January
2006,
Volume 13 Nr. 32, Issue 200
What an Idiot!
Bush jumpstarts the
alternative energy movement
with his own hot air demonstration
Daniel Patrick Welch
When Gore Vidal endorsed last night's
demonstrations against Bush's ridiculous I-am-the-state theatrical
stunt, he added the pithy comment: "Go back to Crawford…. We’ll
help raise the money for a library, and you'll never even ever have
to read a book." As always, Vidal has perfectly framed the
argument for resistance to this anti-intellectual, anti-science,
anti-thought, anti-agenda. And while the networks and pundits and
media shills gawk and preen and profit off the spectacle of this
horrific failure, this loser in the most profound sense of the term,
this puppet plutocrat who brings nothing to the table except for his
legendary ability to drink everyone under it—-an as-yet-unindicted
war criminal with more blood on his hands than the tyrants from whom
he liberates the world in the name of (and at the direction of) his
Lord and Savior—-we must make our own noise, in the name of the
unnumbered and unidentified dead whose corpses pave the way to
Heaven for Bush and his psychopathic band of theocrats.
For as hard as it is to say, Bush is
beside the point. As powerful as he is despised, he still has an
awesome power to destroy and an unquenched thirst for dominion. But
while Bush may be a laughable idiot, his rise to Inherent Authority
could not happen without the complicity of what Irish
revolutionaries of yore referred to as "traitors and
slaves." Every War Party needs fellow travelers, and Bush and
his coterie have plenty. Just yesterday, the Democratic
"leadership" in congress surpassed even itself in
capitulation, a talent at which it has excelled for some time.
If you wasted the time to watch the
circus (I only do it because I love you, Dear Readers), then you are
obviously part of the problem: no one should dignify this fraud of a
presidency by validating the notion that he has something to say.
The world has long since stopped listening, and only the sycophant
US press gave The Leader of the Free World the stagecrafted,
self-serving free advertising to which the far right feels entitled
from the "liberal press." Bush entered this farcical
pageant at the lowest point of any postwar president since Nixon,
and is fast catching up to the crook.
Brave souls were treated to the usual
lies, exaggerations, distortions and demagoguery, as ol' Ronnie
would say. But a few brazen nuggets stand out: it was refreshing, in
a perverse sort of way, to hear the biggest recipient of political
oil money on the face of the earth rail against special interests.
We're addicted to oil! Says the oilmonger. We must guard against the
tendency to centralize power in Washington, says the Unitary
Executive. We need to seek bipartisan solutions. Says the man behind
the curtain of the most ruthless rubber stamp congress in memory,
who shuts out the opposition in closed conferences at which major
revisions to legislation are decided. When he started in on
affordable health care, I had to leave the room to throw up; there
is a limit to the pain I can take even for the sake of a column.
Thankfully, I was in the bathroom when The Man Who Makes Us Safer
introduced Justice Alito, the living, breathing symbol of the end of
constitutional government in the US.
It's nice to see that he's still
reaching out to Black folks, I guess; maybe a sign that he's in as
much trouble as we think he is, seeing that 100% of
African-Americans in a recent Zogby poll (I'm not kidding) are
unconvinced. But seriously, folks, we are in deep shit. The fact
that this charade could take place at all without a self-respecting
opposition walking out on a muppet who arrogates to himself the
"inherent authority" to piss on them is yet another sign
that the Reichstag fire has come and gone.
Democrats are too complicit, too
timid, too stuck in a past in which one wing of their own party was
among the greatest terrorist organizations in human history. The War
Party has mastered the Election: Mark Crispin Miller argues that
tampering and memory card chicanery engineered a switch of eight
million votes in 2004. Too bought-and-sold to save even themselves,
it would be a true miracle if the carcas of the party could convince
Americans that it can save the country and swing control of the
legislative branch in November.
But George Orwell may have been
right: If there is hope, it lies in the proles. Of course, by his
own prose, it proved a misplaced hope, but let's stick with the
slogan. The highlight of my evening was not typing this as I
listened to the Joker-in-Chief spin a new web of lies: prior to the
speech, we interrupted our little gathering to stand outside in the
frigid New England air and "drown out the noise," as the
organizers suggested. Holding signs reading "Impeach
Bush," "Drown out the Lies," and the peace symbol,
our hapless little band garnered more attention than we have ever
felt for another cause or candidate. Is it too late? Or is there an
undercurrent sweeping the country, sick of being told how to be
American by the pimps and whores whose assets are safely stowed in
the Cayman Islands or in a secret Swiss account, or in the greedy,
bloody hands of some transnational oil borg. Screw you. We are
citizens of the world, and the world is fed up.
© 2006 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint
permission granted with credit and link to http://danielpwelch.com.
Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and
writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia
Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The
Greenhouse School. Translations of articles are available
in up to 20 languages. Please visit: http://danielpwelch.com
© 2006
Daniel Patrick
Welch
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