The State of the Union is #%!*@&
By Jim
Smith
The Imperial President strolled
through the Hall of Congress among the mortals, accompanied by members of the
Blue state and Red state parties. He even deigned to take note of a few of them
before mounting his throne to deliver his marching orders to the waiting
dignitaries.
The Imperial trappings have advanced light
years since the founding of the Republic. I don’t yearn for the
good-old-days when only white men with property could vote, and everyone else
had an inferior status.
However, the great
democratization of the early 20th Century is clearly in retreat. The Congress
has surrendered its warmaking power to the president, and in his Jan. 31 speech,
Bush claimed to turn questions of troop withdrawal over to the military.
Early Roman emperors also retained the
facade of democracy. The first emperor, Augustus, walked among the people and
even ran for the office of Counsel every year (he won every time). By the time
the empire had morphed into Byzantium, the emperor had a hydraulic throne that
would elevate his seat high above prostrate supplicants to show his majesty. We
can expect the same during the reign of Bush VI or Clinton
IX.
Meanwhile, where are the people?
Scared shitless that the telemarketer or tech rep you’re talking to in
India might be a terrorist in disguise and now the NSA knows all about
it.
I’d like to talk about the
content of the speech, but there wasn’t
much.
Bush’s plea to reduce
reliance on foreign oil is a clue that he – and his neo-con advisors
– understand what a mess they’ve made of things in the Middle
East.
Not only has he provoked a
guerrilla war to drive the “foreign devils” out of Iraq, and the
entire region but he has united most the world’s population against the
U.S. The Bush regime must be wishing for the good ole days in Iraq when they
only had to deal with one person.
There
are many metaphors in the English language to describe Bush’s missteps,
such as Pandora’s Box, a can of worms, a sea of troubles to name a few.
But that old Vietnam standby “quagmire” will do
nicely.
The growing demand outside the
Beltway to get out of Iraq as soon as possible puts Bush in an untenable
position. He can’t stay and he can’t leave. If the troops stay in
Iraq, in reduced numbers, they will have to assume an increasingly defensive
posture. The French well remember the Indochina end game, the surrender to the
Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu.
If Bush
pulls out of Iraq, he is dead politically. In any democracy worthy of its name,
there would be resignations up and down the civilian chain of
command.
Before shedding any tears for
Bush II or believing his line that “the State of the Union is good,”
think about what he has squandered (in addition to the number of human lives
lost that are listed on page
one).
Congressional appropriations by
the Demopubs add up to more than $238
billion.
According to the National
Priorities Project, that could have paid the annual salary of four million
school teachers, built two million homes, put 31 million kids in Head Start
programs, fully funded global anti-hunger efforts for nine years, or global AIDS
programs for 23 years.
Sadly, the last
five years have not been due only to one Texas draft-dodger run amok. The
illegal invasion of Iraq, the “Patriot” Act, all the deaths and
injuries and the squandering of billions of dollars could not have occurred
without, at least, the passive cooperation of nearly everyone in Congress. But
now, more than four years after 9/11, that act is wearing thin.
The L.A. Times conducted a nationwide
poll that was reported on Jan. 27, which asked: Which party in Congress do you
think has higher standards of honesty and
integrity?
The responses were
Republicans, 14%; Democrats, 13%; No difference, 68%; Don’t know, 5%.
Hopefully, we won’t get fooled
again.
Posted: Wed - February 1, 2006 at 07:15 PM