I Have Nearly Lost Faith in George W. Bush
by Joshua Minton
...but this wasn't something unexpected. This is all part of my master plan to watch the two party corporate-controlled political system broken forever, to be replaced by the age of the Enlightened Individual.
See, I knew Bush was a company man back in 2000 and that the GOP was a company and a business miles before it was a philosophy and a set of core values. But the company securing power for the next two terms was so much more important than voting core values at that time.
Besides, in 2000, I wasn't quite sure what my core values were.
When I graduated college that Spring, I would have voted for Al Gore without even thinking twice (and that was the problem, wasn't it?).
But my brother-in-law came down to visit me and we were having drinks at the bar, waiting for our table and he asked me the question that changed everything: Why are you going to vote for Gore?
All I had was: Umm, err--the environment, uhhhh the way they treat minorities, ehhh they've been running the government pretty good for the last eight years... And then he proceeded to educate me on conservative values of governance and why they made more sense morally, ethically, politically, and financially than liberalism which was full of lofty ideals with no substance and masked a terrible usurpation of individual liberty.
I didn't come away convinced but I was definitely curious. I read this book
, this book, this book, this book, this book, and this book; then I started listening to Rush Limbaugh every day at my new 9 to fiver cubicle job.
I didn't have much money then, but I knew I was going to have some someday and I wanted as much of it as possible to remain in my bank account--that wasn't going to happen with Al Gore in office.
But deep in my heart I knew that a Bush presidency would come at a price, that moving away from the Clinton era would heft an enormous fee but it was one that must be paid.
I didn't think a thing about Islamic fundamentalists and the danger they posed to my country. I had heard of Osama Bin Laden and I think I actually read his threat against the US in 1998 but it didn't mean anything more to me than the Bible's threat of damnation if I didn't toe the line and call myself a believer (which never happened).
But I voted for Bush and it was the first time I ever cast a vote for anything besides for myself as cutest boy in my fifth grade class (I won, by the way and got to date Brandy, the hottest white chick, and Shonda, the hottest black chick at the same time). So, I voted and my man won and that was all that mattered to me at the time. I was on top and for the first time in my life, felt a part of my country, a new regime that I helped usher into power--it was a sweet but short victory because that first major bill came due pretty fast and the interest was high: 3,000 lives to be exact.
I've never placed the blame for 9/11 on Bush (I firmly believe that it was Woodrow Wilson who caused 9/11 and keep watching this site over the next few days because I'll prove it to you) and I think that had he been able to retire in January 2003, he would have been the greatest President in the history of our country besides George Washington; greater than Lincoln and greater than Jefferson. Nobody was greater than Washington and I don't care that the man owned slaves or if he tortured small animals on the docks of Mt. Vernon--the man was an Emperor who laid down his power voluntarily because he knew the dangers and because he'd given up so much of his life and what he loved in order to preserve the freedom we each continue to enjoy to this day--that was a great man.
And George W. Bush is also a great man but great in the way that any American is great. He was in the right place at the right time to do the right thing.
His tax cuts for those who pay 80% of the taxes were right.
His response to 9/11 was right and he galvanized the country into a social force that moved mountains, or rather invaded mountains because his invasion of Afghanistan and dismantling of the Taliban was also right.
But he was still a company man and that leash was bound to get yanked at some point and it did. Someone still had a stick up their ass when it came to Iraq. Now, I'll be the first to admit that it was in our country's best interest to invade Iraq, remove Saddam from power, and secure the country as a democratic ally in the Middle East from which to launch an idealistic invasion that would eclipse that of the cold war between capitalism and communism. But we should have prioritized better because Iraq was about third or fourth on a very short list of things to get done before we took on the Islamic fundamentalists which really meant taking on Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and Syria in that order.
We should have secured our oceans and land borders first.
We should have strengthened our civil defense measures in the heartland (meaning bomb shelters for every neighborhood and a firearm in every home with people trained to use it along with HAM radio teams that network across the entire country to provide armed defense that is structured and unbreakable even should one region go down the others would move in to secure the infrastructure).
We should have applied Six Sigma to the disaster response and recovery (including healthcare) for a massive strike. The aftermath of Katrina clearly demonstrates that the administration has been jerking off on this matter for the past four years.
We should have already rebuilt the World Trade Centers exactly as they were or something very similar, right on Mohammed Atta's grave. And right out front of the towers, in a lovely little butterfly garden with a fountain should be a hundred foot spike with Osama Bin Laden's shriveled head being burned in an eternal flame.
But none of that happened. Instead, we got Go back to work and keep charging up those credit card bills and that should have been the first clue as to what this administration was going to end up being about.
And then came the invasion of Iraq. And I'll admit that it felt pretty frigging good to see the American might roll into the deserts of Iraq on cable television. I taped about ten hours of the invasion and it is in a vacuum sealed bag in my basement inside a box labeled WAR BOX because I want my kids to watch a war unfold as it did before my eyes in real time. I want them to know that their father was watching for the first time in history that a civilian could sit at home and watch the invasion of another country live on television.
And it felt damn good to watch that statue of Saddam topple to the ground. But that was the last time I felt really good about Iraq because I knew the sensational stuff was done and that the really hard work was about to begin. It took years to secure Berlin from the Russians and they were civilized compared to Fascist Islamists. It's going to take decades to secure a peaceful state of government in Iraq and these are years and resources we don't have to allocate to those ends which is a Global War on Terrorism that is going to last at least 50-70 years (since we're being honest here).
I'm all about removing dictators from power and letting the people handle their own business but we need to be expedient about it and get on with it and if a terrorist state should rise up in Iraq in our absence, that's when we send one plane back armed with a full blown nuclear warhead and turn their sand castles into the biggest glass mirror on the planet, something that could be seen from the surface of Mars.
And to be honest with you, I was with the President even up until Katrina hit. I was willing to say let's stay the course, go the distance, hit the nail on the head, and whatever other cliche you wanted to use about Iraq. But after his response, or lack thereof, to hurricane Katrina I'm feeling the passion that I once defended him with and with which I proudly displayed my B/C '04 sticker on my SUV until August of this year start to dissipate and I'm finding myself anxious for November 2008 to roll around quickly so that the next phase in the plan for individual freedom can be enacted.
Because time is running short and the smallest actions are going to have the biggest long term impacts.
The President's response to the Katrina devastation was the same as his stump speech for Social Security reform--a party mantra, a company statement, something slick and polished and adequately (but rarely eloquent, let's be honest) delivered. There is no spark left in this man that I can see. What I'm seeing, hearing, and feeling are a bunch of lawyers and men in suits pointing their fingers at a field, imagining construction crews rolling in and clear-cutting to build, build, build, and make the same old shit all seem new.
But what I'm beginning to see, hear, and feel from the President is what I heard from that prick in Poltergeist who put up a housing development over the cemetery and I'm afraid that we won't survive three more years of milk toast company mission statements being passed off as social direction and core values.
I want the man with the bullhorn back. I want the Bush doctrine acted from. I want to see the first priority be Americans again and damn the rest of the world--they come second and we come first. I want the man I voted for back, not the man the board voted for to best represent their corporate interests.
I want America the country not America, Inc.
But like I said in the beginning, this was all part of the plan. See, the Democrats have been completely marginalized from all legitimate power. They've had their balls cut off
and a sock shoved in their mouth and this is a good thing for America. They will have no candidates to run besides Hillary and Obama and they will be defeated by a margin unseen before in the voting behaviors of this country's citizens. It is plain that those two are not what is good for America.
But the company is no longer good for America either and must be marginalized in the same fashion. The age of the individual is about to descend upon this world with a social evolutionary force unseen since the Industrial Revolution ripped farming away as the tensile web that connected all of mankind.
Never before have individuals had the power and reach to effect long-term and short-term changes in their world on a global scale.
The next Presidential race is going to hinge on ideas, ideals, core values and how well the individual can hold up to them in the burning light of public scrutiny.
The next President must have his or her own blog and the comments and trackbacks had better be turned on and pumping.
The next President must have their own podcast and put out a daily five minute monologue about why their vision is better, not why the other guy sucks because that is so played out. Every speech and every news report should be indexed on their website.
I'm talking FULL DISCLOSURE here, something unheard of in American politics but it's the only thing that will work in the future of American elections.
One good thing about the Internet is that it has sharpened the bullshit detector in a lot of the citizenry and future politicians need to take that into account or suffer the wrath.
Here's a rule of thumb: Party people don't do well when it's a race of individuals and this is exactly what the future of global politics will become.
In the next ten years, our species will either fall together or fall apart but one thing is for sure--the next few years aren't going to be boring.
TT: George W. Bush, Libertarian, Politics, Republicans, Democrats, Blogging, Podcasts, Hurricane War, Iraq War, War on Terror, Al Queda, Osama Bin Laden
See, I knew Bush was a company man back in 2000 and that the GOP was a company and a business miles before it was a philosophy and a set of core values. But the company securing power for the next two terms was so much more important than voting core values at that time.
Besides, in 2000, I wasn't quite sure what my core values were.
When I graduated college that Spring, I would have voted for Al Gore without even thinking twice (and that was the problem, wasn't it?).
But my brother-in-law came down to visit me and we were having drinks at the bar, waiting for our table and he asked me the question that changed everything: Why are you going to vote for Gore?
All I had was: Umm, err--the environment, uhhhh the way they treat minorities, ehhh they've been running the government pretty good for the last eight years... And then he proceeded to educate me on conservative values of governance and why they made more sense morally, ethically, politically, and financially than liberalism which was full of lofty ideals with no substance and masked a terrible usurpation of individual liberty.
I didn't come away convinced but I was definitely curious. I read this book
, this book, this book, this book, this book, and this book; then I started listening to Rush Limbaugh every day at my new 9 to fiver cubicle job.I didn't have much money then, but I knew I was going to have some someday and I wanted as much of it as possible to remain in my bank account--that wasn't going to happen with Al Gore in office.
But deep in my heart I knew that a Bush presidency would come at a price, that moving away from the Clinton era would heft an enormous fee but it was one that must be paid.
I didn't think a thing about Islamic fundamentalists and the danger they posed to my country. I had heard of Osama Bin Laden and I think I actually read his threat against the US in 1998 but it didn't mean anything more to me than the Bible's threat of damnation if I didn't toe the line and call myself a believer (which never happened).
But I voted for Bush and it was the first time I ever cast a vote for anything besides for myself as cutest boy in my fifth grade class (I won, by the way and got to date Brandy, the hottest white chick, and Shonda, the hottest black chick at the same time). So, I voted and my man won and that was all that mattered to me at the time. I was on top and for the first time in my life, felt a part of my country, a new regime that I helped usher into power--it was a sweet but short victory because that first major bill came due pretty fast and the interest was high: 3,000 lives to be exact.
I've never placed the blame for 9/11 on Bush (I firmly believe that it was Woodrow Wilson who caused 9/11 and keep watching this site over the next few days because I'll prove it to you) and I think that had he been able to retire in January 2003, he would have been the greatest President in the history of our country besides George Washington; greater than Lincoln and greater than Jefferson. Nobody was greater than Washington and I don't care that the man owned slaves or if he tortured small animals on the docks of Mt. Vernon--the man was an Emperor who laid down his power voluntarily because he knew the dangers and because he'd given up so much of his life and what he loved in order to preserve the freedom we each continue to enjoy to this day--that was a great man.
And George W. Bush is also a great man but great in the way that any American is great. He was in the right place at the right time to do the right thing.
His tax cuts for those who pay 80% of the taxes were right.
His response to 9/11 was right and he galvanized the country into a social force that moved mountains, or rather invaded mountains because his invasion of Afghanistan and dismantling of the Taliban was also right.
But he was still a company man and that leash was bound to get yanked at some point and it did. Someone still had a stick up their ass when it came to Iraq. Now, I'll be the first to admit that it was in our country's best interest to invade Iraq, remove Saddam from power, and secure the country as a democratic ally in the Middle East from which to launch an idealistic invasion that would eclipse that of the cold war between capitalism and communism. But we should have prioritized better because Iraq was about third or fourth on a very short list of things to get done before we took on the Islamic fundamentalists which really meant taking on Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and Syria in that order.
But none of that happened. Instead, we got Go back to work and keep charging up those credit card bills and that should have been the first clue as to what this administration was going to end up being about.
And then came the invasion of Iraq. And I'll admit that it felt pretty frigging good to see the American might roll into the deserts of Iraq on cable television. I taped about ten hours of the invasion and it is in a vacuum sealed bag in my basement inside a box labeled WAR BOX because I want my kids to watch a war unfold as it did before my eyes in real time. I want them to know that their father was watching for the first time in history that a civilian could sit at home and watch the invasion of another country live on television.
And it felt damn good to watch that statue of Saddam topple to the ground. But that was the last time I felt really good about Iraq because I knew the sensational stuff was done and that the really hard work was about to begin. It took years to secure Berlin from the Russians and they were civilized compared to Fascist Islamists. It's going to take decades to secure a peaceful state of government in Iraq and these are years and resources we don't have to allocate to those ends which is a Global War on Terrorism that is going to last at least 50-70 years (since we're being honest here).
I'm all about removing dictators from power and letting the people handle their own business but we need to be expedient about it and get on with it and if a terrorist state should rise up in Iraq in our absence, that's when we send one plane back armed with a full blown nuclear warhead and turn their sand castles into the biggest glass mirror on the planet, something that could be seen from the surface of Mars.
And to be honest with you, I was with the President even up until Katrina hit. I was willing to say let's stay the course, go the distance, hit the nail on the head, and whatever other cliche you wanted to use about Iraq. But after his response, or lack thereof, to hurricane Katrina I'm feeling the passion that I once defended him with and with which I proudly displayed my B/C '04 sticker on my SUV until August of this year start to dissipate and I'm finding myself anxious for November 2008 to roll around quickly so that the next phase in the plan for individual freedom can be enacted.
Because time is running short and the smallest actions are going to have the biggest long term impacts.
The President's response to the Katrina devastation was the same as his stump speech for Social Security reform--a party mantra, a company statement, something slick and polished and adequately (but rarely eloquent, let's be honest) delivered. There is no spark left in this man that I can see. What I'm seeing, hearing, and feeling are a bunch of lawyers and men in suits pointing their fingers at a field, imagining construction crews rolling in and clear-cutting to build, build, build, and make the same old shit all seem new.
But what I'm beginning to see, hear, and feel from the President is what I heard from that prick in Poltergeist who put up a housing development over the cemetery and I'm afraid that we won't survive three more years of milk toast company mission statements being passed off as social direction and core values.
I want the man with the bullhorn back. I want the Bush doctrine acted from. I want to see the first priority be Americans again and damn the rest of the world--they come second and we come first. I want the man I voted for back, not the man the board voted for to best represent their corporate interests.
I want America the country not America, Inc.
But like I said in the beginning, this was all part of the plan. See, the Democrats have been completely marginalized from all legitimate power. They've had their balls cut off
and a sock shoved in their mouth and this is a good thing for America. They will have no candidates to run besides Hillary and Obama and they will be defeated by a margin unseen before in the voting behaviors of this country's citizens. It is plain that those two are not what is good for America.But the company is no longer good for America either and must be marginalized in the same fashion. The age of the individual is about to descend upon this world with a social evolutionary force unseen since the Industrial Revolution ripped farming away as the tensile web that connected all of mankind.
Never before have individuals had the power and reach to effect long-term and short-term changes in their world on a global scale.
The next Presidential race is going to hinge on ideas, ideals, core values and how well the individual can hold up to them in the burning light of public scrutiny.
The next President must have his or her own blog and the comments and trackbacks had better be turned on and pumping.
The next President must have their own podcast and put out a daily five minute monologue about why their vision is better, not why the other guy sucks because that is so played out. Every speech and every news report should be indexed on their website.
I'm talking FULL DISCLOSURE here, something unheard of in American politics but it's the only thing that will work in the future of American elections.
One good thing about the Internet is that it has sharpened the bullshit detector in a lot of the citizenry and future politicians need to take that into account or suffer the wrath.
Here's a rule of thumb: Party people don't do well when it's a race of individuals and this is exactly what the future of global politics will become.
In the next ten years, our species will either fall together or fall apart but one thing is for sure--the next few years aren't going to be boring.
TT: George W. Bush, Libertarian, Politics, Republicans, Democrats, Blogging, Podcasts, Hurricane War, Iraq War, War on Terror, Al Queda, Osama Bin Laden
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This blog was originally posted on September 12, 2005
The BWP Comment Policy
Guest are encouraged to leave comments here; you do not have to register an account. All that I ask is that you be respectful of the other readers of this site and its host. Stick to the ideas being expressed and you should be okay. Get personal and you might not like the results. Thanks for reading.In all seriousness, I agree with a lot of what you’ve said. I think he needs to get back to taking care of Americans first. However, just the other day you were saying you can’t blame the president for the Katrina response. I still don’t think you can. Can you do things to improve the process and can you fix mistakes that have been made? Yes and yes. It’s still not his fault, the way things turned out. Yes, he could have handled it better. But I do agree with most of the points in your bulleted section. We should have strengthened ourselves before picking a fight.
And do you really think Clinton/Obama would be hugely defeated? I think if/when she runs she’ll get a pretty good part of the vote. Think of all the bra burners that’ll go that way (don’t get pissy about lack of political correctness here) just because she’s a woman. Then there’s all the serial Lifetime watchers who hate men who will back Hillary. Tree huggers. If the weather is good that day, most of the population of most minorities (sterotypes are such time savers…). Come on, you know how marketing works. They’re hitting all the smaller markets, which together make one large demographic. I, as of this writing, think Hillary’s got a realistic shot in ’08. I’ll vote for her when I trying to piss out the fires of Hell but I think she’s got a shot.
I really like this line too: I want America the country not America, Inc. I completely agree.
I still don't blame Bush for the disaster in the wake of Katrina. I'm referring to his muted reaction to the whole thing. I didn't get a sense of him being truly pissed off or even emotionally moved and any President with a heartbeat needs to be emotionally moved when speaking to the American people. Sure, he can make his policy decisions based on cold logic but I want to see some podium pounding and voice inflections coming out when the cameras are rolling and the heat is on.
And yeah, I think those two will be decimated. I think they'll capture the kook vote but you have to know that the forces on the right have been preparing for this battle for years and they will have mountains of convicting evidence against Hillary. Obama is relatively new to the scene but his slick talking and race baiting won't keep that iron afloat when it starts to sink.
...noted about the Gatling Gun. I've always thought it was Gatlin...you learn something new every day. Thanks bro.
Rock on, dude.