Letters to the Editor

• Crash, Crash...the painful sound of your delusions smashing to the floor.

  [Read the article: Last refuge of the scoundrel]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  I eagerly anticipate any Tues mornings when I can get my hands on a Kamiya article. This one was superb and it led me to the following conclusions.

  Of course Bush wants to equate his misadventure in Iraq with the titanic struggle that Churchill faced against fascism because he's trying to bask in the reflected nobility of that whole enterprise. But does it really matter that he's saying it. I mean he would wouldn't he? You wouldn't expect him to say "I failed, I'm a failure I've ruined countless lives with my grandiose schemes to upstage my daddy, my resignation takes effect right now"

  The blame for the entity called 'George Bush' can be placed right at the door of the American voters and pundits who saw greatness where the rest of us saw a fraudulent character. Never mind Florida for now, he might have been 300,000 votes short but he wasn't 10 million short. So it's somewhat academic now. He was very nearly half way there. People don't tend to vote for candidates they despise, ergo, they liked what they saw. But them liking what they saw is deeply troubling. It means in effect that the US is so wrapped up in one confected national myth after another that very nearly 50% of the people can see a real turkey and deem it a golden goose. All a candidate has to do is have the right backers, loads of money, press all the correct single issue fanatic buttons (abortion, NRA, low taxes etc...) be optimistic and he can sucker into one grand coalition nearly 50% of his fellow citizens.

  Blaming Bush alone lets off the rotten core of US democracy and its mendacious shallow uninvolved nature. France right now is at a crossroads, they may choose Royal or Sarkosi, but you get a sense that they are really thinking about it and are having a real hand in their fate, they don't want to go back to the days of Chirac and stagnation, but neither do they want a country so wedded to neoliberal capitalism that they lose all that is precious.

  Contrast that with any US election. Issues are not debated at all, positions are taken and other positions attacked. Any lobby can work the Washington beat hard until they are unassailable and unopposable. Character assassination and attack ads are the order of the day. You can pay to literally shred a person to pieces. Watching Bush lament the swift-boating of Kerry was laughably contrived. Witness also the flack that Obama received for having empathy with the suffering of the Palestinian people. Any decent human being in the world should have empathy with the unjust suffering of the Palestinian people, making that an unacceptable utterance is gross, disgusting and plain childish.

  So you have AIPAC (unassailable at the moment) buying up all their support in congress, you have a beauty contest that runs for two years and is scandalously expensive which the media don't critique as the attack ad money rolls in, and as a result of that circus you get Bush twice. You'd think that this would prompt some soul-searching on behalf of the public and the parts of the elite that care. It does not. The whole circus is starting again. Even after the Virginia Tech tragedy we saw how the NRA can silence politicians over the gun issue. So craven is the establishment and so ignorant the voters I bet that as a piece of performance art you could get up a pressure group to ban something absurd like 'collecting stamps' and just sit back and watch as key public figures and many duped voters zealously join in the crusade.

  Bush came about as a end result of this fraudulent process, he's been truly awful and has lied through his teeth like no self-confessed christian really ever should, and now he's telling us that he is Churchill. I think it's plain to see that he wants to leave his presidency without the ignominious stain of defeat simply to pass on the responsibility for retreat from Iraq to the next president. He should be prevented from achieving this cop-out. In life there are consequences, you choose a bad partner, you have an awful marriage. You make a poor investment, you lose money. You choose a god-awful president in a system rigged to give you one....I know that not all presidents are awful, but in the last 30 years the political classes all over the world have learned so many media and PR tricks - like being ruthlessly on-message and having really simplistic talking points - that things are getting worse. If you get a Dem in the white house, this won't all be fixed because he/she will be hamstrung from day one by these ruthless interests. You have to address the awful way you conduct politics.

  I'm not anti conservative, you need diversity and opposition in a country, there is a difference between a liberal and a conservative which doesn't trouble me, what I find totally abhorrent is the difference between a liberal and a so-called conservative who is in fact, shallow, mendacious, dishonest, malicious, feckless, incompetent, ignorant, irresponsible, indifferent to people's pain (except as a photo op) and malignantly stubborn to an extent that beggars belief. He has run down the stock of goodwill towards America world-wide, shouldn't that be enough to have you all storm the streets clamouring for his removal?

  Permalink Tuesday, May 1, 2007 03:13 AM