Because every time I try to sit down and get any serious work done, I end up writing yet another broadside against the President Regent and his Band of Merry Robber Barons. I truly can’t help it: the vitriol just flows out of me, and, in all seriousness, it is beginning to tire me a bit. But I’m compulsive about it, which is stupid because this administration is stupid, stultifyingly stupid, and
not worth my time and emotional or intellectual energy.
It would not be worth it if these people did not purport to lead the free world, that is.
For the first few years I looked in vain for some saving grace. I was a bit encouraged after 9-11 when the Bush crew seemed to actually care about something other than aggrandizing their own egos and bank accounts. But that did not last, and the lack of reason that underlay each statement that came from Bush and his cabinet all pointed to one thing: these people are idiots.
They repeat their own carefully crafted bits of misdirection so often that they begin to believe it themselves. Or perhaps their logic is so twisted that they believed it to begin with, but that notion is almost too terrible to contemplate.
The current state of affairs really is beyond reason: Nixon was corrupt, but at least he had a soul. It may have been a rotten soul, but at least Nixon was human. He had doubts and uncertainties. He was paranoid. Real people are paranoid. The current administration is paranoid too, but it is paranoid as a matter of policy, and its predetermined policy is all it is capable of seeing.
This is not merely sad; this is alarming. Now I know how the average Roman felt as Nero fiddled and the city burned.
Where are the examples? Where is the logic? This is just name-calling without backing anything up. Who does this anymore?
Tacitus and Seutonius would have been ancient William Randolph Hearsts. Their “Globe Insider” journalism is considered by most contemporary scholars to be inflated, villainizing, and defaming accounts of the emperors and used to rouse public rage. As today, the public doesn’t mind a little (or a lot of) skewing of the facts so they can blame politicians for every woe. It is hearsay whether Nero started the fires in Rome, which was overpopulated and plagued often with fires anyway, and doubtful that he merely fiddled away during such a crisis.
Also, I see no reason to favor paranoid egotism over delusional egotism. They are both psychotic behaviors and have the power to be equally devastating.
Sigh. Do you see what I have to put up with, dear people? Regular readers of this weblog, not to mention anyone who has the slightest idea what is going on in world affairs generally will see evidence of the multitude of ways in which the Bush administration is simply divorced from reality. But for those living under large rocks or simply too dense to see, I shall provide a short list:
1. They claimed that there were WMDs in Iraq. When it was shown there were not, they claimed that there were WMDs in Iraq.
2. Halliburton. More specifically its subsidiary KBR.
3. Martha Stewart has been prosecuted for making herself $40,000 in a less-than-legal way. Enron’s Jeff Skilling and Kenneth Lay are allowed to cut deals with the “Justice” department by ratting on their own underlings after their company manipulated markets, cooked books, and went “tits up,” thereby wrecking the 401k accounts of many of their law-abiding employees and costing the people of California millions and millions of dollars during their recent energy crisis.
Enron was also probably instrumental in creating the latest energy bill, but Dick Cheney won’t let us know for sure, because he won’t allow the public’s business to become public knowledge. Texas-based Enron’s ties to Bush go back to his days as governor, perhaps before.
4. Iraq made little strategic, economic, or even humanitarian sense (as those in North Korea, the Sudan – sub-Saharan Africa generally, actually – were – and still are – suffering even more than the Iraqi people). Few or no invasions of its type has worked out well in America’s history, much less world history. The Brits managed to hang on to India for 200 years, and what did they get from it? A severe addiction to tea.
5. The “Clear Skies” initiative. Well, enough said about that.
I could go on, but my fingers tire.
Don’t get me wrong; I realize that the alternative is also not terribly exciting, but it beats what we have got now. Christin’s idealism is fine, but now is not the time to be dithering about proving a point about the limitations of a two party system. It is time to salvage what little bit of sensibility we have left. And what about the name calling? My dear “Bob”: it is no worse – considerably better, I should think – than the two-bit paranoia vomited forth by talk-radio. Remember the theory prevalent on several of those call-in shows that Clinton was aiming to become dictator of the world? The man couldn’t even cover up the two-bit scandal that ensued over his Oral, rather, Oval Office “hummer” much less take over the world. If the Right Wing can’t take a little bit of its own medicine, perhaps it should pack up its kit and go home.
Oh, and the Nero comment was not meant to be taken literally: I know as well as anyone that the legend is probably innacurate, but, by Jove, ‘tis part of the parlance: If I were to say that so-and-so was like a modern-day Johnny Appleseed it wouldn’t merit an hermeneutic examination either.