dragging out the scapegoats

[glthompson]

Terrance wrote:

> Bashing Bush for his language skills is easy, but
> demonstrating, with solid facts and good argument, that Bush is not a
> smart man
> or that his policies are stupid is not so easy.
>
> It's easy to call the man a box or rocks. It's not so easy to
> critique his foreign policy.
>
> The devil is in the details, in the facts, not in the marbles in the
> president's mouth.
>
> I still contend that Bush is a very smart man. I don't buy into the TV
> stereotypes and propaganda from the Left. He's smart.
>

Sorry, that would be propaganda from the Right. In case you hadn't noticed,
the Left doesn't have much role these days in the distribution of propaganda
(e.g., Fox News, "We report. You decide" indeed, or the newly right-tilting
"Hire Rush Limbaugh" CNN).

So long as W.'s handlers could lower expectations during the campaign,
attention was paid to his malapropisms rather than his proposed policies, a
pattern which has largely continued. It may be a good thing to change tax
policy so that the top 2% pay much much less than before, but no one argued
the case because so much attention was paid to Al Gore's sighs.

So far as we can tell about Bush's policies, prior to 9/11 they consisted of
skewing federal policies so as to benefit his supporters and friends, with a
few symbolic gestures to the Christian right and allies. On 9/11 he and all
of us have been put into different circumstances. Last night's speech was a
good performance, and I agree that Bush is shrewder than advertised. But I
would still feel better if a) he hadn't *just* begun to develop an
appreciation for something beyond unilateral US action, and b)  he had shown
a basis for decisions which reach beyond political calculation.

Now of all times we have to be suspicious of those beating drums.

"The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality and the
self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public
figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to
follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize
the public. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly'
attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but
an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a
consequence of specific American alliances and actions? . . .

"Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is
not afraid. Our spirit is unbroken, although this was a day that will live
in infamy and America is now at war. But everything is not O.K. And this was
not Pearl Harbor. We have a robotic President who assures us that America
still stands tall. A wide spectrum of public figures, in and out of office,
who are strongly opposed to the policies being pursued abroad by this
Administration apparently feel free to say nothing more than that they stand
united behind President Bush. A lot of thinking needs to be done, and
perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the ineptitude of
American intelligence and counter-intelligence, aboutr options available to
American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, and about what
constitutes a smart program of military defense. But the public is not being
asked to bear much of the burden of reality. . . .

"Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together. A few
shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just
happened, and what may continue to happen. 'Our country is strong,' we are
told again and again. I for one don't find this entirely consoling. Who
doubts that America is strong? But that's not all America has to be."
        --Susan Sontag, _New Yorker_, Sept. 24 (sorry, it's not on line)


Gary Thompson