Ranting in the Wilderness

Why was John Bolton so intent on getting those CIA analysts to cook up reports saying that Cuba had a biological weapons capacity? Was it to set the prelude to an invasion, according to this super-gung-ho administration's unprecedented preemption policy?

But what the mass media missed, in typical style, was the question of why such a thing was being cooked up in the first place. There's the Big Bad Story (a little something called warmongering) but the so-called journalists were nattering and chattering over all the high school drama of ... He said this ... No he didn't ... But he was mean ... Then he tried to get him in trouble ... Who's supporting him? ... Who doesn't like him anymore.



For all those who have never considered what it must be like for the rest of the world, i.e., those living in the shadow of one superpower, here's some help. Imagine the U.S. in 20-30 years, half as strong militarily and financially as it is now (as it will be) and China, much stronger in all ways as it is now (which it will be).

China's foreign policy, in this scenario, includes giving military aid to many Central and South American countries, as well as a lot of development money. They use their heavy-handed influence to install leaders who are pro-China, defeat and even assassinate pro-American leaders, establish many military bases in these countries, and send troops in wherever their interests are threatened. Their cultural influences are everywhere and many Americans (including our best young engineers and scientists) apply for visas to emigrate there.



So those stupid French derive 78% of their energy from nuclear power? Clean and low-cost and accident-free nuclear power, or so they claim. But how are they to be believed, those smelly, disreputable people with the funny-sounding language? Those stupid, stupid French! Don't they know that you can get plenty of energy from burning coal and importing petroleum from those nice Mideastern folks?



Speaking of dirty energy, GWB was bragging on television that there's less pollution now then there was in 1970, kind of like he was taking credit for it, and at the same time disparaging (with that obnoxious snickering sound he makes) the environmentalists' concerns. The fact is that most of that improvement came in the latter years of his Father's administration (a president who helped pass the Clean Air Bill) and the tightened regulations of the Clinton administration. It's gotten worse since this young (phony conservationist) Bush took office, from Day One stripping the teeth out of the environmental regulations and pushing through bills which hurt the ecosystem and citizens' health, while further enriching his corporate cronies.

Slowly Sinking Ship

One could readily make the assumption that a nation which has been organized for two centuries, is free of any occupying foreign force, enjoys a richness of natural resources, and has an educated populace, would be fiscally sound, generating an ever-healthier citizenry, producing progressively more intellectual and spiritual people and institutions, and earning the amity and respect of the world. In point of ugly factuality, if that country is America, the opposite is true in all cases.

One could add to that list the presumption that such a country would be in a condition of reducing the number of its residents in poverty, and would be improving its ecology. Wrong and wrong. So instead of an upward spiral, we of the vaunted U.S.A. find ourselves in the other kind.

We as a country are no longer just dangerously close to the infernal slippery slope; we are indeed over the edge of that precipice and in the process of slip-sliding down that slope. The smoke and mirrors machine of the mainstream media, working in concert with the Bush administration’s mega-hype machine, has lulled people into an eerie complacency about the state of affairs we are now faced with.



The White House recently described Karl Rove’s job to be "to make sure that we have an open and fair process ... and to make sure that policy is complementary and consistent." Nice try at gobbledy-speak but Karl Rove, the president’s top political advisor, who also sits in on all policy meetings across the governmental board, has as his job to make sure that the government does not do anything to alienate its political base (i.e., conservatives, evangelicals, and rich folks) and does in fact do things which make the base happy, regardless of whether it’s good or fair-handed public policy.



When you have a congressional situation -- which we do -- wherein the so-called representatives only vote along party lines, then you no longer have a representative democracy. It’s something else, and not a good something else — maybe call it partisanocracy. The Founding Fathers did not intend the House and Senate to be this way; their vision was to have the elected members vote according to an ethical blend of their conscience and the expressed will of their citizenry.

A Bolton from the Blue

As a believer in the great potential of the United Nations (if not its current efficacy), I am particularly appalled by Bush’s selection of John Bolton as the American representative to that body. Not only is he considered the least diplomatic person in the State Department (perhaps in all of Washington), but also because of his vitriolic attacks on the institution he’s now appointed to, he is the last American who any of the U.N. diplomats want to see in that post.


To say that his selection is a thumb in the eye of the U.N. doesn’t quite capture it; it’s more like a thorny stick rammed down the throats of the international body. For Bush to pick this reddest of the red-ass Republicans to go amongst the peaceful-minded and reasonable-toned delegates of the United Nations confirms what others (like myself) have been saying about Bush and his administration, which is that they are infected with the disease of hubris from their own power and need to be severely curtailed.

With the wall-to-wall media coverage of the Vatican funeral and the Charles/Camilla wedding (with occasional updates from the Michael Jackson trial), I was worried that Congress would employ the subterfuge to lower the minimum wage and eliminate capital gains taxes altogether. But all they did was drastically cut the estate taxes that the wealthy pay upon the death of the family head.

This will cost the treasury over 2 trillion dollars in its first 20 years, money that could have helped cover the Social Security shortfall -- or the coming Medicare shortfall. It’s been dubbed the ‘Paris Hilton Bill’, because that’s the sort of person who will gain from it. Also benefitting will be the families of almost all the people who passed the bill, the ever-richer members of Congress and the Senate, especially on the Republican side.


So, now that three study commissions have found that the intelligence agencies couldn’t possibly have done a worse job preventing the 9/11 attacks, or deciphering whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or handling the occupation of Iraq, where are the job reprisals, where are the firings, where are the demotions?

Instead, Tenet and Bremer get the nation’s highest medal, Rice gets rewarded with Secretary of State, Wolfowitz gets the World Bank plum, and John Bolton is chosen as our U.N. representative. No wonder Bush did so poorly in the business world; he can't fire anyone and can't tell when people are dangerously incompetent.

It used to be that the United States government saw itself as the leveler of the playing field, protecting the common folk from the ravages of the rich and powerful despoilers, those who would swindle and gouge and pollute without mercy if there wasn’t anyone to stop them. But suddenly now there’s been a reversal of fortune for the American people, called the Bush Administration. And more than half the country are going along with it, jus’ so long as they keep the queers in their place, and protect the upstanding citizens of Middle America from the mythical monolith called "the liberal elite" (aka the tree-huggers, fem-nazis and baby-killers).



The political system now in place in the U.S. is bordering on hara-kiri. The politicians prostitute themselves to amass large sums of money for their campaigns, which they then spend mostly to destroy the character of their opponents. Since both sides are doing it to each other, the American people are left with leaders who more than half of them believe to be some combination of stupid and evil. More and more people are just not voting, and many who do are doing so with misgivings, i.e., hold your nose and pull the lever.



Speaking of elections...
Kerry and Bush were, if you were to make one generalization that covered them both, proceeding through the campaign with the apparent intention to display their characters as the opposite of what they truly were: Bush as compassionate, industrious and smart, and Kerry as rugged, personable and decisive.

Speaking Truth to Power

One of the cancers eating away at what’s left of America’s soul is the growing power of the corporation. And one of the ways that this cancer projects itself is through corporate manipulation of employees. The first order of business, right up there with profit-making, is to rob the workers of their individuality. In restaurants, stores, hotels and other service industries owned by conglomerates, the employees must wear some (often hideous) uniform, usually with attached buttons, and mouth certain pre-scripted words to the customers.



GWB routinely ignored the sage advice of three men he should have listened to: Colin Powell, Richard Clarke and former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill. He opted instead to listen to the ideology-driven neo-cons when it came to war in Iraq, the war on terrorism and soaking the economy with overdone tax cuts. Well, all three are gone now, so that bunch has the run of the ranch.

The early results are that the country has been saddled with an impossibly expensive prescription drug bill (a massive giveaway to the pharmaceutical companies), a new bankruptcy law (a massive giveaway to the mostly unethical credit card companies), and a specious proposal for "saving" Social Security with private accounts (a massive giveaway to Fortune 500 companies and Wall Street) which would entail the government borrowing a few trillion more dollars.



It’s not only not your father’s Republican Party anymore, it’s flat-out not really the Republican Party at all. For generations, the GOP’s core values were pro-business, pro-privacy, anti-foreign entanglements, importance of state’s rights, separation of church and state, smaller federal government, separation of powers and balancing the damn budget. Except for the first one on that list, the Bushies have shredded and trampled the rest of their supposed credo of guiding principles.

What it should be called now is the Money/Power Party. It really just exists as an engine to make the rich richer, something it accomplishes by suckering the religious people of the country to vote for it, even while it’s economically screwing over many of those people at the same time.