Tag Archives: Bush

Political Rants

Better than.

There isn’t much I can say about the presidential race except … it’s going to happen, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Much has been said about the general lack of enthusiasm about both major candidates. It seems we Americans always find ourselves in this situation. Certainly, we focus too much on famous people (i.e. politicians) and not enough on what is really important (i.e. politics). I supported Obama in 2008, but not because I loved him. Rather, it was because McCain would have been an unmitigated disaster – a point he has proven every time he’s opened his mouth over the last three years. With respect to the presidency, voting is a zero-sum game. If you lose, the other wins. And the other, my friends, gets worse every time around.

In all honesty, the Republican party is more virulent and destructive every time they return to power. It’s hard to imagine an administration more regressive and destructive than that of George W. Bush, but judging by Romney’s advisors – folks like John Bolton – it’s not hard to imagine that we would get just that. They will, of course, attempt to conceal their extremism starting … well, starting last week, when Santorum suspended his campaign and effectively ended the primary season. Romney will now be the nominee, and being the Colorforms (another sixties toy) creature he is, they will now stick a more moderate outfit to his two-dimensional frame. It’s Mitt the Moderate, once again! Come on, ladies! He didn’t mean it when he told Mike Huckabee  that he believes life begins at conception! Come on, Latinos! He was only pandering when he said Arizona’s SB 1070 “papers, please” law was a model for the nation!

Fortunately for Romney and for the Republican party, pop culture in the United States is a cross between a bulimic twelve-year-old and someone with advanced Alzheimer’s. We’re stuck in the perpetual purge/gorge cycle, and we can’t remember what happened yesterday … or even earlier today. Romney is the perfect politician for that circumstance. He apparently has no actual convictions, so he can seem equally committed to any portfolio of views that might fit a given electoral situation. Even having extensive video archives of him taking contradictory positions somehow doesn’t register. So what is likely to happen this fall? Anyone’s guess.

I’m not an Obama acolyte. There were some serious missteps over the past few years that demonstrate a certain lack of boldness on his part. But there’s no question but that he was better than the alternative, and he remains so today.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Peace train.

My brother Matt was complaining about NPR today. I guess they were talking to one of the fifty generals they have on tap; a guy named General Mills. (“What the hell, does he command Cap’n Crunch?” said Matt.) We groused about this a bit for the podcast. NPR and PBS have always been heavily freighted with retired generals, like the commercial networks and cable channels. But because they have been erroneously described as “leftist” or somehow associated with an elusive liberal elite, they go overboard to disabuse people of that notion. They fired Soundprint’s Lisa Simeone for her association with Occupy DC, apparently fearing that her defense of the 99% would cloud her journalistic objectivity about opera, which is mostly what she covers. Call them National Paranoid Radio.

I’m thinking about NPR particularly because of the president’s declaration that the Iraq war will be drawn to a close at the end of this year, despite the administration’s efforts to keep it rolling for an indefinite period of deployment. NPR was completely on board with the Iraq war back in 2002-03; they dropped the ball on anything like investigative journalism at a time when it might have mattered to get the truth out. People tend to forget that the alternative press, plus outlets like the London Independent, blew holes in the Bush Administration’s case for war well before the shooting began. Counterpunch, for instance, knocked down Powell’s February 5, 2003 presentation point by point within days of its delivery. Much of what they reported is common knowledge now. NPR – like other mainstream news sources – were nowhere on this.

Now that people are beginning to think of the Iraq war as a done deal, we would do well to remind ourselves that no one – absolutely no one – has been held accountable for this major bloodletting. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Condoleeza Rice have all barnstormed the country, hawking their memoirs, bragging on their participation in committing the crime of international aggression – the worst of all crimes, per the U.N. charter, since so many smaller crimes are precipitated by it. On the hook with them are some of the nation’s most august news organizations, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and, yes, NPR.

All I’m saying is, with respect to accountability for this historic crime we call the Iraq war, it’s not over until it’s over.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Hors de combat.

I’m not a big fan of the notion that people in custody should be abused, beaten, or killed. Once you have them restrained, if circumstances warrant it, that should be enough. Seeing Gaddafi beaten and bloodied, then expired with a bullet hole in his head was kind of sickening, frankly. Sure, he was an autocratic asshole. But he was also defeated and in custody. If the Libyans are starting their brave new future with extrajudicial killings, it doesn’t sound too promising. But then, I suppose, that would put them in the same league as their sponsors … particularly, us.

It’s been said that the Libya intervention is Iraq done the Obama way. Today kind of underlines that notion a bit. We didn’t get all arrogant about it or act unilaterally. We pushed through a UN resolution – something Bush couldn’t have had and probably wouldn’t have wanted, since his administration was actively trying to sideline the UN. Obama is a true imperial internationalist, and the product of that is the kinds of interventions you see in Kosovo and Libya and the kinds of coups you see in Honduras, as opposed to his predecessor’s far more blustering approach to wars and proxy overthrows. Sure, neither is a fly on Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, or even Reagan when it comes to mass killing. But Obama acts to sustain the empire, not destroy it. Bush apparently couldn’t care less about it.

My main concern is that we appear to be going the way of all empires. We are getting more comfortable with the trappings of imperial adventure. We are, in a sense, getting meaner as a society, more willing to mete out harsh “justice”, more attached to our bloodlust. We are, it’s also worth pointing out, falling apart from the inside out, the very bones of our civilization progressively embrittled by forced divestment and diversion of revenues to the maintenance of foreign wars, occupations, and forward bases. As Yeats wrote (later repurposed by Achebe), “the center cannot hold and things fall apart”. Our devotion to maintaining our neoliberal empire at all costs is driving us into a period of significant decline – one that cannot be ameliorated by the deaths in custody of third-tier dictators.

This is not an inevitable process. It’s a choice, and we can choose otherwise. Up to us. Imagine that.

luv u,

jp