Is it possible that this administration is mad?

[rodeodance]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1570326,00.html
Ignorance and abdication that amounts to madness

All political leaders sometimes parry with the truth, but with Bush the disconnections are systematic

John Berger
Thursday September 15, 2005
The Guardian


As a consequence of the catastrophe that occurred in New Orleans, people in the US and throughout the world have started to re-examine the record of the present leaders of the first world superpower. A shift in opinion has taken place almost overnight. History, throwing us all back into our seats, suddenly opened its throttle.
Katrina - everyone refers to the hurricane by her name as if she were some kind of avatar - revealed that there is dire and increasing poverty in the US, that black people are typically treated as unwanted second-class citizens, that the systematic cutting of government investment in public institutions has produced widespread social disequilibrium and destitution (40 million Americans live without any aid if they fall ill), that the so-called war against terrorism is creating administrative chaos, and that within and against all this, voices of protest are being raised loud and clear.
.........


In some gnomic way the as-yet-innumerable dead on the Gulf coast spoke not for but with the 100,000 Iraqis who have died as a consequence of the ongoing disastrous and criminal war. Time and again in the US press, Katrina and Iraq are being mentioned together. Yet Katrina was regular. She belonged to the familiar weather conditions which affect the Gulf of Mexico. She was not hiding in Afghanistan. And merciless as she was, she did not belong to any axis of evil. She was simply a natural threat to American lives and property, and she was heading for Louisiana.

It was in the self-interest (as well as the national interest) of the president and his chosen colleagues to meet the challenge she threw down, to foresee the needs of her victims and to reduce the ensuing pain and panic to the minimum possible. If they, the government, happened to fail to do this, they would be able to blame nobody else, and they themselves would be blamed. A child could foresee this. And they failed utterly. Their failure was technical, political and emotional. "Stuff happens," murmurs Donald Rumsfeld.

Is it possible that this administration is mad? Let us try to define the variant of madness, for it may be that it has never occurred before. It has very little to do, for example, with Nero when he fiddled while Rome burned. Any madness, however, implies a severe disconnection with reality, or, to put it more precisely, with the existent.........

[Richard D]

1. Is it possible this administration isn't mad?

Nope

[Maple]

2. Well I've always thought so

but that's just me.

[BrklynLiberal]

3. From the very roots on up... or the very top on down, whichever image

more adequately completes the image.

[MADem]

18. Da fish rots from da head.....

And this crew is rotten all the way to the tail....

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Yes

yes, yes, and now we need to convince people that they are MAD... with HUBRIS

[Gyre]

5. Their entire goal is to benefit corporate America.

Pirates in the palace looting the treasury until there's nothing left or we stop them.

Gyre

[Erika]

6. The reaction to W's speech today at the U.N. said it all

The audience showed no interest in listening to his words. They read, they wrote, they talked amongst themselves. It was like they were saying blah, blah, blah.

In the meantime, they had seen our poorest left for days with no help. They know we are spiraling downwards in education of our youth.
More and more of our own have no health care.

W has not only his credibility but his moral authority. He has turned us into the world's joke.

[texpatriot2004]

8. I can't stand to hear the man open his stupid evil mouth...

I turn him off every chance I get.

The Emporer is STILL naked.

[lindisfarne]

7. The madness of King George. The brits would know. n/t

[texpatriot2004]

9. Yes, it is QUITE obvious. n/t

[Karenina]

10. NOMINATED!!!!

[ixion]

11. gee, ya think? Many here could have answered this question

tens of thousands of lives, numerous civil liberties and hundreds of billions of dollars ago. :eyes: :grr:

[Nothing Without Hope]

12. Yes, the PNAC neocons are insane. On top of that, I do believe Bush is

deteriorating mentally, and I've got lots of company in this. Here's a video presentation comparing Bush 10 years ago and now. 10 years ago he was speaking smoothly and articulately without written notes or a prompter. Now he can barely get a single sentence out and often stands there like a deer in the headlights. Some mental health professionals believe it's a form of presenile dementia, a progressive disease state. Here's the video presentation - the difference from 10 years ago is quite marked:
http://www.adbuzz.com/bushbuzz.htm

As for the PNAC neocons like Cheney, Rummy, Wolfowitz, Bolton and so on, they are insane in their willfully blind drive toward their crazy dream of world domination through military power. In this connection, we must expose and fight the new Pentagon draft policy statement that would make PRE-EMPTIVE NUCLEAR STRIKES official US policy:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1770759
thread title: PREEMPTIVE NUCLEAR STRIKES - Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan

[smoogatz]

21. Great video.

Isn't there a form of dementia associated with long-term alcoholism? I think forty years of Jack and Cokes are eating W's brain.

[Nothing Without Hope]

13. I believe we would do well to show the American public they have good

reason to FEAR the Bush Administration. It may open more eyes than our anger alone. And it is the simple truth.

[Pacifist Patriot]

14. Yes! Not only possible, but probable.

Bush on the Couch

Beyond Bush's psychopathy, I think anyone who subscribes to the PNAC agenda has more than one screw loose.

[PurgedVoter]

15. Narcissism poster child. Yes he is mad, check the criteria.

See if he is missing even one.

Criteria for Determination of Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Narcissists demonstrate a need for admiration and a lack of empathy. They have an extremely exaggerated view of their importance, perception and power and persecution. These traits usually show up in early adulthood. This is indicated by having five or more of the nine following:

(1) Has a grandiose sense of self-importance, in other words, exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements.

(2) Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.

(3) Believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people or institutions.

(4) Requires excessive admiration.

(5) Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations.

(6) Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends.

(7) Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.

(8) Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.

(9) Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.


None missing, all defining traits. He is not just a narcissist, he is the narcissist.

[rateyes]

16. Bush is "mad as a hatter,"

and the whole administration lives in Alice's wonderland. It's time for the Dems to look at Bush and yell "off with his (political) head."

[PATRICK]

17. Total indifference

to everything except advancing their agenda. And what can they practically suffer with all the instruments of power intact? They never lost their focus which confirms what many have suspected about 9/11. They only looked at the warnings from the SOLE perspective of how to exploit them. There was little or no effort given to things like prevention or interdiction or anything. If they DID want to lethargically go through the motions of preventing terrorist attacks it always deviated into exploitation and rationalized away all choices in that it "would happen anyway" and with their "strong" plan for the future we would be better off for controlling outcomes of disasters NOT preventing them.

This is not so hidden though some of them may have hidden this from themselves. rationalization, eyes on their goal. Crushing and sidelining of anything and everyone in their way. The media operates sympathetically
in the opinion making field. Competent and dedicated public servants get compromised or overwhelmed in unsupported efforts, distracted like any two income marriage in a hopeless battle against diminishing returns.

We are are a hijacked train speeding down the one track system of the Coup.

Not ONCE did Bush make more than a meaningless token effort(photo op lazy) to merit even the paid plaudits of his peanut media gallery. No concessions, no work, no compromise, no effort to do anything or really win hearts and minds with real service. Not once anything but lies and posing and retracted promises. Could have should earned the willing surrender of good will and bipartisanship, but they rode over it with total impunity. Anything Bush ever showed as an effort to serve America and Americans was nothing but a fiction. Death has no balance on the tally sheets. There is nothing good they ever tried to do to win people over. They are revealed as 100% incapable of it.

All these people and more to come were doomed when we surrendered our country to the actual loser of the 2000 rigged contest. There was no possibility of choice or chance in the conscience of the king. Never was fate so set in stone by a heart to match.

[cliss]

27. Yes. They remind me of carpenter ants

or maybe yellow jackets. You must admit: they have been single-minded. They've accomplished pretty much EVERYTHING on their shopping list. They have been unbelievably successful in pushing through their agenda.

But what agenda?

To hijack the United States. To use it as their juggernaut, or torpedo for whatever they wished.

Power has a way of perpetrating itself. It becomes what it seeks to be - power to be used for its own purposes.

And it's inherently unstable. The more power they pull to themselves, the closer they are to their own destruction.

[hvn_nbr_2]

19. It's hard to tell how much is madness and how much is evil.

This adminstration has so much of both. Also a generous portion of stupidity, but I think it comes mostly at the behest of the evil and insanity.

[Pacifist Patriot]

20. Hmmmm...is evil madness?

I see the kernels of one whammy of a philosophical debate. ;)

[CJCRANE]

22. The "Crazies" are in charge

as the neocons were known during the Bush 1 administration.

(Also known as "the Vulcans").

[glitch]

24. "Vulcans" probably what they named themselves. "Crazies" what everyone

else named them.

[geckosfeet]

23. Possible? It is a difficult conclusion to avoid. n/t

[WhiteTara]

25. I don't know about "administration" but those people in it

certainly are insane, criminally so.
IMPEACH GEORGE BUSH AND SEND THEM ALL TO THE HAGUE

[melody]

26. I thought it was a foregone conclusion

What do they mean "is it possible"?