Sunday, September 18, 2005

Are You As Shocked As Me That This Stuff Is News, Mr. Rich?

This is how things have been working since before Day 1 of the George W. Bush presidency.

Few things are more frustrating than iterating and reiterating to an otherwise apparently rational, responsible person that something is the case and then, on the umpteenth time he or she is given a new syntactical version of the same story, the light bulbs finally begin to sputter to life. Oh well, I'm no more perfect than anyone else, and it is better to learn a lesson late than it is to never learn it. Of course people make mistakes, that's why we evolved enough to think to put erasers on pencils...

On the other hand, or perhaps I should say furthermore, many times incompetence is ignored, overlooked, or even embraced by people until it becomes the source of a problem for those previously blissful enough to let it slide. Therefore, millions of people are suddenly painfully aware that the deer-in-the-floodlights stance of Bush and others in his executive branc fraternity was not the steely determination and steadfastness they wished it were courtesy of yet another train jumping the tracks. On the bright side, some of the damage of the Bush administration's failure seems to be sticking this time.

But steadfastness? Resolve? To a fault, such that the steadfast Luntzian focus groups and resolutely Rovian smearology have suddenly started hitting the faberge eggs of American lives with the same hammer of message-control and dog-wagging they use on most everyone impertinent enough to call a spade a spade. These Americans affected by Katrina have suddenly discovered what it is like to be on the receiving end of choosing one's leaders from politically in-bred stock who choose subordinates for their personality, business relations, and/or past friendship rather than the way one would choose other people to put in other positions of responsibility. If the management at the DMV handed out driver's licenses to people out of sheer friendship or NASA awarded engineering contracts based on the fact that a person was their best pal on the rowing team it would be no less criminal than the clinic of political hackery perpetrated on us and the rest of the world by a spoiled Ivy League legacy of a chump who's all name and no game.

But this is hardly anything different than what the Bush administration has done all along. When has any acting member stood up and shown integrity rather than mealy-mouthed newspeak (e.g., Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rove), tired cliches and emotionally manipulative sophistry (Bush's speechwriters, Cheney, the entire cabinet, neocons foremost), or outright sanctimonious arrogance (e.g., Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush himself). Moreover, to reference parenthetically, when was the last time a president's words were so tortuously gamy? Perhaps Reagan or George H. W. Bush, and Clinton on occasion, but George W. Bush is off the charts for standing up before millions of people, time and time again, and almost uniformly reading someone else's words as if, well, they were someone else's baroque dime-store bunting rather than the actual thoughts of a person deserving of the immense responsibility inherent in the presidency.

George W. Bush never has been a leader. He was a screw-up, alcoholic, and all-purpose failure who fit neatly into an all-is-forgiven niche within the community of most zealous support among the new pushers of the line between a democratic republic and a quasi-fascist plutocracy. If you don't know what a Christian Dominionist is or what the deal is with the National Prayer Breakfast and the so-called Family, well...that's not news any more than that George Bush is the darling of the redneck who always wanted to play gold with the rich kids at the country club, the coward who always wanted to be associated with courage without having to risk earning it, and the wild-eyed televangelists' milkin' cows.

It's historical fact that George W. Bush was not and is not competent to lead the United States of America and that, on his watch, a college roommate or resume filled with PR and marketing coups (i.e., convincing people to believe in something that in the final analysis they do only at their own peril) has proven a ticket to the big time; for the past five years professionalism, integrity, and genuine concern for one's fellow man has been practically nonexistent when the chips were down in this country's highest executive office. Unfortunately, the majority of American citizens are only just now squeegeeing the tickertape and confetti from their damned eyes. Welcome to, at the very least, the next three years, if not longer...try to pay attention this time, thanks.

2 Comments:

Blogger Thom Foolery said...

Keep banging away man. It has got to get better.

Right?

September 23, 2005 at 3:14 PM  
Blogger Myconfidence said...

Word, my friend...

September 28, 2005 at 10:16 PM  

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