In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Wild Talk
When someone with the eyes of a madman storms up to you with a raised hammer, you better believe it's coming down onto your skull if you don't move out of the way. You have about 1 second to think about it; there's no debate, no reasoning with the attacker. In a civil society, chances are that you haven't got a ready weapon.
In a paranoid, militant society, chances are you are armed and dangerous. Think about it for a minute: when faced with the constant threat that someone is going to attack you, what do you do? Unless you're willing to take them out yourself, you give someone else that authority, pretty much carte blanche. And carte blanche is where we are now. No one has much of an objection to the militarization of our society except a handful of "liberals" and "appeasers" and "antiwar pacifists" who are too "pussy" to "do the right thing" -- which is why Kerry keeps saying strength every third word, in a transparent attempt to out-macho the Republicans. The military is never strong enough in an election year: just check the speeches, all the way back to Lincoln. Well I've got news for you, the American military is the biggest, baddest superpower in the history of the planet, and no one says otherwise. We can out-pummel, outblast, outkill every motherfucker on every continent two hundred times and then some. So why the macho pose?
Here's why: money. It's all about the money. The guy with the biggest money wins. I was worried at first that the Bush fat cats had unending supplies of it, and that was the election right there -- who in god's name among the dems could possibly match Bush's warchest? Well now we know, our John. Life is a bowl of Kerrys. It's all good. So why do I have this sinking feeling?
Because America is different. When we started This Century Sucks, we felt the guy with the hammer smashed us in the brain and stole our country, and we wanted it back, even if we are brain-damaged on account of the struggle. But thanks to 9/11, there's no going back. That America is gone, forever. We are now in a new century, a new America, and it isn't because of George Bush. He just took advantage of it, like any enterprising opportunist. And he played us for suckers. And reaped a gigantic reward. And there's more where that came from.
But business is notoriously shortsighted. It only sees the meat in front of it. Never mind the consequences. Actually, fuck the consequences, as we see in Iraq. Who's gonna argue this? You patriots who want me to climb up into my pussy and fuck myself? Who's being fucked here? George Bush is "protecting my ass"? If that's true, then how come he keeps telling me "we are not safe"? When the president of the United States keeps hammering home the message that as a nation we are not safe, why are you telling me that we are? Where are you getting your information? Where do you get off? You can't have it both ways; either we're safe or we're not safe. In the black-and-white Bushworld, it's one or the other, buddy. So after a year of bombing the shit out of Iraq, the Dept. of Homeland Security is issuing Orange Alerts and telling us to "go about our business." Thanks, I'll remember to get off at the stop before the dynamite belt gets on the Fifth Avenue bus; that'll be easy -- I'll just consult my Magic 8-Ball. That should do it.
So we can't go home again. Terrorism has arrived. I'm just as anxious as the next guy. Hell, I was there on 9/11. I saw that shit. I breathed the dust, it was all over me, I tracked it into my apartment, it stunk up my bedroom, I got asthma from it, the ashes of the dead. I have to use inhalers. It was my home, my backyard that got attacked. My city. Not some Texas asshole's, to profit from. Fuck him. Take a look at his face at the smoking pit, with the bullhorn and the fireman. He's got a big shit-eating grin. Why wouldn't he? That the Republicans picked New York City of all places for their convention is rubbing our noses in it -- something Bush especially loves to do. We're the city of Sodom. We're evil. Ask Newt Gingrich.
Which brings me to this troubling review. According to Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic,
For the virulence that calls itself critical thinking, the merry diabolization of other opinions and the other people who hold them, the confusion of rightness with righteousness, the preference for aspersion to argument, the view that the strongest statement is the truest statement -- these deformations of political discourse now thrive in the houses of liberalism too. The radicalism of the right has hectored into being a radicalism of the left. The Bush-loving mob is being met with a Bush-hating mob. Liberals are forgetting why liberals are not radicals. ... American liberalism, in sum, may be losing its head.
Really? Maybe it's because the liberals' heads have been bashed in. There's more:
The opinion that these are not normal times, that the Bush years are apocalyptic years, is quite common. ''We are no longer in the ordinary times we were in when the conservatives took out after Bill Clinton,'' Janet Malcolm recently explained in a letter to this newspaper. ''We are in a time now that is as fearful as the period after Munich.'' Life in South Egremont, Mass., may be excruciating, but Malcolm's knowledge of the period after Munich has plainly grown dim. And who, in her ominous analogy, is Hitler? If it is Osama bin Laden, then she might have a little sympathy for the seriousness of this administration about American security, whatever her views about some of its policies. If it is George W. Bush. . . . Well, she continues: ''Those of us who are demonizing George W. Bush are doing so not because of his morals but because we are scared of what another four years of his administration will do to this country and to the world.'' So whether or not Bush is Hitler, he is a devil. This is what now passes for smart.
All I can say is this: At least the Fuhrer motorcaded in an open vehicle. Just look at the films. Can you imagine for one minute George W. Bush riding around in an open car? Where's the love?
Liberals must think carefully about their keenness to mirror some of the most poisonous qualities of their adversaries. It was never exactly a disgrace to American liberalism that it lacked its Limbaugh. But demagoguery now enjoys a new prestige. Thus, a prominent liberal thinker writes a book against George W. Bush that refreshingly prefers ideas to innuendoes, and a sympathetic reviewer in this newspaper laments that ''instead of 'Reason,' which the left already has too much of, the Democrats need a book titled 'Brass Knuckles.' ''
If I had a hammer ...
The argument for liberal demagoguery is twofold, tactical and philosophical. There are those who believe the Democrats cannot succeed without the politics of the sewer. These are the same people who believe it is the politics of the sewer to which the Republicans owe their success. This view significantly underestimates the depth and the nature of George W. Bush's support in American society, and significantly overestimates the influence of the media and its pundit vaudeville on American politics.
Is that so, professor? Tell it to Clear Channel and Fox News Organization. Then ask the FCC, who spend their entire time trying to deregulate federal statutes so as to consolidate media into as few hands as possible. Vaudeville, huh? You know what they say, the Show Must Go On.
It is when politics becomes a competition in populist credentials that demagoguery, and the sophistry of the slippery slope, flourishes, and the voice of the common man is stolen. ... It will be disastrous, for liberalism and for America, if the indignation against George W. Bush becomes an excuse for a great simplification, for a delirious release from the complexities of historical and political understanding that it took the American left decades to learn.
And what was that? That the rug can be pulled out from under us at any time? I'd like to hear the voice of the common man on that one. What is "common" anyway? It's common to smash people in the brain with a hammer when they don't agree with you. What does Mr. Soft Knuckles think?
The good news is that the politics of Bush-hatred may be at odds with the culture of Bush-hatred. ... Whatever the merit of [Kerry and Edward's] opposition to the Bush administration, the spirit of their opposition is not dark. They are not taking the radical bait.
So that's the answer! Good news and sunshine! Just what got Al Gore elected!
Only he didn't win.
- Michael 8:04 PM - [PermaLink] -
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