It's getting hard to poke fun at President Bush. As his approval ratings have plummeted, the frequency of Bush's malapropisms, hyperboles, and outright lies has increased; as has his propensity for gauche behavior and buffoonery. It's become clear that he's contracted incurable Dubya disease.
Many of us who never supported Bush – who thought he stole the 2000 election and proceeded to fulfill our worst expectations – dismiss him as a fool and rejoice in the prospect that his disease is dragging the Republican Party down with him. However, there are two vexing problems with this perspective: one is that Bush has twenty more months left in the Oval Office and, therefore, can still do lots of damage – launch a nuclear attack on Iran, for example. The second problem is that when Liberals attack Bush, they alienate the third of the electorate who believe the office of the President deserves respect, even if the occupant may not; these are the same Americans who Liberals want as allies on issues such as Global Climate Change.
In order to reach out to all Americans, Liberals must look beyond Dubya's behavior and overcome the reality that Bush is the most polarizing President since Richard Nixon. While it's a good thing to have political debate, it's unhealthy to have the degree of acrimony and incivility that we current experience in American politics. One way to overcome this antagonism is to look at the elements of the American psyche that produced George Bush, get in touch with the "inner Dubya" of the American political system, and view Bush not as the problem but rather as a symptom of a larger dysfunction – Dubya disease.
There are three trends in American politics that produced the Bush Presidency; tendencies that did not originate with Dubya, but were accentuated by this Presidency over the past six-plus years. One is the propensity to lie, to tell outright falsehoods in order to achieve political ends. While lying had long been a characteristic of most American political campaigns, it was the dominant feature of George W. Bush's candidacy: Bush wasn't a successful CEO or an effective Texas governor, as he claimed to be; he wasn't a compassionate conservative or a committed environmentalist; and certainly wasn't "a uniter" or a leader who would "usher in a new era of responsibility." Since his background was fabricated, it's not surprising that the dominant feature of the Bush Presidency has been prevarication: the White House lied about the danger posed by Saddam Hussein; about the probable effects of massive tax cuts for the rich on the standard of living of average Americans; about their concern for the health and safety of our military; and about the dangers posed by global climate change. They've lied about everything.
However, It's too easy to say that the way to turnaround American politics is for politicians to stop lying. That's true, but it ignores the fact that political prevarication is a part of a more systemic problem: willingness of Americans to do anything to win. That's the second trend in American politics: the dominance of capitalist ethics over those of a deeper morality that honors the golden rule. It's ironic that American society has come to be characterized by a morality where the ends justify the means, because that's the moral failing we've historically accused our enemies of; during the Cold War, Americans pontificated that Communists were evil because they believed the ends justified the means; now, as we combat global terrorism, we're told the same thing – terrorists are bad because they believe the ends justify the means. Yet, the clear ethical footprint of the Bush Administration has been their willingness to place their own interests above the common good.
The third trend has been to place political gain above the welfare of the US: to use the office of the President primarily for political purposes. Recently, there's been a lot of talk about the machinations of White House insiders – Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, among others: manipulating the press by leaking Valerie Plame Wilson's job at the CIA or firing US attorneys because they weren't pursuing the Bush political agenda aggressively enough. The truth is that this Administration has been inordinately political since they took office: one of the reasons that the war on Iraq was initiated in 2002 was the Bush Administration belief that they could use it to Republican advantage in the mid-term Congressional elections. The hallmark of the Bush Administration has been their willingness to make everything political: Karl Rove was both Bush's campaign manager and senior policy adviser to ensure that politics colored every move Bush made.
It's easy to make fun of Dubya, to dismiss him as a fool. It's much harder to admit that the 43rd President is a symptom of a moral cancer that resides deep within the American political system. Only when Americans address this, only when we do something about the root causes of "Dubya disease," will we feel safe that no George Bush clone will ever again become President.
Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and Quaker actvist. He is particularly interested in progressive morality and writes frequently on the ethical aspects of political and social issues.
It worries me no end that Bush is going to be anywhere near our Queen. He has no clue about protocol and is such a dingbat that he will probably try to rub her back or practice some other gauche behaviour. The Queen has had to put up with outlandish behaviour before, such as being mooned by Africans on one of her trips to that continent but nothing can prepare her for the idiot in the Whitehouse. I hope she has scores of footmen (security) ready to lay down their lives for her if Bush tries someting.
by
Archie (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1285 comments)
on Friday, May 4, 2007 at 11:10:51 AM
Look who the current crop of thugs is trying to emulate. To bad the Dubya disease, a variant of the Reagan fungus, isn't the fast acting terminal kind. Instead it infects the psyche of people we pretend are capable of vying for the highest office. No wonder the Sopranos is so popular--another way Reagan used to understand reality the public has adopted--B grade entertainment based on a declared crime family.
by
HL Bumpkin (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 53 comments)
on Friday, May 4, 2007 at 12:15:13 PM
The question is how can we force him to be examined for this. You and I can see it is obvious but his blind minions cannot. This should be required on a yearly basis for all Judicial, Congressional, and Executive branches.
by
Hayesml47 (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 503 comments)
on Friday, May 11, 2007 at 8:20:44 AM
You are so right. We are a people and a country that elected the current misguided, fundamentalist and corrupt administration. We elected them twice and presently there are still enough people supporting them to move us closer by the day to an outright dictatorship. The only candidates running for president now that are progressive at all, Kucinich and Gravel, are being either laughed at or ignored. We will not see a real improvement in our government until we change our mass consciousness to one of unity and love. The answer is not found in religion or government. The answer is in us. We must change one being at a time. We must also realize that the current government, as terrible as it may seem, thinks it is right just as right as the awakened or progressives do. So we have another war of us against them. Force is not the answer as those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still. War and violence are only symtoms of the real problem, consciousness. As a people, we will always get the government and society that we at some level want or desire.
by
carl (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 129 comments)
on Friday, May 4, 2007 at 5:35:16 PM
As Abraham Lincoln once said, "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."
W has attempted the latter, but the people are catching and recognize him for the fool and the charlatan that he is.
We should worry less about the third who are willing to fooled all of the time and start worrying more about W's disgraceful behavior and the disgrace that he is inflicting on the Presidency.
Robert Chapman
by
Robert Chapman (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 556 comments)
on Friday, May 4, 2007 at 7:32:34 PM
If you can fool a third all of the time, you win most times
I think that you underestimate the significance of that one-third of the nation that inexplicably remains loyal to corruption, incompetence and stupidity. The neocons are not America's most fundamental problem; they are merely an opportunistic infection of the republic enabled by the gross failure of the intellect of the citizenry, the only possible immunity from such a political infection.
Consider that the worst president in the history of the nation is about 75% through his gang-raping of the American people, and they have only fallen from about one-half who support him to about one-third, or a decrease of only one in six! That's stunning, and an extremely poor prognostic sign.
How do you propose to sustain a democracy comprising such people? As long as the church and the media remain the loyal property of the people's enemies but yet are still trusted, and as long as the schools continue to produce graduates ignorant of civics and history (and thus incompetent as citizens of a democracy), your efforts are in vain. And that's not even addressing the voting fraud.
The disease is more fundamental than writers that focus on the Neocon infection acknowledge. The electorate is sick, too. Even if you could magically cleanse the nation of the Neocons with a wave of the hand, Fred and Doris Ziffel of Heartland, USA, with the blessings of the media and the clergy, would welcome the first flag-waving, Bible thumping miscreants right back into power.
You have a national dementia of sorts on your hands, and the Neocons are just a manifestation of that, not the central problem. These people are. Ignorant, fearful and superstitious, these people are just a few torches short of being a Frankenstein movie's mob.
I don't think that the American people are going to be able to identify, solve and correct all of this in less than a few generations, if at all. Living among them is a form of partnering with them. Think about that.
by
Yaybob (12 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 174 comments)
on Saturday, May 5, 2007 at 3:25:48 AM
8 comments
How would you rate this?
You must be logged in (if signed up) to do ratings.
It's free to signup! And easy. And takes just a minute or two....
Must Read (
Well Said (
News (
Touching (
Funny (
Supported (
Interesting (
Inspiring (
Valuable (
