America's Caligula

The Counterfeit President
Submitted by Ian MacLeod on Fri, 05/11/2007
Bush, George W

George Walker Bush is a counterfeit – everything.

He is a coward who wants desperately to be a war hero. He was born to old money, but he is rude, crude, and even sober, he is an embarrassment whenever he is thrown onto his own resources; he has the wit of a drunken stevedore with the intellect of a slow eight year old. Even when he is given the words of others to speak, they come out mispronounced and disordered; he doesn’t understand all of them, and fails completely to understand what they taken all mean together. He’s a silver–spoon city boy who, if he had to saddle his own horse – if he can ride at all – would end up riding as Odysseus did the sheep of Polyphemus: underneath. Nor would he, with his bought and paid for University degree (they wouldn’t have dared fail a legacy like him anyway), understand the reference.

He is foul-mouthed, his sense of humor runs to the low, the cruel, often the filthy, and is always inappropriate. One has to wonder how many heads of state have been invited to pull his finger... He was genuinely incredulous that the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, didn’t want him manhandling her in public. Nonetheless, he has a sterling record, also bought and paid for, with only a few hard to see ghosts of things that don’t belong, ghosts that are not healthy to bring up or try to see. He believes the family’s money and connections can buy or fix anything; they always have before. He is vengeful and vindictive, even towards those closest to him. As for those who cross or harm him or his in any way – which includes asking questions he doesn’t like or disagreeing with him, he tends towards hatred and overkill. If he could have, he would have called in an airstrike on Natalie Maines and the Dixie Chicks.

He is easily led by those he sees as truly intelligent, though they have to put up with his gloating about him being their "boss" even so. He tends also toward fanaticism or obsession in anything that takes his fancy (until he tires of it, anyway, or until stress or difficulty makes it work), nor does he feel that rules or laws should apply to him, as the president, as a scion of Old Money, or as a Dominionist Christian, so he constantly tries to undermine any laws that might become obstacles – like the entire Constitution, though he doesn’t seem worried about the Third Amendment (quartering of the military in the homes of citizens) - yet. In religion, as in most things, he likes to come across as "one of the guys" until someone treats him that way; otherwise, he takes the aristocrat’s view: he is to be treated as the royalty he believes he is or else; that way he can do his "Aw shucks" routine. As with the priests of the Middle Ages who sold indulgences, his religion has told him that he is forgiven anything he might do, and anyone who believes differently isn’t just bound for Hell, they’re fair game for any torment he can arrange here on earth as well, and with his connections, he can create Hell right here on earth for almost anyone.

In economics, he fastened onto an outdated, disproved theory that takes everything away from those who produce the wealth of a country and gives it all to the deserving rich – like him and his family, and any crony corporations in his good graces. It also incidentally has essentially bankrupted and destroyed every country it has been forced on, and is doing the same here.

He is a liar by preference, whether there is a necessity for it or not, but being called on it can bring up up a destructive, self-righteous rage against the one(s) who saw and exposed the truth. It is as though he feels that even though he lied, his status as a superior being by birth and unearned wealth should dictate that the peons must treat anything he says as gospel truth. Although once, on television, he essentially said that he had lied so the truth wouldn’t influence the upcoming election (this was after the election), as it would have: against him. He was matter-of-fact, as though of course anyone would do the same thing, and there was nothing wrong with it.

He has no empathy save as an abstract concept. He says he doesn’t "know how poor people think." One wonders how difficult it could be to imagine not being able to afford rent and heat and medication and everything else your family needs. Or simplify it: what do you do when you have no roof over your head, can’t work, and the government has cut off any aid to single men your age? According to him, as far as anyone can tell, you die - you deserve it as the lazy, improvident sinner you are. It’s God’s punishment, just as the wealth his grandfather and father stole or got by bankrolling the Nazis, by insider trading, or by any other means they could use God’s reward to His Own, and he deserves the money he was born into because he’s a real Christian, and therefore is "forgiven from the beginning of time," meaning anything he ever does from now on is already forgiven.

His religion, a fanatic, cruel and controlling cult version of Christianity (called Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism), tells him he is God’s Chosen, shown by his wealth and position; all others deserve not only whatever trouble they already have, but whatever he does that makes life even harder for them. Those who work for a living are resources: they cough up votes and taxes for people like him, and sometimes have other things that can be taken from them to his benefit. It is also his belief that a government must lie to the people it rules, and the people he and the other Dominionists admire and quote often (well, other, more literate Dominionists like Karl Rove do, and George agrees, of course) are people like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Genghis Kahn and others they call "great leaders" not afraid to kill and conquer, torture or do whatever needed to be done. They teach that rulers must rule by terror, violence, and lies. As Machiavelli, another man they admire, said in "The Prince", a manual for taking over a country and ruling it which they have used as it was intended, "A leader must only appear to have the qualities of goodness — he need not actually possess those attributes." He said that, in fact, it was better if those qualities were only a pose. In George’s case, it isn’t a problem.

George Walker Bush talks about freedom a lot – and liberty, our compassion as a nation and the other things that have made us great. Like freedom of speech. He then follows the advice of his idols, working to remove all of these things from Americans and everyone else. He has taken our right to dissent, to gather peacefully and to protest, to have a say in our own government, our right to privacy, and to make our own choices about our own lives so long as they harm no others, our right to know any charges against us, our right not to be tortured or held incommunicado, to travel anonymously, and to be able to expect to have our taxes go to maintaining the infrastructure necessary to the well-being of the country and everyone in it as those we elect are supposed to do. He wants to tell us who we may and may not marry and live out our lives with, what we can watch on television, read or write, and to force us to allow our children to be taught (his) religion in our schools – which he is defunding and destroying as fast as he can anyway so that children must be taught in churches or at home, not stealing government money for something rightly not the government’s responsibility – and he wants to forbid all contraception, abortion for any reason, including to save the life of the mother or in the case of incest and rape, as well as demands that lying and harmful "information" is all our children may be taught in school about sex (this is abstinence education), making them far more vulnerable to unwanted pregnancies, and STD’s, including HIV, which he views as God’s punishment for fornication and sodomy.

Our roads are falling apart for lack of maintenance, and a full one-third of the dams in the country are a danger to human life. Our electrical grid is an antique, and will fail when it’s most needed.

The regulatory agencies that were set up to protect the people of the U.S. from rapacious, destructive business practices are being gutted, and ethics investigators are routinely fired, to be replaced by crony appointees that favor the administration. Deregulation and the laws promulgated by the neocons have changed things enough so that our medical care system is rated forty-ninth in the industrialized world and falling, based on, among other things, infant mortality.

Scientists whose research finds information that Bush doesn’t care for or which offends his backers, or is otherwise inconvenient – which might, for instance, cost Big Business at the all-important "bottom line" – are also routinely censored or gagged, their results redacted or even rewritten by a political crony, keeping the public "properly" misinformed, as per the president’s preference. This applies to the FDA, the EPA (he has rendered their vast library of studies and other knowledge unavailable to it’s own scientists as well as to everyone else), the CDC – or any agency that once protected and informed the public. To Bush’s mind, they owe him loyalty before anyone or anything else. Their only function is to write things that back up what he says.

The radical right is paid back for their votes – and perhaps some of it is Bush’s attempt to practice his own relatively newfound religion – by keeping any research that has to do with stem cells, contraception or sex in general under-funded or unfunded, even illegal if he can manage it.

Attempts are also frequently made to remove rights and benefits from gays, Muslims, the disabled, the homeless, the mentally disturbed, the old, veterans and others who have few resources with which to defend themselves.

The Neocon view is that taxes on the rich or on business are theft, especially if they are given away in social programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to "the undeserving poor, who have done nothing to deserve this stolen money." Taxing the working poor or keeping the minimum wage as minimal as possible, however, is fine. Bush somehow thinks that such people have money to invest, too, which is how he keeps trying to arrange medical and welfare programs "to help the poor." Making their lives even more difficult, government restrictions, requirements and rules have made it impossible for many to meet the work requirements, to take care of children, and to continue schooling, and has forced many people off of welfare, out of school and into low-paying, dead-end jobs, even rendering some single-parent families homeless just months or weeks short of a degree or certificate. To Bush, this is a success: he’s improved the economy and the welfare program so much, people are coming off "the public dole" and going on to live their lives. He never mentions their continued poverty, lack of medical care and homelessness. It doesn’t register with him, really; he sees it as their own fault for being lazy and sinful – if he sees it at all. In Bushworld, people’s troubles are always their own fault, no matter that they had no other options. That is God’s doing in punishment for their sins, so they deserve that and more. He has no twinges of conscience, and he reports no trouble sleeping.

To George W. Bush, the business of government is pouring money into business and the military, which exists to conquer countries and competitors that have what Big Business wants. Throwing the entire country into what must become crushing debt is also no problem, and he pours the borrowed cash into crony corporation coffers without a qualm. Other generations of American poor can pay it back – eventually.

To his way of thinking, despite the record numbers of unemployed, homeless and other needy, the failing infrastructure, an American icon of a city still not even close to recovery, no rebuilt Twin Towers and eighty-some dead newly found after having been missed and left in a basement level since 9-11, despite thirty-five million people without health insurance having become forty-seven million, two and a half million citizens (mostly with dark skin) in prison mostly for nonviolent and inflated offences (bigger numbers=better PR) with closer to seven and half million otherwise entangled in the system, - the economy is in fine shape because Big Business is making money hand over fist, much of it by not having to pay their employees a living wage or benefits, and often, especially in Iraq, by not having to actually do anything for it at all. Of course, a lot of his evaluation of the economy may have to do with his anticipation of the forests and all of our national Parks almost being ready to be opened to gas and oil drilling, chemical plants, road building and logging with no regard whatsoever for any animal populations, or for better air quality standards – if you happen to be a power company – because the tons of mercury they spew into the air (and therefore the water, the fish, and our dinners) is officially to be treated as non-toxic, along with the increased arsenic and other poisons. Utility companies, if they find cleaning the water they sell to us to drink and wash with an undue burden, they don’t have to: then, if we go and drink or wash in poison, it’s our problem, not the government’s or the water company’s (who can still promote their product as "promoting good health"), and it’s certainly not the power company’s problem. They can all afford bottled water.

Bush is American only by courtesy of birth. He feels no debt of honor or loyalty to his natal country, or to the people who depend on the government to do the jobs it was created for. Our forests, the environment that literally keeps us healthy and alive, he labels "resources to give away to corporations" and forgets about it; it’s a big world, and there’s always more – somewhere. For him, at least.

He has no problem with stealing elections by any means necessary, as long as he and those he supports win. Besides, as long as "his own kind" control the laws, the courts and the information, no one can prove anything. The deaths of our young men and women are simply what they’re for to him. That’s what all peons are for: if a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand or however many die in securing MORE – more oil, more control, more for the holy "bottom line" for him and his, then they have fulfilled their purpose, and it’s an equitable trade.

His oath to defend the Constitution is simply a silly ritual that he had to go through and nothing more. This is clearly shown in this quote of Bush from a staffer: "Quit throwing the Constitution in my face! It’s just a Goddamned piece of paper!" That it is also the core document that defines America and Americans, that it is the single most magnificent piece of ethical and philosophical poetry in legislation since Hammurabi also means nothing to him. It is just an obstruction that keeps getting in the way by making people think they actually have rights and can make demands on him based on them. If he could, he would simply burn it and forget about it. Anyway, he’s gotten around to almost all of it now. For all the force it has, it may as well have been burned.

The spying he is having done, and the collections of every piece of data on every American and everyone else possible, is touted as being for the War On Terror, though in reality, the Neocons and their creations are the true terrorists in the world. Anyway, it’s all another lie. Experts have said that such an eavesdropping and spying network is utterly useless for finding terrorists.

Witness that it has found none so far. What it is good for is finding information that can be used for blackmail (note several sudden turnarounds of some in Congress who had disagreed with Republican bills up for a vote until the last second), or for getting obstructive individuals out of the way and forestalling dissenters, protests and other legitimate – for the time being – activities of citizens.

Now he is sending more troops into Iraq, despite the opinions of almost every expert in the country and elsewhere; the reasons he gives to the public are lies, as always.

He needs someone there to support Maliki until he can force a law through giving Halliburton and other private oil companies what is essentially ownership of Iraq’s oil. He will also try to use the situation to keep a large, permanent base and an embassy (the largest in the world, which, itself, constitutes a military base), manned, and a U.S. force there to keep control of the oil and a U.S. forward base in the Middle East.

The Iraqis will, at some point, object to getting such a minuscule portion of the sales of their own oil – 25% for the first thirty years, then a bit more – and are bound to rebel. Bush wants people with guns there that the Iraqis are afraid of to make sure the "law" forced through by his pet Prime Minister is enforced.

Until very recently, Bush had no idea there were different kinds of Islam, like the Shia and the Sunnis. He understands the culture not at all, and doesn’t care to learn; it simply isn’t important. They’re all Arabs, all heathens, all savages, and that’s all he needs to know. As long as they’re afraid of him and do what they’re ordered to do, things are as they should be.

Over the time of his presidency, Mr. Bush has packed the federal judiciary with demagogues, the legislation and cabinet with cronies who will back him no matter the law. He has claimed powers that no president has ever had, even in a war actually declared by Congress; he has twisted the laws of the land, and has passed laws by stealth and other methods that are unconstitutional, unethical, and destructive, but no one in government now seems to have the authority to go against him. With what is now almost ownership of the Supreme Court, still a huge Republican support in Congress, and appointees in the Justice Department who owe for the jobs or believe as he does, he is all but unassailable – for the time being. It would require almost all others, including the electorate, to go against him all at once to oust him. So far, the courage and the leadership simply doesn’t exist, especially not in Congress.

It is my fear that he will finish at least a part of his program: the destruction of the Social Contract, and the opening of the Commons – all National Parks and all public lands, with immunity to polluting industries entrenched in the law for decades designed to protect them from the consequences of their own actions (like poisoning the air, water, food and people around them for hundreds of miles, and destroying plants and animals, the function of which in the ecosystem that keeps us alive we still don’t understand, beyond any hope of recovery) – before he goes.

America would never recover. It would take generations now. He has some of the most brilliant and sociopathic strategists and tacticians there are working for him, constantly devising attacks on all of these things from many directions, while others work on keeping opponents busy defending themselves.

All Bush has to do is wait, read what he’s told to, and it’s almost certain that the people who are trying to defend America from this relentless attack on absolutely everything we have ever valued will miss something, and he will win again. America will be dead except as a poisoned resource, a third-world country that exports to Bush and his kind the vast majority of it’s labor and produce, leaving nothing for those who produce it.

That’s the plan.

Especially since the whole-hearted – well, let’s call it just almost "unlimited" since I’ve seen no evidence of a Neocon with an actual heart – entrée since the start of the Bush regime, the corporations have an access to and a control of government not seen since the robber-barons of yore.

They write our laws, or they ignore them with impunity – and with government complicity, because the regulatory agencies are run by their own.

Worst of all though, the single thing that can keep this going, is this: both parties are controlled by the corporations, so despite their apparent differences, their agenda, minus the Neocon slant, is the same! The corporations contribute the major funding that gets people elected, and they contribute to both parties, always! That way, whoever wins, they owe the corporations. They know that if they don’t pay that debt with influence peddling, laws that benefit businesses instead of We the People, they won’t get that money for the next election, and they will lose their great jobs, their benefits and gifts, and their illusion of being powerful people. The electorate who votes them in keep voting for the same people, the same parties, often knowing that they’re all under the influence of the corporations, because they’re afraid that if they vote for someone who might be good for the people, their vote will be wasted.

WE VOTE OUT OF FEAR! We vote for what looks like the lesser of evils, but it’s only the lesser face – the truth is the same on both sides, and that’s what we need to change.


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....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free