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Final Winter Of Our Bush Discontent

By Robert S. Becker

12 January, 2008
Countercurrents.org


By next year logic alone predicts happier tidings, after a campaign “surge” that channels today’s widespread anger. Blame such wild optimism on seasonal afflictions, personal derangement or blatant wishful thinking. Electing a new presidential voice, like Senator Obama or Edwards, would signal not just rejection of corrosive Bush politics but an historic, symbolic reversal justifying both shock and awe.

The question today is whether we’ve passed the nadir of the Bush assault on government, foreigners, and our country. Of late, the White House scandal machine appears exhausted, though only a fool predicts the final act, the last humiliation, the ultimate disgrace. The apparent fatigue of our own domestic axis of evil feels like good news.

Two other factors will temper the strident Bush-Cheney ’08 tone – the fantasy of a positive legacy plus party pressure to make nice so the GOP candidate isn't ruined even before his nomination finishes. I trust administration flimflam to buoy up its legacy will utterly fail, leaving the only question whether Bush-Cheney stands as the worst, or equal to the worst, of our national administrations.

Blowback to the Bush pendulum

These comments are less Obamesque glimmers of hope than recognition the pendulum of Bush damage, having surpassed all expectations, must eventually swing another way. As truly bad times often presage better, the numberless scandals imply the worst may be over. When the NY Times throws its arms up in despair, unable in its final ’07 editorial to “recognize” America under Bush, we sense ruling class agony—and that big money and power will switch horses to preserve its fattened asset base. Gross negligence, whether in Washington or sub-prime lending, depletes the American “brand,” thus the plunging dollar and desecrated image abroad.

Certainly, this year’s tepid Christmas festivities reflect dark, dark times, and western complicity in the Bhutto assassination (refusing to insist on top security) marks the latest Bush foreign policy fiasco. Fierce defenses of President Musharraf undercut any charade talking democracy. And recent economic reversals (negating all trickle-down fantasies) finally took their toll, as the once insatiable American consumer left retailers high and dry, with more goods than profits.

Only powerful levers dislodge seven years of mass national denial, but an onslaught of scandals, one more dispiriting than the last, has tortured America from lethargy. Even the dullest among us realize American interests will be bloodied when the world depicts America an outlaw nation, equated with inhumane inquisitions, suspension of habeas corpus, and contempt for our own Constitution. Years of violations, capped by the illegal destruction of CIA tapes specifically demanded by a federal judge, are causing tectonic shifts, feeding outrage moving in one direction.

Each scandal exacerbates the last

This sense of betrayal forces Americans to do what we hate -- puzzle over how quickly we turned from a progressive nation aligned with freedom and opportunity to become a torturing, immigration-hating, fear-driven, pre-emptive invader with contempt for international law.

Glaringly obvious aren’t just the number of scandals, but the emerging pattern, the cynical and calculated mindset in charge from the start. A nasty consistency proves Bush-Cheney anything but incompetent when serving a skewed business agenda, for corporatism, globalization, and climate-threatening deregulation. Every new scandal pummels our national ego, pressing us to accept this worst case scenario: White House decisions were rarely random or related to 9/11 or terrorism, rather the execution of long brewing rightwing ideology that favors the few at the expense of the many.

It’s clear why the administration never asked for public sacrifice, typical during wartime: it embraced unfair taxation, criminal overreaching, and covert charades to achieve the same purposes. Abandoning butter for guns may be legitimate war policy, but picking our pockets and pensions while not fighting genuine enemies or disasters at the levy – that chicanery cannot hide forever.

However shocking, it’s healthy to realize the tyranny when federal police forces –- the CIA and the FBI – freely violate rights (with illegal eavesdropping, monitoring of bank records, denial of habeas corpus). It is shocking but healthy for a majority to recognize our elected government has repeatedly violated core civil rights, whether with brutal treatment, permanent incarceration, or denial of legal hearings.

Our "most disgraced president"

Is there any question, with a year still to go, Gore Vidal’s amazing prediction in 2000 -- George Bush will depart office “our most disgraced president” –- astonishes with its prescience? True, not one big scandal has been resolved and more will emerge. Yet, if we’re closer to the end than the beginning, that's marginal good news, inspiring healthy anger that “we” as a country let Bush happen.

The media, though sluggish, is awakening, increasingly investigating beyond the obvious, unarguable violations. Congress, too, is awakening, so brace for a year of inquiries, of subpoenas, of testimony and indictments, at least for support officials.

I expect a year of revelation, of truth long buried dragged kicking and screaming into the open. If this is not the case – and White House crimes not detailed -- then we have a double tragedy: suffering without learning from failure and corruption. It is one thing for a nation to go the wrong way for seven years. It is quite another, and historically less likely, to see no meaningful correction.

Can visible, criminal violations challenging a democracy, even a compromised one, endure forever against a mass of angry voters, a roused, if wary Congress, a skeptical media, and a judicial system that realizes its core authority is on the line? That is the question for the New Year.

There has been much recent talk of empires rising and falling, often with astonishing speed. Now we find out if this once vital enterprise breaks the mold or repeats history. If we don't recognize, let alone remedy the sustained anti-Constitutionalism from this White House, then the American political delusion of superiority, divinely ordained, is kaput and the only unknown is how long before America’s conspicuous decline.


Former university teacher, outreach consultant, and small business owner, Becker spouts off from Mendocino CA, welcoming rational feedback at [email protected]



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