I clipped a political cartoon in 1999 that characterized George Bush Sr. as Dr. Evil with a mini-me W. on his lap. I found myself delighted that the right was so desperate it was running the puppet chump son of a one-term president. Don't get me wrong - I know Bush Sr. is more influential than his public image leads us to believe. The man who inherited a Nazi-fuelled fortune and headed up the CIA is likely to protect his power with secrecy. However, running his boozer middle son seemed to me such an obvious grasp at an office he lost, that the public was sure to dismiss W's candidacy.
The five years since have been for me a lesson in the ease with which a nation, even one that purportedly espouses liberty, can don the black cowl of fascism. It's true the chickens come home to roost. Bush Sr. used his experience rigging elections in Central America and right here in good ol' U.S of A. we had a coup. On Inauguration Day, W drove, not walked like elected presidents do, in an armored car to the White House on a street lined with armed guards. My friend Alicia, in a revolt against despair, remarked that at least this ugly turn of events would galvanize the Left into amassed action.
While we were still building our coalition, the corporate media was left to its own devices. They ignored the facts: Bush stole the election, he lied in a State of the Union address about weapons of mass destruction, he gave 39% of a $350 billion dollar tax cut to the top 1% of tax payers, oversaw the loss of 3 million jobs, turned a surplus economy into the country's largest deficit in history and his administration was asleep at the wheel during the nation's worst terrorist attack (or worse, his administration was greasing the wheel, but more about that later).
We are finally seeing the benefits of a united front against the Bush administration: bad publicity. Rice is desperate to avoid the 9/11 council, Rumsfield is still frothing at the mouth but this time he's on the defensive, insisting he never got the memo! Opening the Wall Street journal last week, I thought I was reading The Nation. By page three I was reading articles about Shell cooking the books and Medicare's Chief Actuary being threatened not to reveal the true cost of Bush's Medicare bill (three times what Bush & Co. predicted). My favorite corporate media admission of late is the Feb 15th New York Times article revealing Florida's "massive purge" of eligible voters. The BBC and The Guardian asked the NYT to run the story when it could have benefited the country to know a coup was underway and it refused. The fact that facts are now surfacing in the mainstream reflects, I hope, that our country's political climate is changing. Those of us who want our country back and a chance at a long, healthy future for our planet must stick together and continue, through activism, to apply pressure to the White House of cards. We've labored too long under the illusion that the Emperor's son is clothed.
// posted by coleen at
12:21 PM
