Sane
Bush Hatred
By Joel S.Hirschhorn
16 November, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The
Wall Street Journal gave the top half of its opinion page yesterday
to a long essay by Peter Berkowitz titled “The Insanity of Bush
Hatred.” If anything, it deserves a gold medal for political propaganda
– make that political lies. What caught my attention immediately
was the frequent use of the word “progressive” to describe
the people Berkowitz was attacking. It was used ten times. In other
words, progressives were attacked for hating Bush.
There is a major lie of omission. No mention was made of the vast number
of Americans that certainly do not call themselves progressives that
hate Bush. Surely there are many millions of sane independents, moderates,
libertarians, conservatives and liberals that rightfully hate Bush.
To ignore all these Americans betrays the intellectual legitimacy of
the article and its arguments.
Here are the few core reasons
given by Berkowitz for condemning Bush hatred:
It is not a rational force
in politics. It clouds and impairs political judgment. It subverts sound
thinking. It has addled minds. It damages the intellect. It reduces
“complicated events and multilayered issues to simple matters
of good and evil.” It “blinds to the other sides of the
argument, and constrains the hater to see a monster instead of a political
opponent.”
There is no detailed analysis
of all the ways that the Bush administration has betrayed our Constitution.
No mention, for example, of Bush signing statements that self-justifies
not obeying the laws passed by Congress. No mention that the Bush claim
of not using torture is so obviously a lie. No mention of using illegal
surveillance of Americans and lying about it. No mention of countless
lies used to get us into the absurd and costly Iraq war. No mention
of the enormous amount of evidence showing that 9/11 was not solely
an operation by foreign terrorists, but involved the federal government.
And on and on.
The only rational and sane
conclusion is that hating Bush is justified and completely sane.
There is some truth to the
opening statement: Hating the president is almost as old as the republic
itself. But the growing consensus that George W. Bush will go down in
history as the nation’s worst president is a much larger truth.
It is perfectly reasonable for ALL Americans to hate Bush for squandering
the lives of the many people in our armed forces, for squandering the
nation’s wealth, and for squandering our nation’s good name
and reputation. Bush is a national embarrassment and disgrace, and for
that he deserves to be hated.
All those with a clear and
sound intellect, rational objectivity, sensible judgment, and the ability
to know evil when they see it should hate Bush. Hating Bush is nothing
to be ashamed of. The real challenge is moving beyond Bush hatred to
seeing the need for deep political reforms that restores American democracy.
We must convert the national Bush-hatred-energy into rebellious action.
We must re-establish our constitutional checks and balances and removing
the unlawful and excessive powers of the presidency. How do we achieve
reforms? That is the right question.
As to insanity: I say we
must stop doing the same thing and expecting different results. That
same thing is voting for Democrats or Republicans. We must remember
that virtually all the evil and corrupt things Bush has done could not
have been accomplished without the tacit or explicit support of Democrats
in Congress. The two-party partnership also deserves our hatred. It
has removed political competition and the ability of third party candidates
from winning national office. To let Bush hatred result in knee-jerk
support for Democrats is a mistake.
The only way to restore American
democracy is to remove the legitimacy and credibility of the two-party-controlled
political system. The way to do that is through a voter boycott in the
2008 elections for the president and members of Congress. Neither Democrats
nor Republicans faithfully represent the interests of the public and
that makes our representative democracy a sham. To keep playing the
game and voting for any candidates that are members of the vast two-party
criminal conspiracy is plain stupid. If Americans keep sustaining this
corrupt and dishonest two-party system, then they will continue to witness
the decay of our society.
Joel S. Hirschhorn
is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without
Overthrowing the Government (www.delusionaldemocracy.com). His current
political writings have been greatly influenced by working as a senior
staffer for the U.S. Congress and for the National Governors Association.
He advocates a Second American Revolution, beginning with an Article
V Convention to propose constitutional amendments.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.