedom to buy products from big corporations, or maybe the freedom to vote in rigged elections. But freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unlawful search and seizure—you don’t have the slightest inkling of what that is.
“Do you remember what it was like right after September the 11th around here? In press conferences and opinion pieces and in stories -- that sometimes were news stories and sometimes opinion pieces -- people were saying, how come they didn't see it, how come they didn't connect the dots? Do you remember what the environment was like in Washington? I do. When people were hauled up in front of Congress and members of Congress were asking questions about, how come you didn't know this, that, or the other? And then we start putting policy in place -- legal policy in place to connect the dots, and all of a sudden people were saying, how come you're connecting the dots?”
You were warned that bin Laden was going to attack, and you took a vacation. Not a single person was disciplined or investigated for failing to stop 9/11. Instead they got medals. So why shouldn’t the Congress ask questions, you dolt? That’s what they’re supposed to do, but as I recall, there really weren’t enough questions. And suddenly the Patriot Act is brought out, this huge document produced very quickly—and maybe you call this “connecting the dots”—yet it had little to do with actually preventing terrorism and everything to do with giving unlimited power to the executive and its spy agencies to attack the left, jail people without trial, and generally exploit the crisis for your own advantage. Then you used the NSA to tap Americans phones, without getting a FISA warrant as you were required to do. It’s not as if it would have been hard to get a FISA warrant. You would have easily gotten one. So the implication is clear—you broke the law and went around FISA because you were using the NSA to spy on political opponents, and you didn’t want that known. How contemptible.
“I believe this -- the phrase "burdens of the office" is overstated. You know, it's kind of like, why me? Oh, the burdens, you know. Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch? It's just -- it's pathetic, isn't it, self-pity.”
Unconscious people generally affirm what they try hardest to deny. It is clear that you are drenched in self-pity. The fact that you would use the financial collapse happening on your watch is revealing. To you, the financial collapse just happened and you had nothing to do with that. You’re just a passive observer. All the dismantling of regulations, the looting of the treasury to help your rich friends through sweetheart contracts and tax cuts, the economic sinkhole of your two wars and your phony war of terror, all that had nothing to do with the financial collapse in your mind.
What’s amazing to me is how such a narcissist could have served two terms as President of the U.S. Everything’s about you and your feelings. I never get a sense from you of the public good, or even civic duty. It’s all just a little drama with you in the center. It’s revolting to listen to a totally self-centered person with no values and realize that this was our President. It’s really shocking. Why did you even run for President? It doesn’t seem you ever cared about the country, or had a vision of any kind. I’ll bet you were persuaded by a bunch of Republican buddies that you could win, and you thought, “Wow, that would be really cool to be President.” You get to be really important and strut around and have your picture taken. You can live in the White House and get your name in the history books. Is that why you ran for President? I can’t figure it out. I could see if you were someone who was ambitious for power, but when you got to be President you basically did whatever Dick Cheney and Karl Rove told you to do. You were disengaged from the job. It was as if you wanted to be President without having to think.
The fact that you actually wore a little device on your back during the 2004 campaign, through which somebody would whisper your lines to you, really shows that you have no pride at all. Oh, we know that you were being prompted during the debates. We saw the device under your suit jacket. Of course the media never probed too deeply on that one because it was so embarrassing, and the media bent over backwards not to reveal anything embarrassing about the “commander in chief.” But I can’t imagine anyone with a shred of pride agreeing to do that. So on the one hand, you’re a narcissist, thinking about yourself all the time, and on the other hand you don’t have enough pride or resilience to really stand on your own. That’s a very sick combination.
The fact that you chose your campaign manager, Dick Cheney, to be your running mate in 2000 was a real tip-off. I mean, no other politician would have done that. Most Presidents want a VP who is subordinate, but you chose someone who manages your campaign, someone who ended up managing your administration. Why did you allow that? Why, if you really care so much about your legacy, would you hand your power off to someone else? I can only conclude that you’re basically a shiftless coward with no center. Without stronger people directing you, you’re helpless. You’ll just sit there with a lost look in your eyes, even when the country’s being attacked, until someone tells you what to do.
“People said, well, the federal response [to Katrina] was slow. Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed. I remember going to see those helicopter drivers, Coast Guard drivers, to thank them for their courageous efforts to rescue people off roofs. Thirty thousand people were pulled off roofs right after the storm moved through. It's a pretty quick response.”
Yes, the Coast Guard did their job. But no one else did. So now you hide behind the Coast Guard, just like you hide behind the troops, making excuses. Revolting.
“It's just the rhetoric got out of control at times…I don't know why. You need to ask those who -- those who used the words they used.”
You never disassociated yourself from the rhetoric. Your entire team used the rhetoric. Your Republican supporters used the rhetoric. And you used it too. You implied over and over that Democrats were somehow aiding the enemy. Cheney said that if Kerry won there would be probably be another attack. Now you act as if you played no part in any of this, as if your work with Karl Rove never happened. You’re lying.
I’m getting tired. There’s much more I could say. I could talk about how you promised to fire anyone involved in outing the CIA agent, and broke the promise, and then commuted Libby’s sentence. I could talk about how you paid phony journalists to promote your policies and planted Jeff Gannon in the press room; how you went back on nuclear “no first use” policy which opened the door for Armageddon; I could talk about your close ties to Enron, failing to support troops with proper armor, failing to support troops when they come home, not allowing dead soldiers’ coffins to be photographed, the horrendous military commissions act voiding habeas corpus, Terry Schiavo, Dubai, appointing right wing judges like Roberts and Alito, censoring global warming data, using false terror alerts for political ends, firing attorneys when they refused to cooperate in election tampering, lickspittle Gonzo and his chronic amnesia, Pat Tillman, Blackwater, oh I give up. I couldn’t possibly mention all the damage you’ve done, all the scandals and crimes and lies, because everything you did failed and everything you touched turned to shit.
Just a few final thoughts. When you and your friends argued for a theory of the “unitary executive,” did you understand that meant that you were above the law? That you were essentially lawless? What’s to prevent a President from announcing a never-ending war (remember to give it a snappy name) and then using that war to justify overriding all the safeguards against the separation of powers? In fact, that’s exactly what you did, or what you tried to do. I count that as treason because it deliberately strikes at the very heart of our republic and seeks to establish a dictatorship. You basically tried to overthrow the United States, using terrorism as a pretext.
Among the most shameful aspects of the last eight years were the elections of 2000 and 2004. You cheated in order to win Florida in the 2000 election. Most people agree that this is true. And in a way, it seems par for the course for a politician to try to win by any means. But then in 2004, on Election Day, when there was no more campaigning, you suddenly took Air Force One to Columbus, Ohio, accompanied by Karl Rove, where you met with Kenneth Blackwell, Republican campaign manager and Secretary of State for Ohio. Why did you do that? That seems very unusual for the President to make a trip to Ohio on Election Day, when there was no more campaigning to be done.
There was voter suppression in Ohio. We know that. What is obvious to anyone with eyes to see is that there was also outright fraud in Ohio. You conspired with Karl Rove to steal an election. Ken Blackwell was involved in switching computer-tabulated votes in that state to your column. And as a President, not just a candidate, that constitutes a breathtaking violation of every citizen’s trust in their government. When we can’t believe that our votes are counted, when elections can be rigged by the government, that’s a sign that freedom has ended and we can give up hope.
So in your secret little mind you know that you really didn’t earn being President. Both elections were stolen. For you to live with it requires an astonishing level of mendacity, perhaps a very complicated system of rationalization and denial. It’s certainly delusional, and it means that you were always unfit to serve, from the very beginning until now.
I gather that you are interested in how history will judge your Presidency. This is how it will be. In the list of Presidents in the history books, your name will be the only one with an asterisk next to it. Next to the asterisk at the bottom of the page it will say “Illegitimate.” You will be the President that unlawfully usurped the White House, and was therefore, technically speaking, never President at all. These eight years will be like a gap in history, an unfortunate and tragic period in which a criminal acted as if he were the elected leader of the country. Your name will be only a blot on the history of the nation.
And if your Presidency is mentioned when kids are being taught social studies at school, you will be compared to Benedict Arnold. Both were traitors to the United States; both names will be forever associated with crime and treason. This is a bit unfair to Benedict Arnold, the teacher will point out, since Arnold was a real hero before he betrayed the country. But Bush was never anything, and moreover, he betrayed the country while serving as President, which is the greatest act of treason one could imagine.
That is your legacy. Now go away. We mourn all the people who died and suffered because of you, and the many who will continue to suffer in the future because of your betrayals. There was a sign in New Orleans after Katrina that said “All looters will be shot.” In the end, all you are is a looter. You looted whatever you could and then you whined that you were misunderstood. Count yourself lucky that you haven’t been shot, because that’s what you deserve. We don’t want to hear any more bullshit from you, Go to your fucking ranch with your thorazine-addled wife, get drunk, and leave us alone. You’ve done enough damage. Get lost.
The “farewell address” (I shudder to use the same phrase to describe this pathetic piece of theater, when it brings to mind Washington’s great speech) was the usual carefully parsed pack of lies, among which was the following: “Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a friend of the United States.” Hundreds of thousands of deaths (by conservative estimate!), many hundreds of thousands of more displaced, a country in ruins, and the killing hasn’t stopped, even if Bush succeeded in paying off some of the militias to reduce violence as part of his phony “surge.” That’s what I see. But Bush’s Iraq is apparently populated by unicorns, rainbows and happy furry bunnies liberated by American kindness. There’s no grief for the murdered children, the shattered families, or even the deaths of American soldiers, because after all, they signed up.
The news conference I found more interesting, in a perverse kind of way. Bush on his own, without a prepared speech, is usually a weird experience, and revealing, if you have the stomach for it. Here his body language was sickening in itself—looking down, grimacing like a half-wit, that creepy little snigger that passes for a laugh in his mind, the way he shifted from foot to foot like a very bad boy who’s been caught and is trying to think of a good excuse—Bush is the anti-gravitas. There is no dignity in this man.
So let’s go to the press conference:
“I think Israel has a right to defend herself. Obviously in any of these kinds of situations, I would hope that she would continue to be mindful of innocent folks, and that they help, you know, expedite the delivery of humanitarian aid.”
Israel defending herself seems to mean the same thing as America defending herself in Bush World: smashing everything in sight with overwhelming military power, and to hell with civilians. In other words, Israel’s government is acting just like Bush, so any talk of being “mindful of innocent folks” is nothing but empty words for the public.
“And third, why haven't we achieved peace? That's a good question.”
Since you basically agree with whatever the Israeli government does, no matter what, that gives it carte blanche to do whatever it wants without any consequences. Your unilateralism has been disastrous for the Middle East. Your mindless policy of aggression has made everything much worse than it was in 2001 when you took office. And yet you pretend otherwise, against all the evidence. There hasn’t been a more feeble, or more futile, peace effort in the history of American Middle East policy than yours.
“The most urgent threat that he'll have to deal with, and other Presidents after him [Obama] will have to deal with, is an attack on our homeland.”
Where did you get this “homeland” word? Everyone I know has always said, “my country.” If you look back through all of our history, it always says “country,” not “homeland.” It’s really a German phrase, isn’t it? At first I thought this was some creepy way to instill a kind of proto-fascist thought-process into the citizenry. You know, dying for the fatherland and all that. Recently I realized that “homeland” implies that America owns other lands, foreign lands, like a colonial power. So it’s really a colonialist/imperialist style of terminology. Well, I’m sure you didn’t invent it. As usual, you adopted a way of speaking that you were instructed in.
“This [Republican] party will come back. But the party's message has got to be that different points of view are included in the party.”
That’s odd, because that’s not the way things were in your administration. You demanded absolute loyalty, ideological and otherwise, from the party, and they voted as an almost unanimous block for your policies. It was quite robot-like, really. So this sudden interest in diversity of opinions can’t be taken seriously.
“In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession. In the meantime there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth.”
The recession you are “ending on” is many, many times the severity of the situation you supposedly inherited. To compare the mild downturn which actually started in March 2001, when you were already in office, to what we’re going through now, which has already lasted longer than any recession in 25 years and will probably get worse, is nothing short of chicanery. You are a liar.
As for job growth, there were only 3 million jobs created in your two terms, as opposed to 21 million under Clinton. Then we lost 2.6 million jobs in 2008, the most since World War II. Are you blind?
“And so, I view those who get angry and yell and say bad things and, you know, all that kind of stuff, it's just a very few people in the country. I don't know why they get angry. I don't know why they get hostile. It's not the first time, however, in history that people have expressed themselves in sometimes undignified ways. I've been reading, you know, a lot about Abraham Lincoln during my presidency, and there was some pretty harsh discord when it came to the 16th President, just like there's been harsh discord for the 43rd President.”
Arrogant pipsqueak, you dare to compare yourself to Lincoln? You're a mental midget calling yourself a giant.
You know, I never thought of myself as that patriotic, not in the stereotypical way. But since Bush has taken office, I realize how patriotic I am, because I am so angry at the way he has trampled on the Constitution of our country and made a mockery of our traditions. Yes, I am furious, and I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror if I weren’t outraged by your actions. Just in the last few months your administration has pushed through regulations that allow mining companies to dump waste into rivers and factory farms to allow their animal waste to seep into the reservoirs. You’ve opened up two million more acres of public land in the West, in and around our national monuments, to oil drilling. You’ve removed protections from workers exposed to toxic chemicals. You’ve pushed through regulations that allow providers to deny treatment to people because of religious views. These are only examples from the last few months! Your entire eight years have been filled with nothing but this kind of thing, policies that hurt ordinary people all over this country. Many people are losing their jobs right now because all you cared about was giving more wealth to your rich friends. More will suffer from poverty. Many people have died needlessly because of you. And you wonder why there is anger! What could be more despicable than this willful unconsciousness of the suffering of others caused by your own actions?
“You know, Presidents can try to avoid hard decisions and therefore avoid controversy. That's just not my nature. I'm the kind of person that, you know, is willing to take on hard tasks, and in times of war people get emotional; I understand that. Never really, you know, spent that much time, frankly, worrying about the loud voices. I of course hear them, but they didn't affect my policy, nor did they affect -- affect how I made decisions.”
If you had really made hard, principled decisions we would be seeing some benefit from them. You might not be popular with the majority, but you would have a sizable minority in this country that would understand and agree with what you did. But there’s a difference between hard decisions and wrong decisions. You’ve consistently made the wrong ones, and to say that you’re unpopular because you’re principled is sheer vanity on your part. Do you really believe that over 70% of Americans just don’t understand how high-principled you are? That we’re all so stupid that we turned against you because you made tough decisions? We judge by the results, Bush, we see the havoc you’ve created, and the total failure on all fronts, and we judge by that. If you invade a country, for instance, and then make every wrong decision about how to secure that country, so that the infrastructure collapses and the country dissolves into civil war, while billions of dollars get poured into the toilet, do you think the people aren’t going to judge by those results? Most of the time you didn’t even make decisions, you appointed incompetent ideologues who made bad decisions that you didn’t keep track of. So spare us this idiotic nonsense about “your nature” and how you take on hard tasks. It’s a lie. You’re obviously lazy and inattentive, and the people know that.
“I wasn't kidding when I said Wall Street got drunk and we got the hangover.”
Your entire administration was about handing over our wealth to Wall Street. You outsourced the war to greedy contractors who ripped us off on an unprecedented scale. Yet you talk as if Wall Street was something different than you, something outside of you that you had nothing to do with.
“Clearly putting a Mission Accomplished on a aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say something differently, but nevertheless, it conveyed a different message. Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake.”
Yeah, you would consider anything that goes wrong with your public relations a mistake. But since you did whatever Karl Rove thought would be politically advantageous, there doesn’t seem to have been anything else going on except public relations. You flew onto that aircraft carrier in your little flight suit, and you thought you were really cool, I bet. Oh look at me, I’m a macho man. And six years later, and many thousands dead and maimed later, the only mistake in your mind was that banner behind you.
“I've thought long and hard about Katrina -- you know, could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. The problem with that and -- is that law enforcement would have been pulled away from the mission. And then your questions, I suspect, would have been, how could you possibly have flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge, and police officers that were needed to expedite traffic out of New Orleans were taken off the task to look after you?”
You seem to think that you’re just an individual with some sort of symbolic power. Don’t you realize that you were the President during Katrina? It is grotesque beyond belief that you would think that the problem with Katrina was you not visiting New Orleans right away. People were stranded there dying, and nobody came to help, you idiot! Five days after the levees broke, and FEMA didn’t even know that there were people at the Superdome screaming for help. You were the head of the executive branch. It was your job to help those people, and you failed miserably. And you continued to fail after that. There has been no commitment to recovery in New Orleans. Most survivors have either scattered to other places or are still living in trailers. You didn’t care, and it’s obvious from your feeble response here that you still don’t care.
“I believe that running the Social Security idea right after the '04 elections was a mistake.”
Destroying Social Security was a bad idea no matter when you would have proposed it. But it’s so typical of you that a matter of political timing would be your sole idea of a mistake.
“There have been disappointments. Abu Ghraib obviously was a huge disappointment during the presidency. Not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment. I don't know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were -- things didn't go according to plan, let's put it that way.”
How can you call Abu Ghraib a disappointment? It was a crime, and it was really just the tip of the iceberg concerning the widespread crime of torture, which you approved. Abu Ghraib was merely a result of the policies that you, Cheney, and Rumsfeld approved. And you continue to promote torture to this day. So I guess the disappointment was that the photos of Abu Ghraib were released. If there had been no photos, no publicity, you wouldn’t have been disappointed.
And by the way, words can't express how disturbing it is to have my government using torture and trying to justify it. What is this sick obsession with torture, anyway? Anyone with morals knows it's wrong. If you're not against torture, you're probably a sociopath. Yet those of us who oppose this were said to be anti-American, as if being an American meant having to endorse your sick perversions. I honestly believe you should be in a prison mental ward instead of strutting around the world stage.
Then it’s gruesome that you would say that you were disappointed by “not having weapons of mass destruction.” But it’s very revealing. Of course you wanted to find horrible weapons to justify your unilateral, illegal war. The weapons were of course just a pretext for the invasion, because you wanted to invade even before 9/11, so you used whatever made-up arguments you could, and you twisted the intelligence to fit your desire to invade. And that’s a crime. I remember how you joked about it later at the press dinner--where are those weapons, ha ha--just like you would smirk and laugh when talking about the war, even while people were dying. I've been ashamed to even look at you. It's as if you are the personification of everything soulless and cynical in this world, while pretending to be a paragon of virtue.
“And in terms of the decisions that I had made to protect the homeland, I wouldn't worry about popularity. What I would worry about is the Constitution of the United States, and putting plans in place that makes it easier to find out what the enemy is thinking, because all these debates will matter not if there's another attack on the homeland. The question won't be, you know, were you critical of this plan or not; the question is going to be, why didn't you do something?”
How bizarre that you would say you were worried about the Constitution. Yeah, I guess you were worried that the Constitution of our country was something that made us weak, so you sought ways to nullify it, in violation of your oath of office, in which you pledged to protect it. As far as the notion that torture makes it easier to find out what the enemy is thinking, I don’t believe you. Torture never served that end. It never led to any convictions or foiled any threats. The phony examples you’ve given have been debunked over and over, but of course that doesn’t stop you from continuing to lie about it. But in any case, if you don’t think torture is wrong, how can you claim to be moral, or a Christian? Whenever challenged on this, you sputter about how you’re protecting us and our kids as if you were the big daddy and we shouldn’t question you. As if this country, which has survived a civil war and world wars and many trials, needs to crawl under the bed and shiver in fear because of a few terrorists, and then hand our liberties over to some little tin-horn wimp squeaking about the homeland. You impudent, pathetic little man, did you really think that one terrorist attack meant that we had to scrap over two hundred years of our history and become a one-party dictatorship like China? Because that’s the way you acted. To call it hubris would be to dignify it. You are simply and appallingly ignorant of what the United States of America is about. When you talk about freedom I guess you mean the freedom to buy products from big corporations, or maybe the freedom to vote in rigged elections. But freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unlawful search and seizure—you don’t have the slightest inkling of what that is.
“Do you remember what it was like right after September the 11th around here? In press conferences and opinion pieces and in stories -- that sometimes were news stories and sometimes opinion pieces -- people were saying, how come they didn't see it, how come they didn't connect the dots? Do you remember what the environment was like in Washington? I do. When people were hauled up in front of Congress and members of Congress were asking questions about, how come you didn't know this, that, or the other? And then we start putting policy in place -- legal policy in place to connect the dots, and all of a sudden people were saying, how come you're connecting the dots?”
You were warned that bin Laden was going to attack, and you took a vacation. Not a single person was disciplined or investigated for failing to stop 9/11. Instead they got medals. So why shouldn’t the Congress ask questions, you dolt? That’s what they’re supposed to do, but as I recall, there really weren’t enough questions. And suddenly the Patriot Act is brought out, this huge document produced very quickly—and maybe you call this “connecting the dots”—yet it had little to do with actually preventing terrorism and everything to do with giving unlimited power to the executive and its spy agencies to attack the left, jail people without trial, and generally exploit the crisis for your own advantage. Then you used the NSA to tap Americans phones, without getting a FISA warrant as you were required to do. It’s not as if it would have been hard to get a FISA warrant. You would have easily gotten one. So the implication is clear—you broke the law and went around FISA because you were using the NSA to spy on political opponents, and you didn’t want that known. How contemptible.
“I believe this -- the phrase "burdens of the office" is overstated. You know, it's kind of like, why me? Oh, the burdens, you know. Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch? It's just -- it's pathetic, isn't it, self-pity.”
Unconscious people generally affirm what they try hardest to deny. It is clear that you are drenched in self-pity. The fact that you would use the financial collapse happening on your watch is revealing. To you, the financial collapse just happened and you had nothing to do with that. You’re just a passive observer. All the dismantling of regulations, the looting of the treasury to help your rich friends through sweetheart contracts and tax cuts, the economic sinkhole of your two wars and your phony war of terror, all that had nothing to do with the financial collapse in your mind.
What’s amazing to me is how such a narcissist could have served two terms as President of the U.S. Everything’s about you and your feelings. I never get a sense from you of the public good, or even civic duty. It’s all just a little drama with you in the center. It’s revolting to listen to a totally self-centered person with no values and realize that this was our President. It’s really shocking. Why did you even run for President? It doesn’t seem you ever cared about the country, or had a vision of any kind. I’ll bet you were persuaded by a bunch of Republican buddies that you could win, and you thought, “Wow, that would be really cool to be President.” You get to be really important and strut around and have your picture taken. You can live in the White House and get your name in the history books. Is that why you ran for President? I can’t figure it out. I could see if you were someone who was ambitious for power, but when you got to be President you basically did whatever Dick Cheney and Karl Rove told you to do. You were disengaged from the job. It was as if you wanted to be President without having to think.
The fact that you actually wore a little device on your back during the 2004 campaign, through which somebody would whisper your lines to you, really shows that you have no pride at all. Oh, we know that you were being prompted during the debates. We saw the device under your suit jacket. Of course the media never probed too deeply on that one because it was so embarrassing, and the media bent over backwards not to reveal anything embarrassing about the “commander in chief.” But I can’t imagine anyone with a shred of pride agreeing to do that. So on the one hand, you’re a narcissist, thinking about yourself all the time, and on the other hand you don’t have enough pride or resilience to really stand on your own. That’s a very sick combination.
The fact that you chose your campaign manager, Dick Cheney, to be your running mate in 2000 was a real tip-off. I mean, no other politician would have done that. Most Presidents want a VP who is subordinate, but you chose someone who manages your campaign, someone who ended up managing your administration. Why did you allow that? Why, if you really care so much about your legacy, would you hand your power off to someone else? I can only conclude that you’re basically a shiftless coward with no center. Without stronger people directing you, you’re helpless. You’ll just sit there with a lost look in your eyes, even when the country’s being attacked, until someone tells you what to do.
“People said, well, the federal response [to Katrina] was slow. Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed. I remember going to see those helicopter drivers, Coast Guard drivers, to thank them for their courageous efforts to rescue people off roofs. Thirty thousand people were pulled off roofs right after the storm moved through. It's a pretty quick response.”
Yes, the Coast Guard did their job. But no one else did. So now you hide behind the Coast Guard, just like you hide behind the troops, making excuses. Revolting.
“It's just the rhetoric got out of control at times…I don't know why. You need to ask those who -- those who used the words they used.”
You never disassociated yourself from the rhetoric. Your entire team used the rhetoric. Your Republican supporters used the rhetoric. And you used it too. You implied over and over that Democrats were somehow aiding the enemy. Cheney said that if Kerry won there would be probably be another attack. Now you act as if you played no part in any of this, as if your work with Karl Rove never happened. You’re lying.
I’m getting tired. There’s much more I could say. I could talk about how you promised to fire anyone involved in outing the CIA agent, and broke the promise, and then commuted Libby’s sentence. I could talk about how you paid phony journalists to promote your policies and planted Jeff Gannon in the press room; how you went back on nuclear “no first use” policy which opened the door for Armageddon; I could talk about your close ties to Enron, failing to support troops with proper armor, failing to support troops when they come home, not allowing dead soldiers’ coffins to be photographed, the horrendous military commissions act voiding habeas corpus, Terry Schiavo, Dubai, appointing right wing judges like Roberts and Alito, censoring global warming data, using false terror alerts for political ends, firing attorneys when they refused to cooperate in election tampering, lickspittle Gonzo and his chronic amnesia, Pat Tillman, Blackwater, oh I give up. I couldn’t possibly mention all the damage you’ve done, all the scandals and crimes and lies, because everything you did failed and everything you touched turned to shit.
Just a few final thoughts. When you and your friends argued for a theory of the “unitary executive,” did you understand that meant that you were above the law? That you were essentially lawless? What’s to prevent a President from announcing a never-ending war (remember to give it a snappy name) and then using that war to justify overriding all the safeguards against the separation of powers? In fact, that’s exactly what you did, or what you tried to do. I count that as treason because it deliberately strikes at the very heart of our republic and seeks to establish a dictatorship. You basically tried to overthrow the United States, using terrorism as a pretext.
Among the most shameful aspects of the last eight years were the elections of 2000 and 2004. You cheated in order to win Florida in the 2000 election. Most people agree that this is true. And in a way, it seems par for the course for a politician to try to win by any means. But then in 2004, on Election Day, when there was no more campaigning, you suddenly took Air Force One to Columbus, Ohio, accompanied by Karl Rove, where you met with Kenneth Blackwell, Republican campaign manager and Secretary of State for Ohio. Why did you do that? That seems very unusual for the President to make a trip to Ohio on Election Day, when there was no more campaigning to be done.
There was voter suppression in Ohio. We know that. What is obvious to anyone with eyes to see is that there was also outright fraud in Ohio. You conspired with Karl Rove to steal an election. Ken Blackwell was involved in switching computer-tabulated votes in that state to your column. And as a President, not just a candidate, that constitutes a breathtaking violation of every citizen’s trust in their government. When we can’t believe that our votes are counted, when elections can be rigged by the government, that’s a sign that freedom has ended and we can give up hope.
So in your secret little mind you know that you really didn’t earn being President. Both elections were stolen. For you to live with it requires an astonishing level of mendacity, perhaps a very complicated system of rationalization and denial. It’s certainly delusional, and it means that you were always unfit to serve, from the very beginning until now.
I gather that you are interested in how history will judge your Presidency. This is how it will be. In the list of Presidents in the history books, your name will be the only one with an asterisk next to it. Next to the asterisk at the bottom of the page it will say “Illegitimate.” You will be the President that unlawfully usurped the White House, and was therefore, technically speaking, never President at all. These eight years will be like a gap in history, an unfortunate and tragic period in which a criminal acted as if he were the elected leader of the country. Your name will be only a blot on the history of the nation.
And if your Presidency is mentioned when kids are being taught social studies at school, you will be compared to Benedict Arnold. Both were traitors to the United States; both names will be forever associated with crime and treason. This is a bit unfair to Benedict Arnold, the teacher will point out, since Arnold was a real hero before he betrayed the country. But Bush was never anything, and moreover, he betrayed the country while serving as President, which is the greatest act of treason one could imagine.
That is your legacy. Now go away. We mourn all the people who died and suffered because of you, and the many who will continue to suffer in the future because of your betrayals. There was a sign in New Orleans after Katrina that said “All looters will be shot.” In the end, all you are is a looter. You looted whatever you could and then you whined that you were misunderstood. Count yourself lucky that you haven’t been shot, because that’s what you deserve. We don’t want to hear any more bullshit from you, Go to your fucking ranch with your thorazine-addled wife, get drunk, and leave us alone. You’ve done enough damage. Get lost.
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