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George W. Bush should be quiet. It would be much more becoming. It would be much more relaxing (for him and us). It is far too early for reinvention & rehabilitation. The current book tour is way too much to take.
Kiss. Kiss. Hold hands with Oprah. Kiss again. Put the sides of your heads together with your arm around her, lovers, almost. Where was all that touchy feely love for eight years? You are not a lovable teddy bear, George, and some people want to have you investigated for war crimes, okay?
I sometimes imagine that we are lost, collectively and individually. Then things get worse. Then, they explode in my face (Abu Ghraib). Why do I have to be agonizing over these things years later, Mr. Bush?
The new paradigm is that no one apologizes for lying. Or telling an untruth that they didn't know was untrue at the time. Or twisting and expanding facts to suit their needs and our gullibility. Or taking small proof and making it absolute before the United Nations. One apologizes for things that don't mean anything or to "those I may have offended". Your fault you were offended.
Politicians always exaggerate, conflate, mash up information into whatever conclusion ball they want to create. Now, we have extreme exaggeration as a regular part of public discourse. We are dumbfounded in the face of constantly emerging, too clever lies, like the idea if we just cut taxes on the wealthy enough they will all give us jobs. How many people do they need to clean their toilets and sweep out the carpets in their jets? The wealthy, we are told, are doing good by exploiting our labor, allowing is to breathe and perhaps to eat. Forget health insurance, that’s for those European fools.
The election swung to the Republicans not because we are in some period of wandering in the desert for forty years, but, in part, because there was an intense, multi-hundred million dollar war waged on Obama from before he was sworn-in as president. People were angry about the economy and repulsed, yet again, about the tone in DC and the battle over health care that doesn’t benefit them enough. The rest of the anger vote was manufactured.
This is an organized, orchestrated campaign to negate the last presidential election. The Tea Party groups came up too fast and too strong to be entirely, or even mainly, generated just by spontaneous revulsion with the Democrats. They were juiced with money from big donors, but the media has not been able, or willing, to track it all down, in part because the donations can be hidden. We are seeing a campaign of dirty tricks that would have made Nixon blush (with envy).
It was also spurred on by the false rumors of Obama's birth place and his religious faith. Fox News, and Glen Beck specifically, wove a muddled tale of danger, a kind of vague, incomprehensible plot against the United States from within. I'm just saying.
Never in American history have such irresponsible, unsourced and unreasonable charges been presented, nightly, to so many. Fox News sets up the deal with a constant jangle of scary news, jumping on the slightest \"breaking news\", like the wounding of a football coach in a Texas high school, and turning it into the biggest story of the moment (until it is quickly forgotten the next day). The human mind, untrained at repulsing false alerts, gets sucked into the vortex and FEAR resonates, day by day. Of course, this helps keep people constantly on edge and ready for whatever promise might come along. Glen Beck is ready. (His show is billed as a \"fusion of entertainment and enlightenment\". How are we to know which is which? Sorry, he's not saying.)
Rush Limbaugh was comparing Obama to the devil himself not long before the election. Well, that's nice, isn't it? (\"He looks demonic in these pictures.\") How can you counter that? How can you reason anyone down from what is a weird, even paranoid, fantasy? No reasonable person would believe him, but who says his followers are reasonable? After the core believers listens to it, this stuff spreads through middle America like the effluent from a broken sewer pipe.
We are in the age of the triumph of propaganda. Now, with right wing media and right wing news outlets, the far right need never hear a discouraging word. And, those who are scared and looking for something to believe in, come right here.
We want our taxes cut!
We want government services!
We don't believe people should live on government money, our taxes.
Oh, but let's make sure we still give billions to farmers for growing corn, more corn than the world needs, so much corn that they have to turn it into sugar and fuel for cars just to keep selling it. Corn chips, anyone?
We don't want national health insurance.
But we don't want to see bodies lying in the streets on our way home, do we? Who will pick up the bodies after all the workers are laid off by tax cuts?
No expense spared for our military and our "boys over there". Just DON'T ask me to pay for it.
There was little or no push back against this madness, against the campaign to destroy Obama and the Democrats. They were over confident, self assured, cool. Not any more. We are about to learn if Obama and the Obamaettes have any fight in them.
The news media is out to lunch, intimidated and downsized. So far, no major outlet has been able to find a way to add 2+2. Rove is turning over in his grave, laughing in his beer, advising Bush on the come back plan. They can taste 2012 and the ultimate negation of Obama, if they can just get through the next two years without blowing up themselves.
Doug Terry 11.11.10
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