End of Empire Psychosis - John Rember
When George W. Bush stood in a flight suit on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and declared the Iraq War a mission accomplished, I finally understood that the man was batshit crazy. Before that, I had regarded him as just another increment in the incremental takeover of American government by multinational corporations. It didn't matter who was in the White House, I had thought. What mattered was that Exxon and British Petroleum and Halliburton would rule the seas, that Boeing and General Dynamics would rule the air, and that Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland would get to say who planted what crops in every country with a patent office.
It hadn't occurred to me that Bush might actually believe what he said, or, worse, that he really thought he was the leader of a democratic country that in turn led other democratic countries against the bad people of the world, who hated us for our freedom. But there he was, in a flight suit that was itself a tangible lie, telling us without irony that Iraq and Afghanistan had joined the community of free nations.
Since that time, I've decided the worst thing that can happen to a country is to have a leader who believes his own rhetoric. Voters understand this, and instinctively shy away from sincere politicians. Al Gore would have won the presidency had he adopted Bill Clinton's easy smiling cynicism, and effortlessly communicated that he wasn't about to feel anybody's pain, no matter how much of it he saw coming down the pike. As a presidential candidate, John Kerry had a streak of awkward, truth-blurting integrity that made people think he might use the presidency to identify many more lost causes than Vietnam.
George W. Bush won twice because people assumed nobody could be the kind of stupid he was in public. Somewhere behind that idiot grin, Americans assumed, was a kind of low cunning that was in touch with reality, and that reality justified the war crimes, the deaths of thousands of Americans and Afghans and Iraqis, and the emptying of the American treasury into corporate pockets. But there was no cunning, low or otherwise, and no being in touch with reality. There was only the idiot grin. Behind it was howling nothingness. I've seen his paintings.
more - http://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/end-of-empire-psychosis/Content?oid=3155463
JayhawkSD
(3,163 posts)Uncle Joe
(58,355 posts)Thanks for the thread, IDemo.
raccoon
(31,110 posts)BobbyBoring
(1,965 posts)Just ask Michael Connell. Oh wait, you can't! He's dead.
raccoon
(31,110 posts)Roy Serohz
(236 posts)GREAT read!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)but it's not here yet.
How long? The longer it takes, the worse shape the US will be left in. And things are bad enough already.
Of course, a President with integrity, who works for the People, not the Corporations, could turn it around....which is why we won't get any such thing as things presently stand.
When the Supreme Court has been cleaned out, the process will be complete, and we can be a nation of Law again.