The Difference between Dishing It Out and Taking It

"I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger, and this is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, and we have other doctrines that we have announced, and without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another 200-billion-dollar war to get rid of one strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

I'll take this piece by piece and ignore the fact that Robertson already lied in a so-called apology that no offended party would ever accept.

First, if Robertson doesn't "know about this doctrine of assassination," then he is either ignorant of the darker history of American foreign policy or a liar.
Second, Robertson makes the following argument: "If Chavez thinks we are trying to murder him, then we should murder him." My jaw hangs, bearing in mind that Robertson is a so-called Christian leader. Nuff' said...
Third, if murder is cheaper than choosing to start a war of aggression and will not slow the exploitation of another nations natural resources, Robertson wonders what we are waiting for. Gee, folks, I guess they're finally giving up the pretense and being honest about what they miss about the so-called good old days: namely, racism, nepotism, plunder, hypocrisy, murder, warmongering, corruption, destruction, and empire.
Fourth, Robertson claims that Chavez is a big danger, his and his fellow Venezuelans are mistaken that they are a sovereign people in their own country, and that "we" can't let this happen. Well, so much for not being arrogant. Does this recipe sound familiar to anyone else?
Fifth, Robertson makes a further specious claim---supported by references to past racist, warmongering presidentials policies of genocide and colonial imprimatur for other crimes against humanity---that Chavez, rather than the corporatocracy that has made us so dependent on oil, is a threat, and could "hurt us very badly." Really? Cause it sure seems like faux-Christian fascist bigots like Robertson and their golf partners in the energy industries, arms industries, White House, and rightmost fringe of the Republican party are a threat that already have hurt us very badly. Hmmm...
Sixth, Robertson references his whole idea of murdering the elected leader of another nation in the unmistakable tone of the white man's burden. Suffice it to say that if it is such a burden for Pat Robertson that he feels it necessary to enjoin our leaders to commit the kind of atrocities and other crimes that were once secrets known only to the slave quarters and soulless animals like himself, perhaps he should take a long rest.

Granted, I do not advocate putting a large caliber pistol in Robertson's mouth and suffering a momentary muscle spasm in one's index finger. I only wish to point out that this man could be serving as a spiritual guide to his fellow humans being. Instead he chooses to loll around in arrogant and wishful mimicry of the heartless WASPS of his no doubt beloved Confederacy with people he owned waiting on him hand and foot. It is nothing less than proof of the fact that many, if not most evangelical superchurch leaders are little more than manipulators, frauds, and demagogues with a cynical and severe desire to accrue wealth and power through the enabling of a fascist state where the United States now stand; not a National Socialist state or an empire of the rising sun, but a Christian machine for the despoiling of the rest of the world in the name of Christianity without the principle, democracy without an informed and empowered citizenry, capitalism without competition, and war without just cause.

I strongly suggest reading the list in my next post. I think it will prove eye-opening to most.

In other, more recent news...I wondered how a person like George Bush, Jr., could be so consistenly flippant and uncaring about others who were poorer, less privileged, more married to reality, less ignorant, and/or more recently homeless or childless than himself despite evidence that he was in some way at least partially responsible through either negligence, duplicitousness, or incompetence...listen to his mother!

New Heights of Nonsense, Delusion, and Fantasy

According to today's New York Times, George W. Bush stated in Nampa, ID, "As long as I'm the president, we will stay [presumably, in Iraq], we will fight and we will win the war on terror."

There a variety of curious aspects to this sentence, although I will forgo analyzing both misuses of the term we other than to point out that George W. Bush has never borne arms to defend his country, let alone prosecute a war for profit and to further point out that he and many others in the halls of power these days are going to win, in the sense that they will make more money than most of us will ever see, from taking a single terrible act and ballooning into the biggest pork-barrel payday the US taxpayers have ever seen. I for one am unafraid; unfortunately, millions upon millions of others appear all too willing to be frightened into passivity. Moving forward...

To begin with, he comments that these things will be the case "as long as [he is] the president." Now, unless I am mistaken (and I am not), it has been pointed out that a war on terror is as meaningless as a war on drugs. Is anyone, least of all George W. Bush, going to make drugs no fun to do anymore? Of course not; therefore, people will continue to abuse and recreationally use drugs, from alcohol to prescription drugs to cannabis to foxy. So, is George W. Bush, or anyone else, going to kill every terrorist? Of course not; besides the relatively obvious fact that this is an asinine assertion to begin with, it misses the purpose underlying a sincere desire to extinguish, as much as is practicable, terrorism while also assuming that terrorism is something as homogenous as, say, polio in the sense that a single (e.g., vaccine) or small number of solutions will be sufficient to get the job done.

The fantasy that terrorism is some sort of wacked-out hobby of religious extremists or a form of insanity has been perpetuated for years by those who are actively involved in the sorts of things that breed terrorism, just as was the fantasy perpetuated by men that women were created (in itself a silly and meaningless claim) to be lesser, subservient beings to men and were incapable of many things men did. Moreover, the fantasy that terrorism is a successful form of political action, with a few exceptions that hardly suffice to make it such, has been perpetuated by those who cynically and successfully profit or otherwise benefit from it from the noninstitutional side of the terrorist fence. Ironically, there are those who fit into both groups, though this overlap is, I think, less important than the point that there are concrete circumstances and actions that are causally connected to the existence of terrorism and are routinely ignored in favor of propaganda intended to demonize and mystify something that is not monumentally more complex than figuring why a poor man with a starving family is willing to take food to feed them.

So, the fact that acts of terrorism are contingent upon such things as economic, political, and military exploitation in both the former and the latter cases mentioned above (disregarding for now the distinguishing of just what types of individuals are both the latter and the former) leads one (in this case, me) to ask the following:

How on Earth can George W. Bush seriously imply that the nonsensical claim that he is going to win a metaphorical war on terror despite the fact that he is (and others like him are), practically by his/their very existence, a causal precondition for the events that are labeled terrorist acts "as long as [he is] president" when: A) He, by being president in the manner he has almost since taking the oath of office, will continue to inspire terrorism; B) Staying in or leaving Iraq is either irrelevant in either case or bound to continue fomenting (in part) terrorist acts; and C) He makes no mention, explanation, description, or other formulation of a plan to stem the types of preconditions that almost always have and will no doubt continue to foment or eventuate in individuals committing terrorist acts?

The answer to the question is much simpler than fully asking it as I just did: He does not seriously (other than in the sense or affecting, as poorly as he affects a Texas accent that he did not have while governor of Texas, a serious demeanor) intend to cease terrorism.

Call it the paradox of disingenuously rhetorical bombast, but if he---and everyone else who sincerely (out of misplaced zeal for an end to the horrible acts that terrorist ones inevitably are) or shallowly (out of ignorance, herd mentality, bigotry, etc.)---thinks that such chest-thumping machismo is or will ever be, even if acted upon, anything but a further spur or inconsequential chatter to terrorists who continue to believe, as a result of such attitudes by those of one side of the terrorist coin, that their heinous crimes are simultaneously legitimate, heroic, effective acts in the political interests of themselves and those they believe they represent. In other words, Bush and those like him have much more to gain by continuing the types of things they have done in the past to cause terrorism than they have to lose by eradicating it.

This is not rocket surgery people; sometimes you have to turn off the idiot box and read...a lot, until you have sufficient ability to divorce yourself from the chatter and intentional background noise to see the very obvious, very logical connections betweens past events, present circumstances, and future eventualities that closely resemble the logical chain of events with which you have already become familiar.

Meanwhile (which is to say, "So long as most of you roll over and go back to sleep---unless you are personally affected, in which case some people still eventually roll over and go back to sleep---things will continue along their present trajectory. Unfortunately, people are generally far too complacent to get a grip before things hit the fan, and we will all be treated to yet another near-cataclysmic-yet-reasonably avoidable era in human history."), fearmongers and (some types of) businessmen and radical mullahs and hypocrite evangelical so-called Christian so-called leaders and a variety of other such swine will continue to break other people's eggs while trying to make their own selfish omelets for any number of equally selfish reasons, whether delusions of world-historical grandeur, base misogyny, sincere-yet-misguided outrage at the arrogance of one's oppressors/exploiters, emotivist blather, plain old greed, or something else.

TODAY'S Quote:
"Why don't presidents fight the war?/Why do they always send the poor?"---S. Tankian

TODAY'S Answering Quote: "In the current instance, he had his chance and he was a chickenshit little rich boy with neither the intestinal fortitude nor conscience, just like his current partner in crime, Mr. Cheney, to refuse to fight on principle. More simply, they are cowardly warmongering businessmen with 'other priorities' when it might be their ass on the line for some so-called cause that a WASP man in an expensive suit has chosen to coax other, poorer, less-white, less-priveleged individuals into, but the first to reach for a saber to rattle when, as of last week, they (e.g., Dick Cheney's former company) literally have at least $10,000,000,000 (and counting) to make without even having to bid on it and then demoting the only person with the apparent courage to call a filthy war-profiteer a filthy war-profiteer. In other words, Cheney's former company has profited from the Iraq bloodbath to the tune of the military life insurance policies of 480 American soldiers (or $10,000,000,000 more than any of the tens of thousands of dead Iraqi men, women, or children will ever see despite Cheney's instrumental role in beating the drums since George H. W. Bush was president for other American citizens' children to go over there and provide the blood to go with his company's money). In other words, given his own chance to be a "hero" Cheney chose to do everything in his power to avoid it only to later urge young men and women to do what he was too cowardly to do so that he and other dogs of war could enrich themselves. What a scumbag...how anyone---anyone---could honestly respect such a reprehensible human being, and I use that term loosely, is far, far beyond me."

It's going to be a gorgeous day...

Today will be beautiful. No comments on other blogs; my la vie needs some c'est. No looking for more jobs; my hope needs some rest. But first...

John Bolton has wasted no time in placing a looking glass at the entrance to the UN. Suffice it to say that the very idea that he or his superiors are seriously interested in transparency or accountability is a laugh. The most secretive, unaccountable administration in my living memory (which I grant is only a little more than a generation) wants to build consensus? They want human rights violators to be kept off a human rights panel in the wake of overseeing a military that they refuse to open to the same standards as most other nations by joining the International Criminal Court.
"Another piece of cake, Misters Bolton and Bush, or do you need time to eat the piece you already have?" Of course, they are concerned that it would expose American troops to "frivolous" charges. No doubt, we wouldn't want the world to harsh on the frivolity of disappearing people or torturing them; that's just good times, right Mr. President?

In some alternate dimension, the cosmic punishment for such disingenuous double-talk and boldfaced cynicism is to be rent in two by the victims of said retardation of frank rationality.

Oh, and just to join today's bandwagon: The newest post hoc rationalization for the invasion of Iraq, since the first 46 have apparently been discarded in the face of reality (i.e., facts, evidence---in other words, people who uterly fail to understand even the simplest fundamental tenets of evolutionary biology can stop reading right here). The new and improved post-tense is to stare into our collectively infected bellybutton, surrender to fascination over the emotion of sorrow, and send more young men and women into and to man the people-shredder that the Bush administration has made Iraq.

And before anybody whips out their pointer finger to cry, "Saddam bad! G-nash g-nash!" let it be remembered that it was the first two Reagan administrations that were instrumental in ensuring Hussein's seat in power. Any Iraqi or American blood must be washed from, for example, Donald Rumsfeld's hands before I hear one word about the supposed justification of invading a second-and-a-half-world dictatorship; straw men don't count.


TODAY'S Question: If brutal dictators are so bad, and America is so good, how come we've created, supported, or otherwise assisted them so much since the advent of American Colonialism? Could it be a Cat's Cradle scenario? I suppose we'd have to ask the parties in question, but then, the wizards always have been chicken$%!+ about coming out from behind the machine. That's why we have White House press secretaries. Imagine: If, say, an American corporation screwed another, and the CEO of the screwee showed up at the screwer's headquarters, how might the screwee react if the only contact conferred on him or her (oh, who am I kidding? Him) was an audience with the screwer's secretary?

I choose to work tomorrow.

I don't technically have to go to work tomorrow. I want to. So there. Err...I mean, today.

I need to go to bed, but I feel a need to point out that, having begun and almost finished The Great Gatsby, I'm not that impressed. Perhaps it's my distaste for plutocrats, but I find myself asking, "Who really gives a shit what these people who, were they alive today (and I am sure their unreasonable facsimiles are), would no doubt be rich assholes, just like the majority of assholes and rich people I've met before (myself not included in the latter category)?"

Perhaps I am mistaken, and with a somewhat sudden flourish, the characters will suddenly blossom into real, three-dimensional people instead of the two-dimensional (wealthy+unsympathetic) ones they appear to be. Even better, maybe the Depression hits and only the most hardened aspiring fascist sympathizers among them will leap to their deaths when they see their lousy two-bit lives halved! What do I know, anyway? Mere literacy doesn't necessarily entitle me to criticize. Then again, it doesn't necessarily entitle one to accolades for some handful of quasi-poetic turns of phrase and lively description here and there, either.

Finishing the book...now...

TODAY'S Quote: "I want to be the leader of an anarchist society."