DUMB, DUMB AND DUMBER
Sadly, we are a nation of increasingly stupid people. We must be. A nation with even a modicum of collective intelligence would not elect a George W. Bush as its president. And we have done it twice. (Technically, we have elected him only once; and then by a lot less than a landslide, but let's not nitpick. In 2000, like it or not, he was probably the people's choice. That the Supreme Court had to ratify the decision is really little more than a historical footnote.)
The course of developments which allow a martinet like Bush to occupy the White House had their origins in the Reagan administration. The late Ronald Reagan may have been a hail fellow well met, but when it came to his understanding of what was going on around him his elevator never stopped at the top floor. And he was not above whatever chicanery was necessary to pursue his agenda. Begin with Iran-Contra, and the ultimate sale of arms to an enemy in exchange for American hostages. Proceed to his coddling of the religious right, his preference for corporate America over its workers, his disdain for all things "liberal", and his elbow rubbing with the rich and the very rich, and you have the framework for what was to come. Indeed, we saw the creation of the so-called Reagan/Bush Dynasty. That it lasted only twelve years, with an eight year interruption by the Clintons, is the consequence only of the fact that George Bush I was so obviously inept that he could not wrangle a second term. While intoning those now immortal words "read my lips", and then upping taxes, he shot himself in the foot and fell out of favor--even with some of his own support base. But, Reagan/Bush is now enjoying its second installment (with conservatives rarely ceasing to laud Reagan as its progenitor) and, barring a resurrection of our collective conscience it is entirely possible that it could extend well in to the second decade of this century. Indeed, to forestall such a development we will have to become a lot smarter than we are now.
But what has transpired from the early 80s until now is more than the Reagan/Bush flag waving, more than the pernicious perspective of the moral right and the conservatively confused, and more than their combined influence. We have become a country of would be third worlders because we have lost our moral compass, because we have demeaned the necessity of basic education, and because we have allowed an increasingly sizeable portion of our population to lapse in to a one track mentality which concentrates on little more than the present. Contemplations of the future are left to those consigned to decision making, to those who get elected (regardless their political preferences), and to those few who might actually give a damn. And these groups, combined, represent a pitifully minute percentage of the total population. And when that population goes to the polls it does so in such minority numbers as to permit the election, in all too many instances, of folks whose agendas are usually confined to their own personal interests. Society is not well served this way, but it is a by-product of our system that participative democracy is optional. If you don't want to be bothered, you don't have to be.
About fifty years ago we witnessed the transition of our work force from a largely blue-collar
group to one which mutated to white-collar and, more recently, to one which is heavily oriented to services. While the manufacturing segment is still part of the economy it is no longer persuasive. And as it has eroded, and been replaced with a myriad of fast food places, retail establishments, and automated operations of all kinds and descriptions, collective bargaining, and even basic worker rights, have been assaulted and weakened. The fourty hour week is now closer to fourty-five, more workers earn the minimum wage than ever before, and fourty million Americans languish without health insurance. And Reagan/Bush, both then and now, do nothing to improve the situtation. And how could they? Their basic philosophy argues against the masses while favoring the well-healed. Reagan called it "trickle down". And the two Bushs have simply expanded on that notion while using other rhetoric to explain it. The Clintons did try to restructure the nation's health care system, but their proposals were ill-advised, they encountered strong congressional objections, and their plan faltered. And George W. Bush has not even addressed the subject.
And somewhere in the midst of this societal melt-down (which, let's face it, plays right in to the hands of the likes of Bush and his cohorts) we have also seen the degradation of our public schools. The current product of twelve years in the public school system is, with some notable exceptions, almost illiterate. While high school graduation rates remain constant the number of graduates actually receiving real diplomas is sharply reduced. Concurrently, the numbers walking away with polished up attendance certificates is increasing by leaps and bounds. And the Bush answer to this dilemma is to further weaken the public system by favoring so-called private school vouchers for the handful of aspirants who could qualify for such largesse. That Bush actually believes the country's few private schools could make a difference is astounding. That we should fall in with such thinking is ludicrous. But the dumber we get the more susceptible we become to the sly charms of a leadership which seems to honestly believe it can convince us that the sun rises in the west.
A nation of intelligent citizens (particularly a nation which bills itself as the world's only "super power") would not allow the circumstances with which we now contend. But many of these conditions proliferate, and most of our citizenry sit back, observe it all stoically (or, worse, ignore it entirely), and while Nero fiddles, Rome burns. To wit:
We are embroiled, for no discernibly acceptable reasons, in a war in Iraq which has, to date, claimed 2000 American lives. And even on this account we are being bamboozled. When the administration admits to 2000 American war deaths it offers no accounting for many others whose deaths are not calculated because they had the misfortune of not actually dying on Iraqi soil. They were injured there, transported to hospitals or clinics elsewhere, and then died. But they are not, as far as this administration is concerned, casualties of war. Thanks to this peculiar manipulation most Americans believe that "only" 2000 American soldiers have perished in this war. Furthermore, to the administration, this may be a small point, but it is all too indicative of the kind of hoo-ha these folks are capable of. Honesty, it seems, is not an element of their credo.
But we already knew that didn't we? We went to war, after all, because Saddam Hussein represented a clear and dangerous threat to this country. He had weapons of mass destruction (aimed, one assumes, at us), he was in league with Al Queda, and he was spoiling for a fight. That the facts contravened these assertions, moreover, was irrelevant to Bush and company. And when the president was obliged, finally, to fess up (which he never actually did) he simply changed the story, claiming that we had an obligation to rid the world of Saddam and to bring democracy to his beleagured country. And the so-called Al Queda connection never has gone away. No less than Dicky Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld still try to ballyhoo that argument. Facts, after all, are not as important as pursuing a victory we probably cannot (and arguably should not) achieve.
Following the Al Queda attacks of 9/11 the president vowed to "get" Osama bin Laden. To that end he committed twelve thousand troops to the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan. And four years later we are still looking for the elusive Osama. Bush claims we have dismantled the Taliban, he observes that we have inflicted crippling losses on Al Queda (while admitting that it probably has operational cells all over the globe); yet Osama remains at large. Even a generous twenty-five million dollar bounty has produced no credible leads. And every now and then the erstwhile Osama forwards an audio or video tape to the Al-Jazeera network to serve notice that he remains alive and well. If he has a sense of humor (which seems unlikely) he has to be chuckling in his tea over the Keystone Kop mentality which has yet to ferret him out. Lest we forget, however, Osama must have a lot of friends. And no small numbers of them live in Saudi Arabia. Remember that fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 attackers were Saudi nationals; but it never occured to Bush to even consider looking in that country. He is told by the Saudi royal family that Osama is an outcast (inspite of his Saudi nationality and his large family residing there), and that suffices to convince the president that Osama--wherever else he may be--is not in Saudi Arabia. Maybe not, but taking a look would seem to have been logical; certainly as logical as posting twelve thousand troops in Afghanistan, a country which during the heyday of the former Soviet Union engaged the formidable Russian war machinery and emerged victorious.
Bush justifies American involvement in Iraq, at least in part, by noting that its citizenry are entitled to the wonders of American style democracy. That such a notion is not well understood in an Islamic republic which, to all intent of purpose has never had such circumstances, (and was not asking for them) is, to the president, much less important than seeing to it that the opportunity is forced upon them.
The error, we believe, is in the all too obvious inability of anyone in this administration to perceive any issue from any perspective other than its own. Democracy works here; ergo it will work there. Christianity is the religious choice of America's majority so it follows that it is preferable to other spiritual options. That neither premise is truly tenable in the middle east never occurs to the inhabitants of Bush World. And that is stupid!
But what could be more stupid than the villification of France when it opted not to support our invasion of Iraq? We even went so far as to rename French Fries, "Freedom Fries".Surely the laughter in Gaul was heard from the Arc de Triomphe to the beaches in Cannes. And in one act of childishness we all but lost one of our few real allies. And if that wasn't enough we proceeded to simultaneously irritate most of the free world. (We did not have to rile the rest of the globe; they were already fed-up with our churlish behavior.)
Bush may have thought our preemptive invasion of Iraq was justified, but through that one act of arrogance he radically altered two hundred years of American foreign policy; and in so doing he assaulted the foundation of confidence the rest of the world had in us. For no matter how fearsome we may have become, before that invasion the world was content in the fact that we would attack no one unless we were attacked first. It was a sane and sensible policy; one designed to assure the world of our civility; and it disappeared in March, 2003. And most of the world now fears us even more than we fear the spectre of terrorism. Worse, the rationale extended for this event was a series of lies; lies told to the American people and to the world at large. And from Bush World, there will never be an apology or even the hint of second thoughts. Self righteousness, after all, is a stentorian hallmark of this president and his White House toadies.
And this administration survives because we were too dumb, and too uninterested, to vote it out of office. Too many of us believed the lies and the propaganda, and too many more of us did not watch the evening news, did not read our newspapers, and sat dumbly on our hands while Bush World grew up and engulfed us. And now, even with fading popularity, the administration continues its pursuit of an agenda doomed to failure. Be it the war in Iraq, Social Security, no child left behind, health care, or any of numerous issues on the president's plate, success is most unlikely.
And while Rome burns a frighteningly sizeable percentage of its citizenry concerns itself with Desparate Housewives, The Survivor, and a multitude of other inanities. And that is dumb, dumb, and dumber........................................
Garrett500
10/27/2005
The course of developments which allow a martinet like Bush to occupy the White House had their origins in the Reagan administration. The late Ronald Reagan may have been a hail fellow well met, but when it came to his understanding of what was going on around him his elevator never stopped at the top floor. And he was not above whatever chicanery was necessary to pursue his agenda. Begin with Iran-Contra, and the ultimate sale of arms to an enemy in exchange for American hostages. Proceed to his coddling of the religious right, his preference for corporate America over its workers, his disdain for all things "liberal", and his elbow rubbing with the rich and the very rich, and you have the framework for what was to come. Indeed, we saw the creation of the so-called Reagan/Bush Dynasty. That it lasted only twelve years, with an eight year interruption by the Clintons, is the consequence only of the fact that George Bush I was so obviously inept that he could not wrangle a second term. While intoning those now immortal words "read my lips", and then upping taxes, he shot himself in the foot and fell out of favor--even with some of his own support base. But, Reagan/Bush is now enjoying its second installment (with conservatives rarely ceasing to laud Reagan as its progenitor) and, barring a resurrection of our collective conscience it is entirely possible that it could extend well in to the second decade of this century. Indeed, to forestall such a development we will have to become a lot smarter than we are now.
But what has transpired from the early 80s until now is more than the Reagan/Bush flag waving, more than the pernicious perspective of the moral right and the conservatively confused, and more than their combined influence. We have become a country of would be third worlders because we have lost our moral compass, because we have demeaned the necessity of basic education, and because we have allowed an increasingly sizeable portion of our population to lapse in to a one track mentality which concentrates on little more than the present. Contemplations of the future are left to those consigned to decision making, to those who get elected (regardless their political preferences), and to those few who might actually give a damn. And these groups, combined, represent a pitifully minute percentage of the total population. And when that population goes to the polls it does so in such minority numbers as to permit the election, in all too many instances, of folks whose agendas are usually confined to their own personal interests. Society is not well served this way, but it is a by-product of our system that participative democracy is optional. If you don't want to be bothered, you don't have to be.
About fifty years ago we witnessed the transition of our work force from a largely blue-collar
group to one which mutated to white-collar and, more recently, to one which is heavily oriented to services. While the manufacturing segment is still part of the economy it is no longer persuasive. And as it has eroded, and been replaced with a myriad of fast food places, retail establishments, and automated operations of all kinds and descriptions, collective bargaining, and even basic worker rights, have been assaulted and weakened. The fourty hour week is now closer to fourty-five, more workers earn the minimum wage than ever before, and fourty million Americans languish without health insurance. And Reagan/Bush, both then and now, do nothing to improve the situtation. And how could they? Their basic philosophy argues against the masses while favoring the well-healed. Reagan called it "trickle down". And the two Bushs have simply expanded on that notion while using other rhetoric to explain it. The Clintons did try to restructure the nation's health care system, but their proposals were ill-advised, they encountered strong congressional objections, and their plan faltered. And George W. Bush has not even addressed the subject.
And somewhere in the midst of this societal melt-down (which, let's face it, plays right in to the hands of the likes of Bush and his cohorts) we have also seen the degradation of our public schools. The current product of twelve years in the public school system is, with some notable exceptions, almost illiterate. While high school graduation rates remain constant the number of graduates actually receiving real diplomas is sharply reduced. Concurrently, the numbers walking away with polished up attendance certificates is increasing by leaps and bounds. And the Bush answer to this dilemma is to further weaken the public system by favoring so-called private school vouchers for the handful of aspirants who could qualify for such largesse. That Bush actually believes the country's few private schools could make a difference is astounding. That we should fall in with such thinking is ludicrous. But the dumber we get the more susceptible we become to the sly charms of a leadership which seems to honestly believe it can convince us that the sun rises in the west.
A nation of intelligent citizens (particularly a nation which bills itself as the world's only "super power") would not allow the circumstances with which we now contend. But many of these conditions proliferate, and most of our citizenry sit back, observe it all stoically (or, worse, ignore it entirely), and while Nero fiddles, Rome burns. To wit:
We are embroiled, for no discernibly acceptable reasons, in a war in Iraq which has, to date, claimed 2000 American lives. And even on this account we are being bamboozled. When the administration admits to 2000 American war deaths it offers no accounting for many others whose deaths are not calculated because they had the misfortune of not actually dying on Iraqi soil. They were injured there, transported to hospitals or clinics elsewhere, and then died. But they are not, as far as this administration is concerned, casualties of war. Thanks to this peculiar manipulation most Americans believe that "only" 2000 American soldiers have perished in this war. Furthermore, to the administration, this may be a small point, but it is all too indicative of the kind of hoo-ha these folks are capable of. Honesty, it seems, is not an element of their credo.
But we already knew that didn't we? We went to war, after all, because Saddam Hussein represented a clear and dangerous threat to this country. He had weapons of mass destruction (aimed, one assumes, at us), he was in league with Al Queda, and he was spoiling for a fight. That the facts contravened these assertions, moreover, was irrelevant to Bush and company. And when the president was obliged, finally, to fess up (which he never actually did) he simply changed the story, claiming that we had an obligation to rid the world of Saddam and to bring democracy to his beleagured country. And the so-called Al Queda connection never has gone away. No less than Dicky Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld still try to ballyhoo that argument. Facts, after all, are not as important as pursuing a victory we probably cannot (and arguably should not) achieve.
Following the Al Queda attacks of 9/11 the president vowed to "get" Osama bin Laden. To that end he committed twelve thousand troops to the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan. And four years later we are still looking for the elusive Osama. Bush claims we have dismantled the Taliban, he observes that we have inflicted crippling losses on Al Queda (while admitting that it probably has operational cells all over the globe); yet Osama remains at large. Even a generous twenty-five million dollar bounty has produced no credible leads. And every now and then the erstwhile Osama forwards an audio or video tape to the Al-Jazeera network to serve notice that he remains alive and well. If he has a sense of humor (which seems unlikely) he has to be chuckling in his tea over the Keystone Kop mentality which has yet to ferret him out. Lest we forget, however, Osama must have a lot of friends. And no small numbers of them live in Saudi Arabia. Remember that fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 attackers were Saudi nationals; but it never occured to Bush to even consider looking in that country. He is told by the Saudi royal family that Osama is an outcast (inspite of his Saudi nationality and his large family residing there), and that suffices to convince the president that Osama--wherever else he may be--is not in Saudi Arabia. Maybe not, but taking a look would seem to have been logical; certainly as logical as posting twelve thousand troops in Afghanistan, a country which during the heyday of the former Soviet Union engaged the formidable Russian war machinery and emerged victorious.
Bush justifies American involvement in Iraq, at least in part, by noting that its citizenry are entitled to the wonders of American style democracy. That such a notion is not well understood in an Islamic republic which, to all intent of purpose has never had such circumstances, (and was not asking for them) is, to the president, much less important than seeing to it that the opportunity is forced upon them.
The error, we believe, is in the all too obvious inability of anyone in this administration to perceive any issue from any perspective other than its own. Democracy works here; ergo it will work there. Christianity is the religious choice of America's majority so it follows that it is preferable to other spiritual options. That neither premise is truly tenable in the middle east never occurs to the inhabitants of Bush World. And that is stupid!
But what could be more stupid than the villification of France when it opted not to support our invasion of Iraq? We even went so far as to rename French Fries, "Freedom Fries".Surely the laughter in Gaul was heard from the Arc de Triomphe to the beaches in Cannes. And in one act of childishness we all but lost one of our few real allies. And if that wasn't enough we proceeded to simultaneously irritate most of the free world. (We did not have to rile the rest of the globe; they were already fed-up with our churlish behavior.)
Bush may have thought our preemptive invasion of Iraq was justified, but through that one act of arrogance he radically altered two hundred years of American foreign policy; and in so doing he assaulted the foundation of confidence the rest of the world had in us. For no matter how fearsome we may have become, before that invasion the world was content in the fact that we would attack no one unless we were attacked first. It was a sane and sensible policy; one designed to assure the world of our civility; and it disappeared in March, 2003. And most of the world now fears us even more than we fear the spectre of terrorism. Worse, the rationale extended for this event was a series of lies; lies told to the American people and to the world at large. And from Bush World, there will never be an apology or even the hint of second thoughts. Self righteousness, after all, is a stentorian hallmark of this president and his White House toadies.
And this administration survives because we were too dumb, and too uninterested, to vote it out of office. Too many of us believed the lies and the propaganda, and too many more of us did not watch the evening news, did not read our newspapers, and sat dumbly on our hands while Bush World grew up and engulfed us. And now, even with fading popularity, the administration continues its pursuit of an agenda doomed to failure. Be it the war in Iraq, Social Security, no child left behind, health care, or any of numerous issues on the president's plate, success is most unlikely.
And while Rome burns a frighteningly sizeable percentage of its citizenry concerns itself with Desparate Housewives, The Survivor, and a multitude of other inanities. And that is dumb, dumb, and dumber........................................
Garrett500
10/27/2005
posted by Garrett W at 2:57 PM
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