©2008, UrbisMedia
An old friend wrote to me about the election of Barack Obama to the presidency wondering what I was going to “rant about” in these pages now that George W. Bush’s days are numbered (but signing de-regulating drilling and mining leases for his friends in sort of a frantic “scorched earth” retreat) until he can go back to being a fake cowboy again. I object to my moderate words as “rants,” but then I don’t think he agreed with much of what I had to say. But I also too the implication of his remark to be tat perhaps I should “move on” past the Bush era, even perhaps extend an olive branch in gracious victory to the fascisti who ruled and ruined us this past eight years.
He is mistaken on a couple of counts. One is that I have no intention, for reasons I shall elaborate below, in letting go of my contempt for Bush and his cabal. Second, is that he mistakes me for a doctrinaire Democrat, a mirror opposite of the Limbaugh ditto-heads, Fox News lamebrains and Joe the Plumber Palinistas who blindly and uncritically follow the manipulations of the Right Wing noise machine. I’m not. I’m too bitchy for that. What calls ranting is the way I interact with the political process., and that process is fluid, not doctrinaire. I contributed, argued, wrote and voted for Obama, and, of course, a pleased with his victory. I trust he will be a man of his word; but there are ways in which the exigencies and perverseness politics can make that difficult. Getting power, and having it can be two different things. So now what?
Not just America, but the whole world has a lot of expectations for Obama, a huge pressure for a man inheriting a monstrous mess made by the most colossal failure in the history of American politics. So, we shouldn’t jump on him precipitously. But he ran on change, and I took that to be substantive and procedural change in the conduct of American politics. So I will express concerns, not rant (yet).
There will be a new debate between whether policy should be a cast with in a rational;-comprehensive framework or contin ue to meader in a disjointed, serial-incremental (we already see this is treasure Sec Paulsen’s inabilbity to figure out what the hell to do with the bailout.
“Forgive and forget” and “get on with it” are phrases that practically makes me puke— especially “reaching across the aisle.” There are already some indications hat the Obama administration might be a little mushy on this (but it’s early). He’s meeting with McCain supposedly to bring him in some way. Maybe it’s neutralizations, but McCain is a chimerical dork who likes war. Obama owes him nothing. And, were I in the Senate and could reach across the aisle at Joe Lieberman and his ilk they would be singing soprano in the Republican choir. Politics isn’t a sport; it’s war, culture war. They would only see rapprochement as a sign of weakness. The bromides are all out there: “let the healing begin” and such. What healing? I saw a doc on Sundance the other night about a young Iraq vet in a wheel chair for the rest of his life—one of thousands. He’s is pain till the end of his days after being shot like a fish in a barrel in an open truck in Iraq. Bush would call him a “hero,” but he was there only five days and never fired a shot of his own and he has to battle for his VA benefits. Now he’s an anti-war protester. No healing for this guy. His marriage is over and now his mother has to put in his catheter every day. For what? For oil, and Cheney’s Haliburton dividends.
Nor am I in a frame of mind to extend the hand of reconciliation to the right wingers who gladly supported the Bush cabal. I was put in mind of a guy I met on a ship cruising up the Amazon earlier this year. I was stuck sitting next to him at a dinner table. I don’t remember his name, but I called him “Fat Bastard” (the name of an equally disgusting character in a Mike Myers film). This “Fat Bastard” (FB) was a lobbyist lawyer for a beer company who thought he was an economist. He blabbered the standard Reagan “trickle-down” crap for about five minutes before I jumped all over him. He was one of those types that said he usually takes a “higher quality” ship and had recently bought a “vacation home in Pensacola in a gated community.” I felt like tossing this tub of putrid guts over the side, along with his Stepford wife, who, unbelievably, had allowed him to twice impregnate her. I never returned to that table for fear of committing homicide. FB is my role model for the Republican creeps who put that kid in a wheel chair and messed up the economy and now want to “reach across he aisle.” If there is any justice I hope FB has lost his “vacation house” in all of this. I didn’t think that his house of trickle-down cards built on the mound of Chinese debt we owe would crumble this soon, but it had to happen.
Justice, not reaching and healing is what we need, now. Yes, Obama needs to get right to work putting eight years of Bush’s disastrous ruination of this country behind us. But if we don’t get some of these greedy, self-interested Republicans they will be back with a vengeance (and are already positioning to do so), and FB will be right there along with them. It worries me some that Barack Obama is appearing rather conciliatory. But we don’t need a “truth and reconciliation” commission, we need a truth and justice (complete with indictments and trials) system. Sorry Bishop Tutu, but for us to allow ourselves to be distracted entirely to the problem of the economic meltdown will put the Obama administration immediately into a defensive posture, as some conservative commentators are already referring to it as the “Obama recession” and will employ the rhetoric that “raising taxes” and “rising socialism” will be the result. The rhetorical political war for the 2010 midterms is already underway, and the Democrats must keep the stake that they have driven into those Republican vampirical hearts deep and twisting. Obama can remain above all this, but he must have minions who perform this necessary strategy.
So I’m not going to forget about George W. Bush, and neither should the rest of us. I want people to remember how close we came to fascism in this country and how quickly a country can be dissipated and nearly brought to ruin by an incompetent, immoral idiot and his cabal of manipulators and sycophants. Is the suggestion that we should now breathe a sigh of relief and forgive and forget a number of indictable transgressions? Should we allow the wimpy Mrs. Pelosi decide to recount all the “wonderful” and feckless things she accomplished while all this was going one?” In think not. We need some justice! We need some indictments. Should we sit around and wait for George W. Bush to get out his list of last minute pardons?
Bacack Obama recently visited George W. Bush in the Oval Office and I couldn’t help getting the image of him visiting Adolph Hitler in the Reich’s Bunker during those last days of the Reich when the least popular man in the world was getting ready do chomp down on his cyanide capsule. What a meeting it must have been—however the niceties and civilities exercised were conducted—between a man who drew over 200 thousand admirers in Berlin and hundreds of thousands on the night of his election, and a creepy guy who has approval ratings lower than Joe the Plumber, whose own arty can barely mention his name, who was asked by nobody to come a give a stump speech.
Never before in American history has a cabal of morally and politically corrupt so-called “leaders” take us further from our ideals and true course as a nation putatively founded on human rights and dignity. Through the use of fear, intimidation of the media, the formation of political divisions by the semantics of “good “ and “evil” with obvious religious undertones, secrecy, deceit and political assassination, they engaged in preemptive war, exploitation of the military, the movement of enormous amounts of wealth into the hand of the few and favored, the ruination of the American reputation abroad, and the disastrous de-regulation of the American financial system to its recessionistic domestic and foreign consequences. It took the American people—at least a political majority of them—to finally get it; they had put an incompetent, cowardly fool in office (well, sort of), for eight years. Well, the legacy of his Reich will haunt us for perhaps decades. Why stop ranting.
On Veteran’s Day the spectral Mr. Cheney emerged to gave a little speech about those of have put themselves in harm’s way to protect our liberty. This from the serial draft deferer, the evil genius behind the Texas Air National Guard duty shirker, both hypocrites who can mouth their “pride” in the troops while extending and repeating their deployments, returning their bodies in secrecy and cutting their VA medical benefits, so that they could have their war while the rest of the country went shopping.
I had written earlier in their tenure of what I regarded as the shute to fascism that this cabal had greased with regular scare tactics from 911. Even at the end of the death squads, the usage of uncontrolled mercenaries, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the re-definition of torture, the dismissal of the Geneva Conventions, and other disgusting practices that should have—but didn’t—bring millions into the streets to object to the debasement of everything that our warriors of previous generations were ostensibly fighting to protect. What a perverse irony can be fashioned in a atmosphere! How truly frightening it was that we could come close to worst authoritarian regimes of this century. Amazing that our Constitution could be shredded by the likes of scumbags like Alberto Gonsalez and John Yoo, and that Bush could treat Congress like some superfluous gaggle of fools by attaching “signing statements” to nearly every piece of Congressional legislation that was passed, in effect announcing that he had no intention of following the new laws if he so desired. How creeps like Phil Graham snuck in poisonous and self-serving deregulations like the Commodity Futures Modernization Act practically in the middle of he night that we are now paying a huge economic price for.
This was only part of an on-going process too arrogate to the Executive power that constitutionally the founders set with the Congress. Amazing, that an incompetent fool could pull off such a coup d’etat in that country that calls itself the greatest country in history. Bullshit!
To ignore this past history—despite the aftermath that will linger for years—is foolishness. The Republican Party is a shambles just now. They ran their election on the worst of their values—just listen to any Palin stump speech. They showed the world what they had become, handing microphones to idiots like Joe the Plumber an artery-bursting codger who thought he was Howard Beale in Network, and a demented Limbaugh-dittohead woman who insisted Obama is an Arab. This turned out t be their “base”—uneducated bigots and boneheads. Right now, this is their political party. And it is in the best interest of the country to keep it that way. The “base” has shrunken down to a bunch of red-necked cretins with fewer teeth than brain cells, full of hatred and un-recognized self-loathing.
You see, I have no interest in a detent with Fat Bastard, Joe the Plumber, or a concordat with the sleazy Mr. Leiberman, or the graspy Mr. Paulsen and the sibilant sliminess of Robert Gates. They are not “evil” (that’s their religious-based term), but they are really bad people, bad for my country, the country I now feel I might have a stake in again. So screw them! They did their best to screw this country and enrich themselves. We could use a little blood in the cobbles of the Place de la Concorde(?).
And I’m also not very hot on the idea of Hillary for Secretary of State, either.
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© 2008, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 11.15.2008)