Do Bush Supporters hate their Country?

[Guest guest]

http://www.paradisepost.com/columns/ci_3498492

 

Do Bush supporters hate their country?

By Jaime O'Neill

 

 

Sometimes the people who still fervently support George W. Bush seem

just plain stupid, and other times it seems they must be dishonest

and even malevolent, harboring a hatred for their country that allows

them to support misguided ideas and private agendas over the public

good. In more reasonable moods, I want to believe that the Bush

supporters are just like me in simply wanting what is best for the

country safety, security, fairness and a commitment to a government

that observes the principles upon which our nation was founded. When

I'm thinking that way, I assume we don't disagree on goals and

objectives, just on the most effective way to achieve those goals and

objectives.

It's hard to keep that thought, though, when the lies keep piling up

higher and deeper, and when so much of the energy of Bush supporters

goes into evading reality. Is it really possible for there to be an

honest difference of opinion about the calamitous Bush decision to

invade Iraq? No weapons of mass destruction there, as we were told

there were. No link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein, as we were

told there was, and as we continue to be urged to believe by

deceptive administration rhetoric. Almost no likelihood that a stable

democracy will be possible in an Iraq rent by ethnic feuds and anti-

democratic traditions. Billions upon billions of dollars squandered

in Iraq, and billions more stolen by corrupt U.S. contractors.

Meanwhile, the Homeland Security entity Bush created has shown itself

to be yet another huge government boondoggle, and utterly witless in

responding to a national emergency.

 

Beyond that, we have the shameful spectacle of Americans who call

themselves patriots urging a forfeiture of our rights and liberties

as U.S. citizens the rights to due process and the protections

devised by the founding fathers to guard against abuses of power.

 

And beyond that, we have breaches of national security in the outing

of a CIA agent for no better reason than spite. We have the staffing

of all kinds of highly paid and important government jobs with

incompetent administration cronies and partners in crime. We have

repeated and massive failures of imagination. No one could have

imagined a) people flying planes into U.S. skyscrapers, b) a storm of

the magnitude of Katrina, or c) a Palestinian militant group like

Hamas winning elections in Palestine these being just a few of the

things Condoleezza Rice has said the administration couldn't imagine.

 

Beyond all of that, we have the growing gap between rich and poor,

the exportation of American jobs by the hundreds of thousands, the

wasteful and exploitive health care system that continues to bankrupt

American industries, the packing of the Supreme Court with judges

confirmed despite their stonewalling before the congressional

oversight committees charged with vetting them before they assumed

lifetime appointments. We have been unable or unwilling to secure our

borders. We have seen corruption on an unprecedented scale and

massive neglect of dozens of urgent national needs. Science has been

disregarded whenever it runs afoul of the profit motive, and we have

a foreign policy no one, least of all the people in charge of it,

seems to understand.

 

Our actions in Iraq have fueled the most extreme anti-Western views

throughout the Islamic world, and the entire Middle East is less

stable than it was when the Bush bunch took office.

 

Meanwhile, we build for our children and grandchildren a legacy of

international hatred, plus a huge debt burden as the Bush

administration spends and spends as though there is no tomorrow.

 

We've squandered our good name and our moral authority in the world

as we've watched Rumsfeld and Cheney and other spokesmen for our

nation argue to justify torture in the interest of our safety.

 

http://www.paradisepost.com/columns/ci_3498492

 

At a time when it was absolutely essential that the world know

unequivocally just who the good guys were, Bush and Co. have sullied

the image of America all over the globe, drawing a portrait of a

nation that behaves with arrogance, defies world opinion, ignores

planetary environmental concerns, and treats other nations with

disdain.

 

All of this harm has come to our nation and to its image, and still a

cluster of supporters insist on tarring anyone who might question

this ruinous administration. One of the ignorant nimrods who

regularly write to this paper to call me a Marxist argues that those

who disagree with the president are delighted to see America fail,

that people like me take pleasure in anything that gives comfort to

our enemies. He argues that people who question the reckless use of

the military are " pacifist military haters. " There is no truth to

such baseless and childish nonsense, but he seems to think it sounds

persuasive, or perhaps he thinks it's a kind of logical argument.

 

That's one of the reasons it's difficult not to think some of these

Bush supporters are just willfully stupid.

 

These people grow more tiresome as they have less and less with which

to argue. Their recourse, it seems, is to tag people they disagree

with by calling them " leftists " and " liberals, " as if those words

cancel out all arguments. These people exploit the nation's soldiers

to bolster their arguments.

 

They claim to support the troops, but you never hear a peep from them

about cuts to the Veterans Affairs budget or the shameful number of

avoidable deaths and injuries suffered by our soldiers because the

Bush administration still has not provided frontline troops with the

kind of armored vehicles that could have saved them from many of

those deaths and injuries.

 

But to people who are either stupid or malevolent, hatred of those

they would label as " liberals " trumps love of country every time and

blinds them to the harm being done to our security, our heritage and

our well-being.

 

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Jaime O'Neill is a widely published freelance writer.