THE AMERICA OF GEORGE W. BUSH

[Guest guest]

http://makethemaccountable.com/podvin/more/031201_TheAmericaOfGeorgeWBush.htm

 

 

12/1/03

 

THE AMERICA OF

GEORGE W. BUSH

 

 

By David Podvin

 

Martin Luther King dreamt of America as a land where

people value each other based on their individual

merits without regard to superficial differences.

Thomas Jefferson visualized America as a land of

ever-expanding freedom, where each generation would

pass on more liberty to its descendants. Benjamin

Franklin foresaw America as a land guaranteed to

elicit the most creativity and genius that human

beings have to offer because unlimited opportunity

produces unlimited greatness.

 

When it strives to achieve the aspirations of noble

people, our country is a place of incomparable hope

and beauty.

 

The America of George W. Bush is not such a place. It

is a place gripped by fear, a cowardly nation where

personal security is considered to be more important

than preserving the precious freedoms that were

purchased with the lives of selfless patriots. It is a

place of intrigue where the majority of people are

manipulated into supporting policies that are designed

to defraud them. It is a place where the ends justify

the means, and corruption is the governing philosophy.

It is a place where “restoring honor and dignity to

the Oval Office” consists of lying and cheating and

breaking the law.

 

The America of George W. Bush is a place where

conformity is prized over individuality, and reason is

synonymous with hatred, and dissent is

indistinguishable from treason. It is a place where

science is subservient to superstition, and truth is

viewed as being subversive, and democracy means not

counting votes.

 

The America of George W. Bush is a place where might

makes right. It achieves foreign policy objectives the

old fashioned way – by slaughtering defenseless

people. Loyal allies who fail to appreciate the wisdom

of this approach are excoriated for their treachery,

while domestic dissidents are shouted down and

marginalized. In Bush’s America, fighting terrorism

abroad is used as a pretext for vanquishing civil

liberties at home.

 

The America of George W. Bush is a place where

military personnel are exalted as national treasures

at photo opportunities, then shipped off to die to

enhance the profits of the Fortune 500. Those soldiers

who are not killed come home to a future of reduced

medical care, because lavishing largesse on military

contractors is more important than caring for has-been

warriors who no longer serve a useful political

purpose. Like the elderly champions who once labored

to build the economy - and who courageously defended

the nation against attack - our returning young heroes

are now ruthlessly abandoned to fend for themselves…to

sink or swim.

 

The America of George W. Bush is a place where it is

believed that common people have too much power and

government has too little, that average people have

too many rights and corporations have too few, that

working people have too much money and the rich don’t

have enough. It is a place where wealth is equated

with virtue, a place that is bereft of compassion for

all but the most privileged.

 

The America of George W. Bush is a place where caring

about children is a rhetorical ploy calculated for

political gain, where “leaving no child behind” is

merely an expedient lie. It is a place where the

future of the next generation has been mortgaged by

creating vast budget deficits for the purpose of

providing trillions of dollars of kickbacks to

corporate campaign contributors. It is a place where

the nation’s most vulnerable victims of violent crime

lose their lives because child abuse clinics have been

closed so that more money can be given to people who

already have so much money they can never possibly

spend it all.

 

The America of George W. Bush is a place where the

most cherished form of human life is the fetus. Even

the Aztecs were not barbaric enough to throw pregnant

women into volcanoes, but the theocratic primitives

now running the government have decreed that the

health of females who experience severe late term

complications must be sacrificed in homage to the

unborn. Cruel and unusual punishment cannot be

inflicted on rapists or child molesters, but it will

be applied to women who fail to properly fulfill their

function as brood mares. This outrage is to be

committed in the name of religion – it is misogyny

made holy – and such depravity is symptomatic of a

nation that is being led morally astray.

 

The America of George W. Bush is a place where the

doctored image of Jesus Christ is the symbol of an

agenda that repudiates His every principle. Christ

repeatedly condemned the hoarding of great wealth

while never once mentioning homosexuality, yet He is

now falsely presented as both a supply side advocate

and a homophobe. In a blasphemous twisting of His

word, gay people who express love are condemned as

immoral, while the hateful people who torment them are

exalted as righteous. Jesus implored His followers to

generously help the poor, but instead the poor are

vilified as failures who are unworthy of any succor.

The name of Christ is now invoked to justify the

destruction and looting of countries that pose no

threat: The Prince Of Peace has been perversely

transformed into the God Of War by a greedy Texas

politician who worships not at the altar of the

Almighty, but at the altar of the Almighty Dollar.

 

The America of George W. Bush is a place where nature

exists to be destroyed and endangered species become

extinct species. The air and the water that were once

public domain now serve as cesspools for those robber

barons who are willing to buy the appropriate changes

in regulations. As the Arctic shelf continues to melt

and the arable topsoil continues to erode and the lung

capacity of the nation’s youth continues to shrink,

the Bush campaign coffers continue to grow.

 

The America of George W. Bush is a betrayal of

everything worthwhile this nation has ever

represented. It is a capitulation to the basest

instincts of society. It is not what the Founders

created, nor is it what the American people should

ever be willing to accept.

 

Conservatives have questioned whether a citizen who

loves this country would oppose the policies advocated

by Bush. The answer is that every citizen who loves

this country opposes Bush and is appalled by the

devastation he has wrought upon our democracy. For

those who share the ideals of King and Jefferson and

Franklin, there can be no greater act of patriotism

than to defeat the malicious demagogue who is

destroying the best of America.

 

More David Podvin

 

Podvin, the Series