March 5, 2007 by lonbud
Fear No Evil
I am tired.
Not because I face another night of fitful sleep, anxious for my job, my seven year-old, and the pain of a strained trapezius — though there is that.
Rather, I am tired of the realization no matter how obvious it becomes, no matter how far into plain view we might drag the venality and incompetence of the Bush administration, no matter how precipitous a catastrophe to which it may lead the nation and the world, this presidency will be permitted to run its natural course.
I suppose it makes sense to retain faith in “the system” that brought us this far. We rightly ought to trust elections in 2008 will marginalize the warmongering scolds of the Bush administration and their neo-conservative allies, who have abused legislative and executive prerogatives to plunder the treasury and squander the commonweal lo these many years.
Surely the republic has weathered in its brief history graft, cronyism, near-sightedness, and rapacity the equal of this administration, no?
On the other hand, one wonders just how much debasement of every principle upon which the country was founded might cause “the people” to assert their power, to throw off the depredations of illegitimate, incompetent rule.
In the nearly two weeks since I mentioned Dick Cheney’s incomprehensible reading of the British retreat from southern Iraq as a good thing, Bush administration support for the troops has been graphically depicted in scenes from the VA’s flagship Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Northwest Washington, curiously enough, in the administration’s own backyard. Small wonder the systemic rot evinced at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and countless Black Sites across the globe would fester right at home among the very front-line victims of this government’s hubris.
We’ve been treated to an explication of political moxie that cost half a dozen or more U.S. Attorneys their jobs, while donors and fixers for BushCo replaced them. The President of the National Manufacturers Association was named Chairman of the Consumer Products Safety Commission.
A high-level State Department position welcomed a man whose published work views the U.S. not as a republic, but as “a global empire,” and whose entire foreign policy world view is centered around the need to maintain and expand that empire through an “imperial strategy.”
Plans for belligerent engagement with Iran continue apace.
At the same time, world equity markets have stumbled notably on the realization of systemic problems with the financing of the global economy; declining prices for crude oil, precious metals, and real estate indicate a contraction in core global stability. Or the tightening of the collective sphincter.
A suicide bomber got within hearing distance of Vice President Dick Cheney on his surprise visit to Afghanistan last week. Ann Coulter emitted another cloud of heinous bile at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. The Fourth U.S. Circuit of Appeals set new limits on access to judicial redress of grievances.
On the other hand, a full and formal Bill of Indictment for Impeachment was published against Dick Cheney.
Hope springs eternal.
Meredith Charpantier - March 6, 2007 @ 9:09 am
YEAH! Me too. !!
Where are our rabble rousers, where is our revolution? We need a banner to get behind, a collective rant to shout. We need a march, or a boycott to support. What we need is a movement to join. Where is that movement?
Never has a people been lulled into such deep a state of complacency. There are a whole lot of “mad as hell” citizens out here, letting Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann to do all their ranting about it for them. Or blogging. Freedeom of speech is our tranquilizer, freedom of the press, our blindfold.
Lonnie, and friends, beyond the bumpersticker option, let us put our smart minds together and come up with some small action we can take, some statement we can make, some impact we can have beyond the electronic page. Actions do still speak louder than words.
I am up for carrying the bigggest IMPEACH banner in the up coming antiwar rally. Anyone want to join me? But that is only a beginning…
Paul Burke - March 6, 2007 @ 12:10 pm
Dear God,
That impeachment article makes me sick – how can a liberal biased media be claimed when no one, none in the media cares – do we collectively and secretly want Cheney and Bush to set up a fiefdom in the MidEast and that’s why no one is complaining or are the corporations that hold the power silencing the critics? That GQ has to print this article is tragic. Cheney’s latest disingenuous bombastic blow hard comments (read bullshit) about the VA don’t stand up to the facts either, as the administration on his watch lowered VA benefits while sending soldiers off to war – disgusting!
lonbud - March 6, 2007 @ 1:06 pm
See now another spark of hope rising in the darkened skies of our aspirations: today a federal jury returned a unanimous verdict of guilty on four of five felony counts brought against the vice president’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in the investigation surrounding the public unmasking of one-time undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame.
The highest echelon of the Bush administration has its first convicted felon, which puts Junior well behind Poppy and Uncle Dutch (he of sainted memory), but something tells me Mr. Libby won’t be the only BushCo official getting fitted for an orange jumpsuit before all is said and done.
See Glenn Greenwald’s excellent analysis here.
Jeseppi Trade Wildfeather - March 9, 2007 @ 1:15 am
“On the other hand, one wonders just how much debasement of every principle upon which the country was founded might cause “the people” to assert their power, to throw off the depredations of illegitimate, incompetent rule.”
“The People”? Who are the people Lon? I have been hanging out with a wealthy stock broker for the past few months who is teaching me how to invest and get filthy rich like him. This is what I have learned. The people, according to him, are a mass of dumbed down jackasses who have been trained to be loyal ignorant consumers that make him rich with everything they senselessly want, need and buy.
He sees no incompetent rule at all. According to him, America is right where it should be. The founding fathers never made any provisions to free the slaves, and in his eyes, indeed, the slaves still exist, albeit, shod and mobile, but slaves none the less.
He holds thousands of shares of America and feels that his truer vote is better represented in his equities. He really could care less what the people think as long as they keep purchasing consumer nondurables. In fact, he sees the world in terms of those capable of taking on profitable, productive progress. He wants to see earnings per share … the bottom line. I wanted to buy a stock that showed great potential but showed no earnings per share and he asked … “Who will buy the stock.” I slept on it and returned an answer a few days later. “Fools”, I said. He smiled and nodded his head slyly.
You see my friend, this man seems to be part of a contingent of Americans who have invested in America all along, and generated through her enormous wealth. I suppose that was the idea from the very beginning. If you put your money in a bank, he sees you as a fool. Now, these folk are uninterested in giving any of their wealth away, and so they are forced to divert their thinking from anything Democratic and are pleased to embrace the only system which seems to acknowledge the red bloodedness of their patriotic needs; even been passing bills recently to secure themselves and their homelands. Can you blame them? They feel that America was excellent then and now and the economics only proves it. The strong will survive by creating yet another world war to prove it.
It’s all quiet simple —these Americans intend to control all the energy resources in the world because it can, must and should, they believe … and they refuse to be challenged … and quiver at the thought of all those young studs standing at attention before the great booty of war. The masses according to them are simply lemmings awaiting their own slaughter. They certainly believe in ecology, and feel terrible about waste on any level. They tell me that the biggest cause of waste, polution, and scarcity is people and they intend to address that shortly throgh the question of Iran … might even throw in a few more hotbeds just to handle matters efficiently all at once. Oh, I see the treacherous cliff approaching. Indeed, I do feel somewhat anxious. Beware the Ides of March.
lonbud - March 9, 2007 @ 10:46 pm
Very well put, Jeseppi, and you’ll get no argument from me on the meta-points of your analysis. Who are — where are — the People, indeed…
In the end, I guess, the People are those who get things done.
While the founders of the United States of America were in large measure wealthy landowners, mercantilists, and financiers themselves, they might have left well enough alone, actually, had not the British crown overstepped the bounds of legitimacy and competence.
If your broker buddy cannot see the parallels in the George of his own day, well, pray he doesn’t live long enough to see the logical conclusion to the hubris and abuses of the current regime.
The next American revolution will not likely be led by couch potatoes or mall rats, but rather, by wealthy landowners, mercantilists, and financiers who can no longer abide the illegitimacy and incompetence of rulers like Mssrs. Bush and Cheney.
There are consequences — many of them unintended — to the waste of human and capital resources the likes of which we’ve witnessed these past six-plus years. All the rich Republicans who could not stand Bill Clinton’s amorality will one day look back with fondness on the things they had so good, for what BushCo has done is going to bring all but the savviest and luckiest of them to ruin.
Anxiety should soon be all the rage.
Meredith Charpantier - March 20, 2007 @ 8:01 pm
I fear that Lonbud has gone on leave of absence. All this good stuf going down without his astute analysis. Leaves a girl a little untethered. Where’s north guys” Which way is up?
lonbud - March 21, 2007 @ 12:11 am
Yes, well, I have been champing at the bit, with no way to bolt the corral and run free these past couple of weeks.
Dammit.
The wheels on the bus look ready to go quite akimbo any day now, and I hope I’ll manage an astute comment in that regard before the proverbial sh*t hits the actual fan.
Still and all, I hope no one’s compass is really broken. It’s not as if it’s been hard to figure the distance between good and evil these past six years…