N O R T H C O A S T T IM E S E AG LE , SEPTOBER 2004
ambition because there are serious doubts he was ever elected
to a first term). Bush, like Nixon, plainly does not possess the
range of talents of a Jefferson, whom a contemporary described
as a person who could “calculate an eclipse, survey an estate,
tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance
the minuet and play the violin." Nor does Bush, as Sidey wrote
also of Nixon (and which could be applied to Bush's father,
George Herbert Walker Bush) “have the mastery of language
that historian Benjamin Thomas calls the 'ultimate factor’ which
made Lincoln successful. There is little of Teddy Roosevelt's
exuberance" to be found in Bush (though much of his noted
bellicosity), “nor is there Wilson’s deep philosophical strain.
The joy of life that was part of Franklin Roosevelt's remarkable
ability to capture and hold the public esteem emerges seldom
...(and) the public rarely sees signs of the human grace that
John Kennedy revealed.“
Sidey wrote that Nixon’s talents seemed to be “stamina
and control and visceral identity with the vast majority of people
who live beyond the range of The New York Times and the Ivy
League." Nixon’s ability to make so much of his mundane
talents, which gave him in 1972 one of the largest majorities of
any Presidential candidate was, Sidey wrote, “itself a virtuosity.”
Nixon at least “achieved a philosophical identity with
some deep American values," Sidey wrote in his 1972 Life
magazine article, “but he did not have enough faith in the people
to be candid with them."
G. W. Bush is often compared to Adolf Hitler in his rise
and swift takeover of government. People say “it can never
happen here," Sinclair Lewis' classic title of a homegrown despot
— but it is happening here despite laws that are in place to
prevent such an usurpation of power. These laws are useless if
not applied; and at this moment too many of the citizenry make
the takeover possible because they are either complicit or afraid
to prevent the safeguards from being superseded by new laws
that overrule them.
George W. Bush, who says “I believe God wants me
to be President" and also says “our rights (as Americans) were
derived from God,” is a fervent believer in “American except
ionalism" and a theocratic/nationalism. He veins his discussion
of the war on terrorism as a "divine mission" and the “language
of righteous empire." He thinks he can camouflage his oligarch
ial demeanor by cutting a cloth of Stars & Stripes for a priestly
gown.
Wrapping God and the Presidency in the flag is as
inappropriate as declaring a nation under God. The pathological
fusion of government and religion results in unspeakable crimes
against humanity as well as proscription of freedoms and
personal rights, and elevation of a political priesthood into
dictatorial governance.
The unelected President has as a base constituency of
wealthy and corporate sponsors whom he gives breaks at the
cost of scrapping essential programs that are the glue of society,
which leaves the main responsibility to maintain the democracy
upon those who are its least benefactors.
Bush claims he is in line with the thinking of the Ameri
can people, and he might be at least half right. There is strong
evidence the country is indeed conservative, slow to change
and in constant reaction to it. The problem is that blacks and
the poor (which includes all other racial minorities in the U.S. as
well as a significant number of women) are shoved aside by the
rightward politicians and party hacks and they drop away, either
too disillusioned or too angry to register or vote.
So a conservative minority rules in its claim as a
majority. Almost 50% of eligible voters did not vote in 2000.
A slim majority of those did vote voted for Democratic candidate
Al Gore. The Green Party and Ralph Nader in particular are
blamed for taking crucial votes away from Gore, but the real
reason the Democrats were flimflammed was that they did not
have the courage or intelligence to register the vast numbers of
eligible unregistered voters.
The Reagan and father/son Bush administrations have
managed to take away essential political powers of the common,
people through nonvoted-upon policies that not only enrichen
P A G E 15
MORIN
the already wealthy but have pared down to nearly nothingness
the economic potential of everybody else, including the very
glue of capitalist democracy, the middle class.
Incessantly claiming to uphold traditional values, Bush
and his disciples don’t seem to respect such fundamentals of
our civilization as the Bill of Rights, appended to the Constitution
in wary suspicion future segments of society would attempt to
dismantle the democracy in the name of traditional values.
The 2004 election will determine for at least the
immediate future whether indeed our democracy is able to
withstand the ravages of the usurpers and that constitutional
government will survive as it has in the past, most remarkably
in 1800 when the original Federalists attempted to impose their
own unelected President on the country by tying up the popular
vote in Congress. The Bush administration has acted as if
opposition doesn’t exist and doesn’t matter if it does — it has
been devising policies as well as mendacious dirty tricks and
character assassinations to cope with anyone who disagrees
with the administration’s arrogation of the nation’s rights and
liberties, labeling dissent as treachery and unpatriotic.
The following is a composite list of reasons why Bush
should not continue in the Presidency. Any such list has to begin
with the fact that although he insists he was chosen by God to
be President, he was not elected President by the people; and
his “selection” was a distinct corruption of the process set up
by the ancestors to untangle disputed elections. Another frame
on the issue might be a question not asked: If the Presidency
of G.W. Bush violates Constitutional law because of an illegally
conducted campaign in 2000, would taking the Presidential oath
have automatically made him eligible for impeachment?
Bush squandered the world’s goodwill and sympathy
following 9/11 by his arrogant and bullying bellicosity, using
9/11 to claim himself commander-in-chief of the world, breaking
all major treaties, declaring preemptive right to invade any other
country in the world for any reason, which has made the USA
the currently most despised country in the world — a primary
cause of 9/11 in the first place.
Bush has severely curbed American freedoms with the
Patriot Act, which was rammed through Congress just after 9/11,
THE WAR PRESIDENT
Since September 11, 2001, George W. Bush has
reestablished the Imperial Presidency. Election of a President
has always been choosing a wartime dictator; the most import
ant role of the Presidency is as Commander-in-Chief, which
is decorous in peacetime but Caesarean in wartime. “In time
of war it’s all power to the President," a newspaper headline
declared just after 9/11. Presidents consolidate their power
in wartime and the impulse is to quell dissent, which is barely
tolerated during normal times and quickly repudiated in periods
of national crisis when it is especially necessary.
Presidents are given great powers during crises
not covered in the Constitution. Abraham Lincoln, the first
Republican President, suspended habeus corpus during the
Civil War, which allowed military arrest of persons without
formally charging them with violating the law. During World
War 2 the U.S. interned thousands of Japanese Americans
,
(FDR's infamous Executive Order 9066). President Bush has
> set up military tribunals for suspected terrorists both domestic
and foreign — which includes Afghan and Iraqi prisoners whom
¡I he refuses to grant POW status — and especially immigrants,
. not unlike the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798-1799 and the
McCarren Act of 1950 (also against aliens). During the present
emergency Muslim individuals and organizations in particular
are targets of surveillance, wiretaps and inquiry as well as
S imprisonment for even the remotest links to terrorist groups.
Patriotism is the key word and justification for suspen
sion of civil liberties — which points out a flawed weakness
of democracy: the “tyranny of aroused public opinion," which if
adroitly protracted under the rubric of patriotism might well lead
to broad suppression of civil liberties. Yet it should be understood
first of all that our original patriots were not only traitors against
their ‘Mother Country' (or Homeland) but would be regarded
today as terrorists: a small determined group attempting liberty
from a massive overseas empire through terrorism and murder
of government officials and supporters before and during the
Revolution. Their opponents most likely called them "cowardly"
and “evil," which contemporary terrorists are accused of being
It might be worth considering how suitable it seemed
when subjected peoples revolted against communist Russia
— Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia — and our collective
righteous anger when those revolts were crushed; and how
happy we were the Soviet Union turned upside down in 1989,
followed two years later by the final collapse of the decrepit
Russian empire — the ‘Evil Empire' — which gave the world
a much appreciated Christmas present in 1991.
So we are at a point where we must wonder if the
attacks on the USA on 9/11 might be in a similar vein as the
revolts against the didactic rule of the USSR — the differences
of methods and purpose are major, yet there are distinct and
obvious similarities.
Our Cold War policies of 'real politick’ did not endear us
to much of the emerging world which has suffered heavily under
puppet despots we supported in our half century conflict for
world supremacy with the Soviet Union, nor does it make us
popular today as we use the same methods to control the supply
of resources that sustain the American Way of Life' our political
leaders proclaim as the mandate of God and Christianity.
Ever since the first Persian Gulf War the U.S. has
put an iron umbrella over the Middle East to guard our oil lines,
striking with aircraft and missiles at targets in countries that
dispute our virtual monopoly over their most lucrative regional
product.
It was not our values but the abandonment of them the
terrorists attacked on 9/11. Terrorism has become synonymous
with anti-Americanism and its rise has greatly to do with our
zealously arrogant efforts to subdue liberties and freedoms we
claim to exemplify.
The U.S. government has rushed from an undeniable
truth to a false conclusion — that because 3,000 or more Ameri
cans were killed on 9/11 we must declare a world war on terror
ism and retaliate with greater violence than that we have incurred
as well as strongarm every nation that does not sympathize with
our unilateral declaration of war.
With the Bush administration’s preeminent invasion
of Iraq, its gutting of environmental restrictions, granting double-
dipping corporations huge tax breaks as well as huge military
contracts paid for by taxes, blatantly rejecting fuel conservation
while putting American troops in harms way to protect and exploit
world oil reserves for our national use; and collaterally killing
innocents whose only crimes are to be where they are — it is now
mere than ever necessary to reopen the inquiry into Bush’s
legitimacy as President
He and his associates are not unlike the Hitler regime
that once it got power it had to race to control everything before
anyone could recover or gain enough strength to successfully
resist them Bush's father had a word for it: Momentum “The
Mighty Mo."
and is nearly a blueprint of the infamous Huston Plan of Nixon’s
era of surveillance and wiretaps of American citizens. He has
virtually abrogated the Bill of Rights through administrative
policies that avoid Congressional vote or oversight, and has
cloaked the executive branch of government in the deepest
web of secrecy in the nation’s history.
Bush misled the American public about WMDs in Iraq,
manipulated and falsified intelligence to justify invasion of Iraq,
which has caused more than 1,000 U.S. deaths and thousands
more wounded, perhaps 100,000 more innocent civilian deaths
(more than 30 times 9/11 deaths) — by this action has not only
created a quagmire for American tax money, stretched the U.S.
military too thin to adequately respond to terrorism but also
through invasion, occupation and usurpation of power in Iraq,
tarnished the concepts of liberation and democracy, words he
flogs over and over as if selling cars.
Bush failed to follow-through in Afghanistan where
Taliban, Al Qaida and northern warlords are tearing the country
apart once again (not to mention regrowth of opium production,
the only cash producer in the country).
Bush has escalated nuclear weapons development in
the USA, insisting that ‘Star Wars’ guard the high frontier of
space while so-called low-yield tactical nuclear weapons are
planned for front-line use. Developing new nukes ostensibly for
the war on terrorism while insisting every other country limit their
stockpiles is a dangerous contradiction that brings the world
closer to the long anticipated millennial annihilation.
Bush turned a $230 billion surplus into a $500 billion
deficit (which rapidly approaches his father’s 1992 deficit of
$290 billion), and he has presided over the losses of nearly
three million American jobs, the worst domestic job loss since
Hoover.The stock market suffered its worst decline during his
first two years as President since the Great Depression.
Bush has cut taxes that benefit the wealthy three times
and “reclassified" money obtained through stocks as worth more
than money earned by work.
“The abuse of patriotism and trust of the American
people is even worse than everything else this President has
done,” Historian Robert S. McElvaine has written. McElvaine
and other historians rank him as one of the worst Presidents in
U.S. history, comparing him with Nixon, Warren Harding, James
Buchanan, Calvin Coolidge, Andrew Johnson, U.S. Grant and
William McKinley.
A second Bush administration will probably carry out an
Orwellian deconstruction of democratic governance. People will
simply be denied power as well as any voice in its use or intent,
and if history provides an insight, they will become helplessly or
angrily apathetic rather than revolt. Rearranging the democracy
to suit a small ruling claque will most likely result in dismantling
the electoral process.
It seems probable that Bush is pushing the country into
a bloodless civil war, thinking that perhaps he and his cohorts
are powerful enough to repress the half of the nation that does
not support them.
The risk of this election for the New Federalists (aka
neocons) is, of course, that Bush will lose. Perhaps that is why
the prevailing Venetian-style council of doges, who do not wish
to relinquish the power they have stolen, insinuate the current
terrorist situation might call for a postponement of the November
election — but only of course if a major terrorist attack occurs or
is threatened. So far this idea is a seed blown into the wind to
test its popularity; or it might simply be what it appears to be on
the surface: “We are seizing perpetual power, stop us if you
can!” An arrogant power-pulsed gauntlet thrown to the floor by
an unelected Presidential administration that has little concern
about the legitimacy of its power — Yet it might be from serious
miscalculation that nationwide fraudulent computerized voting
would be a “cake walk" with little furor of opposition (the voters
perceived as herds of trusting beef). So the velvet glove seems
to be taken off the iron fist, a crucially apt and ancient expres
sion of true power however frilly its disguises.
The country seems divided as in civil war — yet the half
that does not vote are the ones who will really swing the election
if indeed they do vote. This is one of the primary elections of our
history and could very well determine if we continue the experi
ment of democracy or slip down into something quite sinister.
Bik^s
Beyonc/
1089 MARINE DR.
ASTORIA, OREGON
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