The Conservative Meltdown

The conservative movement is melting faster than the polar ice caps. Speaking of which, a seven square mile chunk of ice just broke off from an arctic glacier the other day. But global warming is hardly the only issue that conservative curmudgeons have mussed up. The Republican establishment has virtually imploded thanks to its incestuous relationships with corrupt lobbyists, rampant sexual hypocrisy among the rank and file of the supposed “values” Party, and the bankruptcy of its economic and social ideologies.

Katrina, Iraq, and the looming Bush Recession. Talk about an axis-of-evils. There’s an overwhelming consensus that when Bush finally leaves office he’ll bequeath his successor the most formidable set of foreign and domestic challenges since Herbert Hoover dropped the Great Depression on to FDR’s lap.

Republican stalwart Phil Graam, until recently McCain’s economic advisor, contends America is in a “mental recession.” But by any measure America’s economic outlook has been pretty bleak of late. After all, the economy has shed jobs seven straight months and the United States is drowning in red ink. Indeed, impending bailout of mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will effectively double the size of America’s debt obligations virtually overnight.

The fiasco at the heart of Freddie and Fannie is symptomatic of how the Bush administration mortgaged America’s future to pay for yesterday’s tax cuts, which mainly benefited those who benefited the most from rigging the system to their advantage. On the assumption that some institutions are too important to fail (i.e., institutions that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbyists) America’s taxpayers will be expected bailout foreign investors who bought bad loans (in the form of complex financial instruments) peddled by Wall Street.

Here’s the essence of the problem: the collateralized debt obligations the financial wizards packaged and sold to foreign interests have proven to be as toxic as the dog food the Chinese sell to us with the money we borrow from them. If the American taxpayer doesn’t make good on their losses, then they’ll stop lending us money and interest rates will soar.

Sure, the apple juice the Chinese sell us tastes like radiator fluid, but if foreign creditors like China stop lending us money we won’t be able to afford to buy gasoline from regimes that hate us. The whole economic order will collapse and the United States will descend into a Hobbesian nightmare where life is “short, nasty, and brutish.” Oddly enough, this brings me to Dick Cheney, architect of the Bush administration’s “enhanced” interrogation policy. Enhanced interrogation, of course, is a euphemism for the torture techniques perfected during the Dark Ages by inquisitors and witch hunters.

The civilized world has equated torture as barbarism ever since the Geneva Conventions were ratified. The United States was a signatory and the custodian of that treaty, until George W. Bush unilaterally (and unlawfully) cast them aside as “quaint” relics of a bygone era. In doing so he ignored the advice of counter terrorism officials, law enforcement experts, and human rights activists. Put simply, the experts recognized that torture yields false confessions at least as often as valuable intelligence, as detainees tell their captors what they think they want to hear in order to stop the pain. The case of Ibn al-Shaykh al Libi, for instance, is instructive; after being tortured, al-Libi told his captors that Saddam was in cahoots with bin Laden. In other words, it wasn’t just the Bush administration’s tortured reasoning that brought about the strategic blunder of Iraq.

There is an insidious connection between the Bush administration’s moral bankruptcy and America’s dire economic predicament. The administration has treated laws, regulations, and oversight as impediments to the brute exercise of force. Indeed, with Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, and John Yoo (the infamous trio who crafted Bush’s torture memos) the law was parsed and twisted so finely that the barbarism associated with the Middle Ages was codified and bureaucratized for the 21st century. Simply put, they provided the veneer of legality for criminal acts. Such mediocre political hacks, of course, have been the rule rather than the exception in the Bush administration. Their legal contortions have since been rejected multiple times by the Supreme Court, but the damage to America’s reputation has been as damaging as the images the world saw in the aftermath of the Bush administration’s shameful response to Katrina.

The conservative movement has squandered America’s economic, intellectual, and moral capital at a time when environmental, financial, and military challenges are mounting exponentially. It’s not hard to see where the Bush administration went wrong. Torture and preventive war cannot serve as the basis for a sound national security policy. Rigid ideological assumptions, like the ones that treated the scientific evidence of global warming as a hoax, or the ones that insisted that less taxes and less regulation always led to economic growth, are invariably pernicious. Support for the conservative movement has evaporated, in no small measure because it has been so radically wrong.

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Torture and the Soul of the Nation

In the wake of 9/11 George W. Bush unilaterally scrapped the Geneva Conventions. The decision, which amounted to a lawless power grab, has proven to be one of the most fateful and pernicious choices made by an administration identified almost exclusively its colossal blunders. There is now no doubt that Bush’s executive overreach has led directly to a systematic pattern of human rights abuses so appalling that it rivals the war crimes perpetrated by the Nazis and the Japanese during the Second World War. That the United States, a signatory and custodian of Geneva Conventions, effectively bureaucratized torture and sadism under the Bush administration, must rank as one of the greatest tragedies in our nation’s history.

For more than two centuries, the United States distinguished itself by rejecting the brutalizing and abusive treatment of prisoners of war. George Washington, for instance, insisted that the Continental Army would not stoop to the barbarous and inhumane treatment meted out by British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries. Scholars and historians universally recognize Washington’s stand against torture was not just a moral gesture; it was a shrewd calculation that brutality undermines discipline in the ranks and strengthens the resolve of adversaries.

Following WWII, the United States led the effort to develop the Geneva Conventions so that the treaty covered every aspect of warfare. Embraced by the entire civilized world the treaty was the law of the land until George W. Bush decreed otherwise. His decision was not debated or subject to a formal policy review. Indeed, Dick Cheney and the vice-president’s top aides circumvented normal policy-review channels and simply had the historically illiterate president sign off on what would euphemistically be called “enhanced” interrogation techniques.

In an Orwellian twist, Bush claimed that although the Geneva Conventions were no longer law, nevertheless the United States would still abide by them as a matter of policy. His assurances would prove false, big time. The “special” interrogation methods employed systematically by the administration included: sexual humiliation, sleep and sensory depravation, waterboarding, numerous other techniques designed to induce extreme stress and discomfort. By any standard – the Geneva Convention, the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, and U.S law – these methods constituted torture. However, legal goons allied with the vice-president, most notoriously David Addington and John Yoo, concocted such a narrow definition of torture -- only procedures that led to pain associated with death and organ failure would be considered torture -- that the administration effectively codified the kind of irrational barbarism one normally associated with the Inquisition or the Salem witch trials.

Times columnist Anthony Lewis has rightly characterized the legal guidance Bush was given to the kind of advice a Mafia don would get from his concilierge on how to stay out of prison. Indeed, most of the infamous legal memos have an Alice in Wonderland quality in so far as they attempt to stretch language and push logic beyond the breaking point. Needless to say, the loopholes the Bush administration created were used to asphyxiate far more than common sense.
Harsh interrogation methods, the Bush administration assured the public, were necessary to deal with terrorists. Most counter terrorism experts agree, however, that physically and psychologically coercive techniques are more likely to lead to unreliable intelligence than good information. For instance, the Bush administration adopted techniques used by the Communists designed to break the will of interviewees. But the Communists had only been interested in eliciting false confessions, which they used at show trials, rather than truthful confessions.

It is now clear, contrary to the Bush administration’s claims, the much of the so-called “intelligence” gleaned from coercive interrogations is of the false confession category. In one notorious case, for example, a supposedly high level al-Qaeda figure, Ibn al-Shaykh al Libi, admitted after being tortured that he knew of links between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden. In reality, al-Libi was a comparatively small fish that simply told interrogators what they wanted to hear in order to stop the abuse he was undergoing. President Bush cited al-Libi’s confession as proof for going after Saddam. The Iraq War, in other words, was at least partially a product of a demonstrably false confession.

The corruption of law and language has led inextricably to a degeneration of decency and morality on the part of our elected leaders, civic officials, and military personnel. Those charged with protecting our values have donned black hoods, treated detainees like dogs, and forced prisoners under their supervision to perform unspeakable acts. The origins of such abuses stem directly from Bush’s directive that “enemy combatants” constitute a class of un-persons not subject to even the most rudimentary traditional legal safeguards.

The Supreme Court has since slapped down the administration’s brazen assertion of unfettered executive authority. But there are still a great many hard-line conservatives that believe affording terror suspects any legal protections whatsoever is scandalous. They are mistaken. As Alberto Mora, former General Counsel of the U.S Navy, puts it “The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America.” If we try and carve out exceptions, Mora goes on to note, the Constitution crumbles. That, in essence, is why the Bush administration’s policies, in so far as they have condoned and sanctioned torture, have been so inimical and corrosive of our values.

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Bush and Crimes Against Humanity

The trajectories of George W. Bush and Al Gore since the fateful election in 2000 could hardly be more divergent. The once highflying Bush has tumbled from the sky like a dodo while Gore has risen from the ashes like a phoenix. Tragically, America’s fortunes have been hitched to the incompetent bungling Bush who has single-handedly managed to destroy America’s reputation, moral character, financial health, and military preparedness.

Bush, of course, still clings to the delusion that his presidency and the decision to invade Iraq will be vindicated by posterity. It is worth noting, in this vein, that Reich Marshall Hermann Goring once boasted that future generations would honor him and his fellow henchmen with monuments. Needless to say, Goring’s predictions regarding his future place in history have proven every bit as empty as the Nazis’ wartime propaganda.

The Bush administration and its league of apologists in the media have generally scoffed at any suggestion that the president and his aides might guilty of war crimes, but a growing body of evidence indicates that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, and David Addington knowingly sanctioned torture and other abuses that amounted to same kind of gross violations of the Geneva Conventions that leading Nazis were prosecuted for at the Nuremberg Trials. Put simply, the concept of “command responsibility,” which implicitly recognizes that political and military leaders are responsible for the moral tone that is set within the chain of command, directly implicates the Bush White House to some of the most heinous human rights violations ever committed in our nation’s history.

“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.” That’s the dispiriting conclusion of Major General Antonio Taguba (Ret.) in his preface to a report issued by Physicians for Human Rights.

Bush’s decision to scrap the Geneva Conventions is not just immoral; it’s self-defeating and stupid. Innocent individuals have been incarcerated and tortured without due process, which has sullied the image of the United States. And at least one false confession – a subject who told interrogators what they wanted to hear, namely that Saddam possessed WMD – helped mislead America into the Iraq War. The Bush administration claims (without evidence) that waterboarding has saved lives, but most counter terrorism experts agree that coerced confessions are inherently unreliable.

The Supreme Court has finally – and repeatedly – slapped down the Bush administration’s legal rationales for denying enemy combatants even a modicum of legal safeguards. The next president, whether it is John McCain or Barack Obama, will represent a repudiation of the moral vacuity the Bush administration has displayed in regards to detainees. There is no doubt that Bush and Cheney have undermined the values they purport to defend. Their contorted logic and reasoning for denying terror suspects even a minimum of legal rights has not only made a mockery of the rule of law, it shocked the conscience of the world. The magnitude of Bush’s failures, however, extends to nearly every aspect of our national life: the reckless invasion of Iraq, the incompetence of Katrina, the failure to do anything about global warming and America’s crumbling infrastructure, and the administration’s fiscal irresponsibility. A staggering 84% of the public now agrees that the Bush administration has taken the country in the wrong direction. Historians will likely be even more scathing; most already concur that the Bush administration represents one of the lowest points in our Republic.

In 2000 the Supreme Court intervened to thwart a statewide recount in Florida. The Court’s reasoning was right out of Alice in Wonderland: there was not enough time for the recount to proceed, a fact the Court itself had made true by stopping the recount the day before. Justice delayed is justice denied. The verdict of history is taking shape: the Court didn’t just install the wrong man; the majority’s sophistic reasoning helped put in place a war criminal.

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Top Ten Jobs for Bill and Hillary Clinton in an Obama Administration

10). Obama should immediately appoint Bill and Hillary to the Supreme Court. Hey, those black gowns will work a lot better for Hillary than her candy-colored pantsuits. And I bet Bill and Clarence Thomas will enjoy discussing legal theories concerning the Constitutionality of adult videos.

9). Since Hillary has shown an inclination to work till 3am, why not assign her to the top job at the White House switchboard?

8). Hillary’s vivid accounts of dodging sniper fire and mortar rounds indicate she would make her an ideal candidate for America’s top ambassador to the Green Zone in Baghdad.

7). Hillary talks about being a fighter a lot so why not give her five stars and appoint her as Secretary of War? I bet the Iranians will think twice about enriching uranium when she’s got the top slot at the Pentagon because they’ll know Hillary has a penchant for proving she’s man enough for any job.

6). If I were Obama, I’d appoint Hillary and Bill as goodwill ambassadors to the international space station.

5). Bill and Hillary have proven they’ll do anything it takes to get back to the White House. Hillary has downed shots of vodka, visited NASCAR, and passed herself off as a good’ old gal. Obama should assign Bill and Hillary to the White House motor pool, and let them be responsible for keeping the presidential limo spiffy shiny and clean.

4). I’m sure the Clinton’s just great at leading tours of the White House, though the secret Oval Office broom closet and the Lincoln bedroom should be off-limits to visiting girl scouts troops, unless Hillary accompanies her hubby.

3). Appoint Bill Clinton to the Court, the White House indoor basketball court that is. Hey, Bill Clinton supported affirmative action, so it’s only fair to have a token white guy who can’t jump on Obama’s team.

2). Bill Clinton playing “Hail to the Chief” on hi sax. How cool would that be? Obama should pick the big guy to lead the White House Band.

1). If Obama is foolish enough to pick Hillary as his VP he should insist on getting two for one by getting Bill as his food taster.

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Bush, Obama, and Appeasement

Man, in his unwillingness to understand other men, becomes like the beasts of the jungle. And their ways become his ways. This sentiment comes from the brilliant film, “The Naked Prey,” directed by Cornel Wilde. But it is probably the best encapsulation of all that has gone wrong with America’s foreign policy under the tragic tenure of George W. Bush. Dialogue equals appeasement, or so the architects of the Iraq debacle hold. But these would be vanquishers of Evil have spawned Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and four million Iraq refugees.

George Bush and John McCain have blasted Barack Obama over his willingness to talk to Iran without preconditions. Bush, in particular, has had the temerity to imply that taking to Iran would be Munich all over again, but this time in the Middle East (Munich was the moment the Europeans appeased Hitler). Of course, Bush’s historical analogies involving Nazi Germany might carry a little more authority if he and his bunker buddy, Dick Cheney, hadn’t decided to unilaterally scrap the Geneva Conventions and launch a preemptive war under false pretenses. After all, wasn’t it Herr Hitler who insisted he was “liberating” Eastern Europe after claiming Poland had attacked the Third Reich? Bush would do well to avoid drawing analogies involving the megalomaniacal but hopelessly incompetent Furher.

Bush’s spiel that dialogue equals appeasement is wrong on multiple counts. First, reactionary conservatives during the Cold War argued in favor of preemptive war against the Soviet Union on the grounds that any form of diplomacy with the “Evil Empire” was appeasement. Needless to say, most sane observers now agree that containment, diplomacy, and dialogue were the right approaches to take, while the rollback doctrine that led to calamities like the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs would have been suicidal.

There is a second and even more insidious way in which Bush’s dialogue is appeasement argument is a dangerous delusion. He is applying it not just to al-Qaeda -- the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11 -- but also to Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and anyone else the Bush administration designates in its ever expansive catch-all category: the Enemy. It is worth noting that Iran was the one country in the Middle East that held public rallies demonstrating their solidarity with the United States following the 9/11 attacks, and that the Iranian government cooperated with the U.S. military’s campaign to oust the Taliban. The invasion of Iraq, however, coupled with the Bush administration reckless plans to refashion the Middle East in America’s image, have helped turn an erstwhile ally into an implacable adversary. You are either with us or against us works better when you don’t piss everybody off so much that everyone is rooting against you.

The tragedy, of course, is that moral obtuseness – assuming one always in the right, not listening to other perspectives, and the unwillingness to compromise with adversaries – leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy that has a tendency to bring out the worst in everybody. The irony, needless to say, is that with George W. Bush the War against Evil has only one exit strategy: escalation.

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Top Ten Ways Hillary Can Pander Her Way to the Presidency

10). Promise to give each and every American $1,500 gift card to use at the mall of their choice. Hey, if every American could afford to purchase a second or third giant screen TV it sure would help stimulate the economy. And who better than Hillary to get tough with the Arab oil sheiks in order to get them to lend us the money to finance this scheme.

9). Hey, if Hillary would promise to obliterate Crawford, Texas it sure would make up for her vote to give the warmonger George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq.

8). Offer raffle tickets to ordinary citizens where the prize is an overnight sleepover in the Lincoln bedroom. The prize should include quality time with Bill and other VIPs. Winners, of course, must be over 21.

7). Subsidize massive federal boondoggle to turn marijuana into cannabis-based ethanol. Hey, weed is already America’s #2 cash crop. Let’s see if we can get higher mileage with hybrid cars that run on fumes. This should solve global warming too. And it’s doubtful it will lead to more traffic accidents, assuming drivers don’t inhale.

6). Forget the gasoline tax holiday. Like a lot of Americans I consume a lot more alcohol than I do petrol. How about a tax holiday on Hillary’s favorite beverage, the boilermaker? I’ll drink to that.

5). Hey, if Bill can pardon billionaire fugitive Marc Rich, then why couldn’t Hillary pardon me for the $28,432 I owe in unpaid parking and traffic fees? A traffic infraction amnesty for all Americans is just what Hillary needs to propose to pick up some Red states.

4). Draft dodging chicken hawk Republicans have succeeded in Swift boating liberal war heroes for too long. Hillary should retroactively reinstate the draft for top government officials who used multiple deferments and the National Guard to avoid one senseless war when they were young only to start another when they were old. Let’s see how Dick Cheney and George Bush look in Kevlar helmets and body armor as they dodge IEDs, mortar rounds, and sniper fire in “Free Iraq.”

3). I’d vote for Hillary if the Clinton campaign would make “She’s so Cold” by the Rolling Stones her theme song. Hey, but if Obama should happen to get the nomination after all I’d love to hear “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” following Barack’s acceptance speech.

2). Hillary should pledge to appoint Al Gore as Chief Justice of the World Court responsible for investigating and prosecuting Crimes Against Humanity (including any and all high government officials who may have authorized torture, preemptive war, and election fraud). Let’s face it, I want to see the rightful winner of the 2000 election order Bush confined to a straightjacket while the disgraced ex-president undergoes a thorough psychiatric evaluation.

1). Hillary should promise to pick her vice-presidential running mate from a pool of contestants that face off on a popular reality-based TV show like “Survivor.” Contestants will have to compete in a series of silly tasks designed to reveal their capacity for ruthlessness, duplicity, and backstabbing. The contestant that would make the Clinton’s want to hire a food taster the most wins the second spot on the ticket.

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Reverend Wright vs. the Right

A debate between Jeremiah Wright and Sean Hannity would probably be about as subtle and intellectually rewarding as a scene from of Hamlet played by Vince McMahon and Donald Trump. Rightwing bloviaters are in perpetual need of bogeymen to rail against, and what better foil to make stupid white men seem smart than an African-American Archie Bunker. If Reverend Wright weren’t the product of the far left the far right would have had to invent him.

Projection is a psychological mechanism whereby unacknowledged emotions of one’s own – fear, aggression, and bigotry – are attributed to another, thus alleviating oneself of the responsibility for toxic feelings. One can imagine, for instance, the temporary psychological relief a KKK member gets from watching loops of Reverend Wright venting his spleen; the white supremacist feels justified by locating the source of his anger in the uppity black minister spouting “God Damn America.”

Reverend Wright and his most vociferous critics are in many ways mirror images of one another. This can be seen, for example, in the mindset of figures from the religious right, such as Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, who insisted that the 9/11 attacks were God’s retribution upon America for promoting abortion, gay marriage, and secularism. This is arguably an even cruder and more irrational explananda than Wright’s “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” commentary on 9/11.

Ironically, Wright and his detractors share the same dubious premise: namely, that we live in a just universe where human events are governed by a benevolent deity who nevertheless dispenses rewards and punishments for our moral good. The notion that the perpetrators and victims of terrorism are part of a divine scheme to dispense justice is so patently anti-scientific, juvenile, and irrational that it is beyond embarrassing.

Reverend Wright’s view, however, at least has the virtue of being more theological sophisticated and tenable than that of his counterparts on the right. For instance, Wright makes the perfectly valid point when he draws the connection between America’s foreign policy and a terrorist backlash. Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noregia, and Osama bin Laden were all recipients of U.S. military aid. In a very real sense, as Benazir Bhutto noted decades ago, al-Qaeda was the Frankenstein monster the Reagan/Bush administration helped create.

Wright is an astonishing mixture of erudition and ignorance. He weaves uncomfortable truths and conspiracies into a narrative that can be odious and illuminating at the same time. I don’t doubt that he and his church have done good work ministering to the poor and championing the cause of the disenfranchised and disaffected. Wright’s legacy will be even more mixed, however, if he succeeds in derailing a candidate who transcends the divisiveness that religious demagogues feed on. Here Wright shares another trait with the far right cable crowd: if he spent as much time solving problems as he did whipping up anger and resentment he’d be out of business.

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Bush vs. Justice

Justice is to society what health is to the body. That is, justice is a kind of harmonious interplay between the various components of the social order that engenders optimum functioning. Philosophers, of course, have long inquired about the nature of justice. For a character named Thrasymachus justice is synonymous with the interests and advantage of the stronger, and attitude summed up by the notion that “might makes right.” When the tiny island of Melos resisted the unilateralism of the Greek Empire a forerunner of George W. Bush simply informed the inhabitants that you are either with us or against us. After all, as the official put it, fairness and justice only pertains to equals. And in disputes between non-equals, the sophistic official went on, “the strong do what they can and weak suffer what they must.”

This is a cynical and corrosive understanding of justice, needless to say, since it reflects the notion that justice is little or nothing more than one side imposing its will on the other, through force of arms, rhetorical sleight-of-hand, or whatever means happen to be at one’s disposal. On this account there are no objective standards, save one: winning is proof that one is right, as evidenced by the fact that the victors will get to write history.

In examining this notion, which extols power as the end all and be all, it is worth quoting the words of John F. Kennedy. He wrote on the pitfalls of power not tempered by a poetic dimension:

“When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses”

Eight years of Bush’s unilateralism, zero-sum politics, and legal sophistry have convinced most Americans that the country could use a moral disinfectant to purge the taint associated with an administration that completely squandered the public trust. This was a president, after all, who insisted the United States did not engage in torture, illegal eavesdropping, or manipulate intelligence even though the administration’s own internal memos explicitly contradict his public assurances.

It is now abundantly clear that administration lawyers – particularly David Addington and John Yoo – contrived Alice in Wonderland type rationalizations to legitimize interrogation methods that were outside the U.S. military code of justice, international law, and the Geneva Conventions. Moreover, these logic-chopping legal sophists attempted to promulgate a perverse doctrine whereby the President supposedly had the inherent authority to ignore, interpret, or fashion the law in any way he chose to in his role as Commander-in-Chief. This so-called theory of the Unitary Chief Executive might just as well be called the Humpty Dumpty Doctrine, after the cracked character who tells Alice after she’s fallen through the looking glass that a word means just what he says it means – neither more nor less. After all, thanks to Bush’s signing statements a law means just what he says it means – neither more nor less.

A law that depends on the whim of a single individual, however, is a contradiction in terms. That is, just as the philosopher Wittgenstein showed that the idea of a private language is incoherent, so the idea of a single individual serving as the fount of what is permissible and not is the very antithesis of the law. Bush’s pursuit of executive omnipotence has in fact led to a form of schizoid irrationality – i.e., torture is not illegal if the president orders it or defines it in ways that makes even the most inhumane and degrading interrogation methods acceptable.

Wittgenstein, incidentally, is famous for saying that “ethics could be shown, but not spoken.” By the same token, it might be said that justice cannot be defined, but still we might find examples that exemplify it. I believe Mozart’s great opera, The Marriage of Figaro, contains a sublime illustration of justice. Here the story concerns a decadent aristocrat presiding over a disordered household. To distract himself from the decaying and dysfunctional state of affairs he governs, the Count in question pursues a series of amorous affairs with the household help. His wife, distraught by her husband’s unfaithful intentions, makes plans to exact her revenge: she will impersonate one of the servant girls that is the object of her husband’s lust. In other words, the Count thinks he is seducing a maid, but he is really pursuing the wife he has spurned.

When the ruse is revealed the Count realizes how much he loves his wife and he begs her forgiveness. The tables have been turned and the wife can now extract her pound of flesh, but in one of opera’s most sublime arias she orgives him. We in the audience immediately recognize the poetic justice in the way the conflict has been resolved. As the opera concludes order has been restored, love triumphs, and justice reigns. Life, alas, does not often imitate art, but perhaps it should. In any event, I believe Mozart’s opera provides an archetypal example of justice.

In contrast, the Bush administration’s conception of justice is nothing but a prosaic counterfeit. Everywhere one turns – Bush vs. Gore, Guantanamo, the trumped up case for invading Iraq – one finds only rhetorical sleights-of hand, ad hoc and post hoc rationalizations, and endless excuses and evasions. Deep dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, the decline of America’s moral authority, and the tanking of the economy are symptomatic of a country that is seriously out of order. There is a lesson here: the arrogance that equated brute force with justice is being undone by a far great power: poetic justice.

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George W. Bush: The Most Unpopular President Ever?

George W. Bush is about as popular with the American people as an undertaker visiting a nursing home would be. Seventy-one percent of the public disapproves of Bush’s job performance, the highest negative rating ever. Not even Richard Nixon was so reviled.

By some estimates a million Iraqis have been killed since the war began, two-and-a-half million Iraqis have fled the country or been displaced, and virtually every expert agrees the invasion has enhanced the influence of America’s chief nemesis in the region, Iran.

The dollar is near an all-time low, gas prices are soaring, and the country is teetering on the brink of what some are predicting will be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Bush, however, is so clueless that he didn’t even seem to know – or care – when someone told him that gas would likely top $4 a gallon by this summer.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has described Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina as “disgraceful.” When you factor in the mortgage meltdown; the failure to find WMD in Iraq; the collapse of Bush’s efforts to privatize Social Security; the explosion of the deficit, the discrediting of the administration’s democratization agenda for Iraq; the setbacks in Afghanistan; the failure to catch bin Laden; and the precipitous decline in America’s power and prestige during Bush’s tenure . . . well it’s a no-brainer that George W. Bush has been a monumental failure. You might say that Dubya is kind of like Nero, but without the musical talent.

George Bush has decimated virtually everything he’s come in contact with: FEMA, the U.S. military, Iraq, the economy, and the Republican Party. But you can bet your retirement account and/or your economic future that Forty-Three earnestly believes he’s been doing a “heck of a job.”

Bush likes to claim that he’ll be vindicated by history. Many decades from now, Bush claims, historians will recognize he made the right choices, particularly in regards to his decision to invade Iraq. This is a facile, self-serving, and irresponsible way of looking at things. As chief weapons inspector Hans Blix noted, had Bush delayed his decision by as little as two weeks the world would have know with certainty that Saddam did not posses the dreaded WMD that were the casus belli of the invasion.

Certainly, from a military standpoint, it would be important to know that U.S. troops would not be facing chemical and biological weapons. Needless to say, this would have simplified the invasion, or perhaps made it unnecessary. But the Bush administration has invariably been hostile to evidence that contradicts its ideological convictions, as its foot-dragging approach to global warming demonstrates.

Bush could (and should) have fired the incompetent Donald Rumsfeld earlier. He should have set up a unified chain of command so that Paul Bremer wasn’t disbanding the Iraqi Army on his own. And he never should have allowed political loyalty to trump competence when it came to sending personnel to reconstruct Iraq. Put simply, it’s not just that the choices that Bush has made that have been disastrous, but rather that his entire ideological, managerial, and political style has engendered catastrophe at every step. George Bush, in short, has about as much chance as going down as a successful president as Britney Spears has of winning an Oscar.

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The Case Against Scalia.

In the film The English Patient a Nazi interrogator muses over a question he thinks has great moral and metaphysical import. In the scene he and his henchmen are threatening to strip a detainees’ fingernails when the Nazi commander has a brainstorm: are thumbs fingers?

Such obsessively abstract logic chopping can engender a mind-numbing moral obtuseness. That’s the feeling I had as I watched “Justice” Scalia being interviewed on 60 Minutes Lesley Stahl. The subject of torture came up -- as did Bush vs. Gore -- but by Scalia’s reasoning torture didn’t fit in the punishment category. Presumably, torture is used on detainees to get information. Therefore, the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” doesn’t apply since no one is using waterboarding, thumbscrews, or the wrack to punish the aforementioned detainees. I’m glad “Justice” Scalia cleared that little moral conundrum up for me!

Scalia was equally disingenuous on the subject of Bush vs. Gore. He makes no apology for that ignominious decision, a verdict that is in the process of tainting his legacy and discrediting his judicial philosophy. He argues, implausibly, that the outcome would have been the same whether the Court intervened or not. Indeed, he has the temerity to blame Al Gore for getting the courts involved in the first place. Needless to say, Scalia blithely ignores inconvenient facts: namely, that tens of thousands of machine unreadable ballots were never tabulated, that Bush ally Katherine Harris misused her office as Secretary of State to thwart a recount, or that the chief legal rationale trumpeted by the Bush campaign (that examining the uncounted ballots would be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause) was right out of Alice in Wonderland.

The Bush administration is universally recognized as a catastrophe. But all the hallmarks of their opportunistic mendacity were on display during the election fiasco that led to current debacle. The sophistic legal reasoning, the fear mongering, and the pandering to the lowest common denominator all had a trial run as the Bush’s campaign took their case to what proved to be a kangaroo court.

“Justice” Scalia’s anxiety was palpable as Stahl queried him. He clearly wanted to change the subject. Bush vs. Gore, it should be clear, will not stand as a paradigmatic case that illustrates the values and principles that exemplify the highest ideals of the United States. Rather, it will mark a crucial moment where the ideal of a fair and impartial judiciary resorted to brazen political expediency. It is only poetic justice that those who lent their seal of approval to Bush’s dubious political ascension should be discredited the most by his disastrously incompetent reign. Justice Stevens was on the right side of Bush vs. Gore when he wrote in dissent that the biggest loser in all this would be the American people and the rule of law. “Justice” Scalia is an oxymoron.

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The Case for Gore/Obama

Hillary Clinton has risen from the dead more times that Count Dracula. She’s sending shudders down the Democratic establishment, however, since the more primaries she wins the less popular she becomes. Indeed, with Hillary’s likeablity rating hovering around 35% -- a virtual untenable number for a candidate who hopes to win the presidency – her only shot at winning the Democratic nomination lies in tarnishing Obama. Hence the paradox, the better she does against Obama the more despised she becomes among the younger and better-educated voters that represent the future of the Democratic Party.

Hillary is drawing kudos from conservative commentators for her tenacity. Her single-minded willingness to fracture her party in order to win the nomination is reminiscent of George W. Bush’s obsessive quest to “win” in Iraq even if it means destroying the U.S. military, the dollar, and America’s strategic position. The scorched-earth self-righteous obliviousness of the two “leaders” is more than a little eerie. No wonder right-wing pundits are singing Hillary’s praises; they recognize in her a kindred spirit.

Hillary’s penchant for distorting the truth, her top-down management style, her us vs. them outlook, and her proclivity to pander to the lowest common denominator make her seem like a liberal mirror-image of that discredited “compassionate conservative,” George W. Bush. I don’t believe the United States can withstand another four to eight years with a polarizing politician who has trouble acknowledging the truth and can never admit they’re wrong.

Hillary, however, has exposed significant weaknesses in Obama’s candidacy. The first African American candidate with a chance at winning the presidency has trouble connecting with the so-called Reagan Democrats. I’d like to think this has more to do with the fact that many of the blue-collar workers that have trouble with Obama are anti-intellectual rather than racially bigoted. To be fair, Hillary also has to contend with stereotypes and misogynistic attitudes that unfairly hamper her ability to be judged on the basis of her message, record, and character.

Hillary probably cannot catch Obama in terms of the pledged delegates or the popular vote count. But her efforts to pin the “elitist” label on her rival could well cost Democrats the election in November. It would be a catastrophe for the Democratic Party the country, and progressive values if the Clinton’s perpetual selfishness helps hand the White House to George Bush designated successor, John McCain. The best way to avoid political suicide -- particularly if Obama cannot convincingly close the deal in the remaining contests – would be for Democrats to turn to Al Gore to head the ticket with Obama as his running mate.

For those of us who support Obama – and see in him the potential to be a great president and a champion for progressive values – a decision on his part to accept the vice-presidential nomination would be disappointment, unless that figure was Al Gore. But a decision of that kind on his part would be in keeping with the kind of character Obama has displayed; he would be putting the needs of his country and his party above his own. More importantly, a Gore/Obama ticket would almost certainly present the most formidable team the Democrat’s could field in 2008. Indeed, a Gore/Obama victory would put the final nail in the coffin of the catastrophically tragic Bush era.

Presidential campaigns need to articulate grand narratives. Hillary has failed to do this. Indeed, it seems woefully clear that she lacks the capacity to be a figure that educates the public. Gore and Obama, however, are both leaders with the kind of vision and judgement to chart a new course for the United States after the debacle of Bush’s failed presidency. They were the only two major figures in the Democratic Party, incidentally, to speak out forcefully against the Iraq War, the torture and abuse sanctioned by the Bush administration, and Bush’s other abuses of power. Hillary loses my respect when she refers to Obama’s prescience on the war as “just a speech.” Speaking out against the war was an act of political courage, a quality that is difficult to associate with the competent but dismayingly prosaic and politically expedient Clintons.

Electing Gore and Obama would signal to the world that America has atoned for the morally hideous aberration of Bush/Cheney. Neither the seventy-one year old McCain or the baggage-saddled Clinton has quite what it takes to turn the page the way Gore and Obama would.

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Sean Hannity’s America: The Politics of Hate

Sean Hannity has taken journalism to a level even Joseph Goebbels would have to admire. In Hannity’s hands, insinuation and guilt by association are art forms. Indeed, his ability to make the worse argument appear better is virtually unmatched by any rhetorician I know of. He may be the finest sophist America has. But let’s give credit where credit is due. After all, Hannity’s success depends critically on the virtually unlimited obtuseness of his audience. It takes a rare and exceptional mind to fall for the same fallacies over and over again, but Hannity’s viewers are unvaryingly consistent in their credulity.

How does Hannity manage to pull the wool over the eyes of his audience while viewers flock away from liberal commentators? I believe this has something to do with the fact that the politics of fear and resentment has proven a winning strategy for the right wing in the past. Put simply, for a lot of voters it’s easier to imagine things that make them angry than to envision ways of solving the challenges that make them fearful and angry in the first place. Hannity’s genius, and that of his compatriots, is to deftly turn public figures like Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama into emblems that stir the anxiety and ire of a significant portion of the electorate.

Hannity and his ilk do this by twisting the words, exploiting gaffes, and manipulating images in ways that make candidates they oppose seem foreign, condescending, and disloyal to America. For instance, prior to the 2000 election Al Gore said he took the initiative in creating the Internet (which was true). But this was twisted to make it seem like Gore was claiming credit for inventing the Internet, which was supposed to feed into the notion that the VP was a serial exaggerator. Conservative commentators had a field day with John Kerry’s windsurfing, which they used to pigeonhole him as a flip-flopping elitist.

The tactics Hannity and company are using to disparage Barack Obama are no less inane, but they are arguably more subtle and potentially more pernicious. It is essential to expose the sophistic ploys they use to manipulate public opinion so that the 2008 election is decided on basis of ideas and character, not character assassination.

Hannity and like-minded conservative commentators are determined to paint Obama as not one of us. They have to eschew overt forms of bigotry, of course, so rather than attack Obama directly they resort to guilt by association. For example, there are determined to link Obama to William Ayers. Ayres was once a member of an extremist group that protested the Vietnam War forty years ago by building and setting off bombs. Ayres is now an English professor who happens to live in the same neighborhood as Obama. The two also sat on the board of an anti-poverty foundation. Barack Obama was eight years old when Ayers was engaging in his subversive activities and has condemned the acts in question as “detestable.”

If standards of logic and reason were applied there few if any inferences one could deduce from Obama’s tenuous association with Ayres. However, Hannity and his crowd are experts at twisting facts in order to generate and pin a negative emotional connotation on Obama. Here’s how they do it. First, they deliberately exaggerate Ayers’ moral culpability. They do this by stating that Ayers was part of a terrorist group that set off bombs that killed people, but they fail to mention two important facts: 1) Ayers did set off bombs, but no one was killed. 2) Three members of Ayers’ group were killed when a bomb they were making exploded accidentally, but these are the only deaths caused by the group. In other words, attempts to paint Ayers as public enemy number one are overblown.

Ayers, however, had the misfortune of publishing a book on the same day as 9/11. In it he says, “I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough.” Ayers claims that “I feel we didn’t do enough” refers to the efforts to end the war and that he did not mean that he wished he had set of more bombs. In fact, he has acknowledged feeling embarrassed by the arrogance, rigidity, and narcissism he and his compatriots exhibited at the time. Ayers, however, as clearly provided Hannity with the opening he needs to portray him as a terrorist in the same moral category as bin Laden, which he does by depicting Ayers as some one who unrepentantly hates America. After all, as Hannity boils over with righteous indignation, Ayers had audacity to make his “I feel we didn’t do enough” comment on 9/11.

Hannity next step is to keep referring to Ayers as a terrorist while mention the coincidental 9/11 connection over and over again. The idea is to plant in the minds of viewers that Ayers is a guy who attacked America and said these dreadful things on 9/11. Never mind that Hannity has interpreted Ayers’ views out of context -- and in the worst possible way -- while deliberately conflating Ayers and 9/11 in a disingenuous way. The final step of course, is to make the leap that because Obama sat on the same board and knew Ayers that this is the kind of person he surrounds himself.

Hannity also takes a relatively innocuous event, such as Obama’s participation in the Million Man march, and links him to radical black leader Louis Farrakhan. Snippets of Farrakhan are played repeatedly as Hannity makes insinuations about Obama’s associations: There’s a pattern here . . . he’s not who we think he is . . . he’s hiding something . . . etc.

The flap over Obama’s pastor, Reverend Wright, is a variation on this theme. Obama has repudiated the comments his pastor made. But by playing them in an endless loop, and piling one dubious insinuation upon another, Hannity makes several flimsy arguments seem more persuasive than they really are. He does through repetition and the juxtaposition of incendiary images (Rev Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and William Ayers) when discussing Obama. All of this is designed to create and imprint negative emotional feelings towards the likely Democratic nominee. Hannity’s method here is only slightly subtler than the conditioning Pavlov used to train dogs to salivate at the sound of a dinner bell.

Guilt by association, conflation, and other rhetorical slights of hand techniques are the same methods the Bush administration deployed to fallaciously link Saddam to 9/11 in the public mind. Can a well-oiled but increasingly decrepit right-wing propaganda machine hoodwink the American people once again? There’s an old saying, “Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.” The American people cannot afford to be fooled again.

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Elitism Test.

Everyone knows for a fact that elitists are out to ruin the good old US of A. Elitists are tree-hugging, French-loving, latte-sipping snobs who look down their liberal noses on Chuck Norris movies, the Grand Old Opry, and cultural events like NASCAR. Yes sir, if American-hating elitists ever had their way the U.N flag would replace Old Glory, George W. Bush would be indicted as a war criminal at the World Court, and Barack Hussein Obama would carry out his secret plan to get "Sean Hannity’s America" off the air. Thankfully, there’s a sure-fire test to identify elitists so that they can be exposed before they can cause too much trouble: Answer the following questions to see if you or someone you know is a closet elitist:

1) Can you down at least 12 shots or twelve beers in less than an hour and still bowl better than Barack Obama?

2) Would your wife or girlfriend prefer to stay at home and iron your shirts while the two of you watch reruns of "The Dukes of Hazzard" than have you take her across state lines to the nearest drive-in to see a George Clooney picture?

3) Do you resent the fact that Muslim fanatics housed at Guantanamo appear to have more amenities than the trailer park where you and your in-laws reside?

4) Do you identify with the mountain men in the film "Deliverance"?

5) Would you like the Bush administration to extend waterboarding to include smart-alecky liberal bloggers, political satirists, and other deviants

If you answered "yes" to all five questions: Congratulations, you are not part of the axis-of-elites. However, if you answered "no" to one or more question, then your I.Q. may be in danger of deviating from the mean. Please watch Fox News and then take the test again until you get it right!

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The Media and the Decline of Democracy

Plato equated democracy with mob rule. Watching the media debase the level of political discourse by constantly shifting debate and discussion to the lowest possible level it is not hard to feel the United States has entered a state of terminal senescence. The country is facing some of the steepest challenges in its history – the ongoing threat of terrorism, the disastrous war in Iraq, a housing/credit meltdown that threatens the foundations of the financial system, and an energy/climate crisis that will almost certainly destabilize the planet – but commentators are harping on flag pins, comments made by Obama’s pastor, and Hillary’s gaffe about evading sniper fire. Rome is burning, but the clowns that run the media circus can still divert the masses.

The price of oil just hit a new time high ($115 dollars a barrel). Food costs are soaring. And the record trade deficit means America is maxed out; since 2000 we’ve been borrowing against the future simply to sustain a standard of living the country can no longer afford. The plummeting dollar is a symptom the U.S. is basically insolvent, but Tweedledee (George Stephanopolis) and Tweedledumb (Charles Gibson) still think it’s appropriate to ask candidates Clinton and Obama to make a pledge not to raise taxes on working Americans.

How inane can you get! The Bush administration’s laissez-faire economic policies have led to the largest transfers of wealth in world history as U.S. consumers are now in hock to some of the most unsavory and anti-democratic regimes on the planet (China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Russia), but the media mavens are trying to extract promises from politicians not to raise taxes on the middle class. What about the dwindling value of the dollar, interest to service America’s debt, and soaring energy/food prices are a stealth tax that Americans will be forced to pay because of the Bush administration’s imprudent policies? Americans are poorer for eight years of Bush’s borrow and spend economics, but they haven’t seen anything yet. The bill for the debacle in Iraq, which by some estimates will cost every American family $50,000, is only beginning to come due.

The credit crisis is just the tip of an iceberg that has capsized the American economy. Housing prices may decline a further 30 percent before things bottom out. This process may take several years, which means the days of homeowners using their homes as ATMs is over for the foreseeable future.

Against this dire economic backdrop John McCain has called for giving Americans a “tax holiday” on gasoline during the summer months. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton promises to investigate oil company profiteering. Neither proposal addresses the inconvenient truth that surging world demand for oil, coupled with the declining dollar, and the increased nationalization of petroleum companies across the globe, have created the perfect storm whereby Americans will have to pay a greater share of their wealth to foreign oil producers. American oil companies have been steadily losing their market share -- a trend the Bush administration hoped to reverse with the invasion of Iraq – and recycled petro-profits are now filling the coffers of Sovereign Wealth Funds in Venezuela, Russia, and the Middle East. Ignominiously, failing and ailing financial firms, such as Citigroup, are now begging these SWF to rescue them.

President Bush’s mishandling of the economy may rival even his mismanagement of the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina. It is now clear that the kind of deregulation and laissez-faire economics extolled by conservatives has brought the financial system to the brink of catastrophe. Free markets work, but only when there is some minimal government oversight. When the financial system is tasked with policing itself you inevitably get insider deals, mountains of bad debt that the taxpayers are expected to assume, and carnivorous CEOs carving up companies and feeding on the spoils, but leaving shareholders and laid off employees nothing but the remains. The CEOs at Bears Stearns and Countrywide did not create value so much as reallocate value, to themselves.

The next American president is going to have to institute measures that will restore credibility and integrity to the financial system, establish a new social compact with the American people (especially a minimum healthcare package), and reinvigorate America’s manufacturing capacity. Put simply, over the last several decades finance became the country’s growth industry as wizards on Wall Street found new ways to package debt, displace risk, and skim money from Main Street. Unfortunately, their financial alchemy did not create new wealth, so much as create the illusion of spectacular riches that would later vanish into thin air once they collected their conjuring fees.

The United States is roughly in the same position as the Spanish Empire under Phillip II. Attempts to plunder gold from the New World could no more keep Spain’s debt ridden empire afloat than the Bush administration’s efforts to establish U.S. hegemony over Iraq’s black gold. As the decline of the Spanish Empire shows, a country known primarily for manufacturing debt cannot thrive economically.

The presidential candidates need to articulate their economic philosophies and explain how they plan to revive America’s economic competitiveness. Unfortunately, the mainstream media would rather focus on trivial matters, such as Hillary’s sniper gaffe or comments made by Obama associates. This is not to say that such questions should not be asked at all, but rather that the media risks turning a presidential contest into a mud wrestling festival if it focuses on trite distractions instead of substantive issues. Needless to say, an army of right-wing pundits is mobilizing to ensure that a flap over flag pins, guilt by association, and other time-tested techniques designed to portray Obama as un-American, will trump the War in Iraq, the Bush recession, and eight years of an inept Republican administration.

The country is going to be in even bigger trouble if the right’s sophistry is able to deflect attention from the moral, economic, military, and strategic carnage conservative rule has wrought. It is positively chilling the way media bloviaters like Sean Hannity are able to manipulate and twist events, situations, and statements in ways that exploit the ignorance and a prejudices of an audience looking for objects upon which they can fixate their anger. Obama’s much maligned comments about small-town voters being “bitter” are right in this regard: if conservative commentators can succeed in making the 2008 election about god and guns they’ll almost certainly prevent the kind of debate the country needs to have to solve its problems.

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The Bush Administration Announces Capture of Bin Laden

(AP) – April 1st 2008

In a stunning development, the White House announced today the capture of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. The apprehension of the world’s most wanted terrorist marks an extraordinary reversal for the Bush administration, which has drawn considerable flack over its handling of the war on terror, the economy, and the conflict in Iraq. Supporters of President Bush are hailing the capture as a “masterstroke.” And new details are emerging that are sure to change the perception Americans have of their president, who has endured historically low approval ratings while being maligned by critics as an “incompetent bungler.”

Bush’s image is certain to change as White House officials are confirming that the President personally commanded the Special Forces team that tracked bin Laden to his mountain lair, and then executed the daring daylight raid that captured the notorious evil doer. Indeed, in perhaps the most extraordinary twist of this amazing turn of events, it has been established that the “President Bush” who has governed in Washington since September 29th, 2001 – the president Americans have come to loath, despise, and revile – is actually a double. In fact, while Bush’s stand-in was donning a flight suit, bungling Katrina, and mishandling Iraq the real President Bush has been doggedly leading a crack team of Green Berets as they tracked the most notorious terrorist through some of the challenging and treacherous mountain biking terrain in the world.

Harry Smitten Jr., the versatile character actor who impersonated a seemingly hapless President Bush – “the role of a lifetime,” as he described it – bore such a close physical resemblance to the actual President Bush that not even the First Lady noticed the difference. Indeed, the ruse was so top-secret the president’s father, George H.W. Bush, wasn’t privy to the deception either. “He seemed a little clueless when it came to fly-fishing, golf, and horseshoes,” the elder Bush confessed. “Heck, I can’t tell you how many times he poked me in the eye with his fishing pole, shanked a drive, or drove into a ditch with the golf cart. “But I chalked it up to the immense pressures of being Commander-in-Chief. Gosh dang if this whole thing doesn’t put a lump in a dad’s throat. God bless my boy. And God bless America, now that we don’t have to worry about Obama anymore”

Grainy video of bin Laden’s capture quickly made it on to Youtube, providing incontrovertible proof of Bush’s success in bringing America’s most wanted fugitive to justice. The clip, which has already attracted nearly as many viewers as Brittany Spears’ latest breakdown, shows the real President Bush in combat fatigues single-handedly wrestling bin Laden to the ground in a dank cave. A spokesperson for al-Qaeda confirmed the authenticity of the video, but accused Bush of using an “illegal chokehold.” An administration official disagreed, insisting that the chokehold was legal in both the WWF and the UFC. The official later released a secret Justice Department memo, signed by former Attorney General Gonzales, which officially scrapped the Marquis of Queensbury rules that govern hand-to-hand combat involving a head of state and enemy combatants. Gonzales dismissed the Marquis of Queensbury rules as “quaint” in signing off in favor of the no-holds barred “rules” associated with ex-cons using mixed martial arts in cage fighting as seen on Pay Per View.

The dramatic circumstances surroundings bin Laden’s capture is certain to alter the political landscape. Already, Hillary is ducking for cover and Obama is taking legal steps to have his name changed to Michael Jackson. Not surprisingly, Bush’s approval ratings have soared and the Dow Jones greeted the news by rising 1,200 points minutes after Martha Stewart rang the opening bell on Wall Street. “This is the end of the Bush Recession,” quipped one market analyst, who predicted that paper gains in the stock market would soon wipe out losses in the housing market. Likewise, military experts now foresee a quick resolution to the situation Iraq as Al Sadr, the Sunni insurgents, the Shiite militias, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recognize that they are no longer up against the most incompetent military commander since George Armstrong Custer.

Presidential scholars, too, are marveling at the stunning turnaround in Bush’s reputation. As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin put it, “Here’s a guy who looked for all the world like the biggest loser in American presidential history, but then suddenly the country realizes we’ve witnessed one of the most audacious cover-ups and successful character reversals that ever played out on the world stage. George W. Bush is certain to go down in history as one of the boldest, most creative, and beloved presidents in American history.” And what does Harry Smitten Jr., the actor who played his part to perfection as a bumbling boob of a president have to say about his role in all of this? Mr. Smitten didn’t have any immediate comment, except to wish everyone a happy April Fool’s Day

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Barack Obama vs. The Axis of Idiots

Barack Obama is almost certainly the most substantive, intellectually impressive, and emotionally integrated figure on the American political scene today. His speech on race in America was far more than the typical self-serving political exercise most of us are accustomed to. Rather, it was a revelation into the character of a man who has a profound capacity to understand himself, his country, and the world in all its moral complexity. How refreshing to find someone so edifying and illuminating running for the White House following eight years of the obtuse self-certainty and inflexible mindlessness of George W. Bush.

What made Barack’s speech so impressive was his capacity to empathetically relate to the concerns whites and blacks, conservatives and liberals, and the rich and poor have. His aim was clearly to encourage greater dialogue, empathy, and to edify. His approach stands in stark contrast to a legion of self-serving politicians and pundits who have built their careers upon feeding the fear and anger of their audiences. Indeed, there is a herd of sophistic talk show hosts and cable celebrities -- Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Rich Lowry come to mind – who stuff their audiences with intellectual garbage the way visitors at a zoo might throw morsels of junk food at a gaggle of geese.

Barack Obama is equally perceptive on the subject of Iraq. Obama’s pragmatism, the cogency of his arguments, and his exceptional capacity to raise the level of discourse must terrify the purveyors of prejudice and irrationality. Put simply, a spokesperson for a progressive outlook as articulate as Obama has the potential to transform the political landscape in a way no American leader since F.D.R has. Thus, the right-wing hate machine is being set loose once again to do the only thing its good at: character assassination.

The Bush era conservatives have demonstrated they cannot govern, but their propaganda apparatus would make even Joseph Goebbels spin in his grave with envy. Six years into a disastrous war, and with the country facing possibly the worst financial crisis since The Great Depression, the professional slime-mongers on the right are bent on hanging comments by Obama’s pastor around the candidate’s neck. Obama has denounced the comments, but for shameless sophists guilt by association is a sure-fire way to clip the Democratic front-runner’s wings.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof correctly characterized called Obama’s speech thus: “It was not a sound bite, but a symphony.” Filtered, interpreted, and distorted by right-wing rage mongers, however, Obama’s speech is being dissected into snippets that present a completely misleading picture of Obama and his message. The agents of anger, ignorance, and arrogance have succeeded before in Swift-Boating Renaissance men like Al Gore and John Kerry. As a result, the country is stuck with a pre-Enlightenment President who has succeeded only in taking America back to the Dark Ages.

Obama faces a steep challenge. George W. Bush has demonstrated that even a bad argument aimed at the lowest common denominator has a good chance of succeeding if it is repeated often enough. The instruments that make up the right-wing echo chamber understand this. The weapons they wield are not truth or reason, but repetition and cliches. Obama’s candidacy really is different; it’s based on the premise that a leader can persuade the electorate by engaging them on a higher intellectual and emotional plane. That’s the audacity of hope we so desperately need.

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The Grand Delusion

Great powers should never entangle themselves in tribal conflicts. That lessons has been lost on the Bush administration, which has managed to tie down U.S. troops in the middle of a civil war in the heart of the Middle East. The U.S. faces a diabolic choice: 1) Leave Iraq and watch the country explode or 2) stay and allow a disastrous war to sap America’s financial and military strength. The Iraq war has revealed Bush’s moral clarity to be nothing but a mushy mirage.

The conventional wisdom among conservative commentators is that the surge is working. Critics of the war, they contend, are in a state of denial about the reductions in violence and the political progress being made. Even worse, conservative commentators insist, opponents of the war calling for a withdrawal would consign the U.S. to a humiliating defeat just when victory is within reach. Once again, so the argument goes, liberals are so blinded by their hatred of President Bush that they would hand al-Qaeda a decisive military and propaganda victory.

All of this reflects a complete misunderstanding of what is happening in Iraq. Put simply, only a small fraction of the violence in Iraq is instigated by al-Qaeda affiliated groups; the vast majority involves criminal gangs, sectarian militias, and the like fighting it out for political supremacy. The U.S. military is the only force capable of preventing Iraq from descending into a full-scale civil war that the ill-advised invasion and botched occupation precipitated in the first place.

Rampant corruption is a virtually ineradicable impediment to reconstruction and political reconciliation. Criminal enterprises and politicians are siphoning off the country’s oil revenue to line their pockets and build their power bases, which insures that there are insufficient resources to rebuild a unified and pluralistic Iraq. Violence is down for several reasons that have little to do with the surge. First, much of the ethnic cleansing has already taken place as the country has been divided up into ethnic enclaves. Second, Sunni insurgents, recognizing they were on the losing end of a civil war, have made a short-term tactical alliance with the U.S. military in the hopes of bolstering their financial and military position for the day the expect to take on the Shiite led government.

Subsidizing Sunni security forces has bought a temporary lull in violence, but it carries with it long-term costs, both to the U.S taxpayer and in so far as it amounts to arming a force opposed to the government we are counting on to keep Iraq from disintegrating. It is ironic in the extreme, of course, to see the Bush administration handing out cash to Sunni security forces patrolling neighborhoods in Iraq while at the same time millions of our fellow citizens are facing foreclosures here at home. When Americans begin to realize that we are paying former Sunni insurgents not to fight us I expect the architect of this debacle, George W. Bush, will be about as popular as Heather Mills would be at a Beatles convention.

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Interview with Bill Clinton: Is Hillary a Monster?

Bill Clinton has campaigned tirelessly on behalf of his wife, Hillary. Deconstructing Demagogues sat down with the former president to get his take on the 08 race, but before doing so we slipped a little truth serum into big guy’s Diet Pepsi. After all, Bill has a habit of stretching, bending, and twisting, the truth with as much flexible gusto as a gymnast on steroids. What follows is transcript of William Jefferson Clinton at his unfiltered, unvarnished, and unguarded best.

Deconstructing Demagogues: Thank you very much, Mr. President, for taking the time to sit down with us.

Bill Clinton: Hey, good to be here with you, and thanks so much for donating $11. 19 cents to my library, every little bit helps. Say, do you have anymore of those glazed donuts with the strawberry jelly inside?

Deconstructing Demagogues: I’m afraid you ate the last dozen, Mr. President, but you are welcome to polish off the rest of my frozen slurrpy.

Bill Clinton: Thanks, man. Campaigning always seems to whet my appetite.

Deconstructing Demagogues: Speaking of campaigns. An Obama advisor, Samantha Power, recently described Hillary as a “monster,” what is your response?

Bill Clinton: Well, she’s right, but only when Hillary gets mad, which thankfully is just once or twice a week these days. You know, everyone has his or her dark side. And with Hillary you just got to accept that every once and a while she’ll get so incensed and wrathful that you expect to see her eyes pop out her head.

Deconstructing Demagogues: What’s that like?

Bill Clinton: Well, it’s a little bit like watching the character played by Linda Blair in film The Exorcist, but Hillary does it all without special effects, scary make-up, or even acting skills.

Deconstructing Demagogues: Wow! But what do you think of Samantha Power? Was it right for her to resign based on the fact that what she said was true?

Bill Clinton: Samantha Power. She’s that cute redhead isn’t she? She could brief me anytime, if you know what I mean.

Deconstructing Demagogues: There’s been a lot of speculation about a so-called “Dream Team.” If Hillary wins the nomination do you think she’ll pick Obama as her vice-president?

Bill Clinton: I’m afraid I’m going to be the vice-president, but I’m not supposed to say anything publicly.

Deconstructing Demagogues: some would say you already were the Vice-President, but that raises another interesting question: what are we going to call you if Hillary is elected? Should we call you the First Laddie?

Bill Clinton: I’m kind of partial to the First Cad, but that’s off the record. If Hillary hears me say anything like that I’d be better off spending the next eight years at Guantanamo as an Enemy Combatant!


Deconstructing Demagogues: Let’s talk about the campaign. A lot of observers say that Hillary’s ad showing her answering the phone at 3am convinced voters in Texas and Ohio that she’s more qualified to handle a crisis. But a lot of Obama supporters believe the ad was fear mongering. What did you think about the ad?

Bill Clinton: To tell the truth, I thought the 3am ad was pretty hopeful. When I was president that’s was about the time that I got calls from that woman, Ms. Lewinsky, and I was always hoping I’d reach the phone before Hillary. So in that sense, I think that ad was pretty positive.

Deconstructing Demagogues: I see. One final question. Like all former presidents you’ve been reluctant to criticize the current occupant of the oval office. Many observers feel President Bush will go down in history as easily the worst chief executive in our country’s history. What do you think about his performance as Commander-in-Chief?

Bill Clinton: I think he’s doing a heck of job.

Deconstructing Demagogues: I have the feeling the truth serum I slipped you before the interview is starting to wear off. But I want to thank you for taking the time with us Mr. President.

Bill Clinton: Truth serum. What is this . . . some vast left wing conspiracy. Shame on you Deconstructing Demagogues. You are worse than Ken Starr!

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Hillary and the Politics of Fear

Hillary Clinton is meaner and colder than Vladimir Putin’s mother-in-law as she spends her winter ice fishing in a Siberian igloo. It may just be me, but Hillary comes across like an ice-princess that could make Lady Macbeth seem warm in comparison. Her latest gambit is to remind voters of the one American public figure who is less popular than she is, namely the priggish prude Kenneth Starr. It’s a nauseating attempt to garner sympathy, distract voters, and slime Obama all at the same time.

It pure chutzpa for Hillary to compare Obama to the GOP’s Inspector Javert just because the Obama campaign focused attention on the fact that Clinton’s have yet to release their tax returns or key documents from their White House years. I guess Obama must be part of a vast left-wing conspiracy, which includes the media, caucus participants, African Americans, and educated voters under fifty that has the audacity to stand in the way of Hillary’s coronation.

The perverse irony, of course, is the fact that a vast right-wing conspiracy – an axis-of-intolerance opposed to John McCain that includes Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter – has endorsed Hillary’s candidacy for their own disingenuous motives. It is understandable, however, that conservatives would gravitate to the former First Lady as she emulates the fear and smear and scorched earth tactics of Rove and Bush.

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Hillary Hasn't a Ghost of a Chance of Being Elected President

Bill and Hillary remind me of the fleshing eating zombies you might see from a drive-in horror flick; just when you think they are politically dead and buried they return to haunt you. Hillary has always been the Republican’s worst nightmare, but now she is becoming the Democratic Party’s worst nightmare. That’s because she cannot possibly win the Democratic nomination without destroying the Party and dooming its chances in the November election against John McCain. After all, there’s no realistic way she can catch Obama in the pledged delegate count, so her only way to win is to use the so-called super delegates to overturn the will of the majority of Democratic voters. If she does that she’s sure to alienate the constituencies that support Obama (the young, African Americans, and anti-war voters).

Republicans represent close to 40% of the electorate. When you add potentially disenchanted Obama supporters to the four out of ten voters that detest Hillary no matter what she does, then you realize Hillary has little upside and little margin for error. At best, Hilary could hope to win a squeaker against McCain, but in all likelihood independents, late deciders, and disaffected Democrats would probably break for the authentic-seeming senator from Arizona.

As a candidate Hillary has displayed some rather disconcerting qualities; she tends to do well when she goes negative or gets in a whining and self-pitying mode. Her last minute attacks before the Texas and Ohio primaries consisted largely of scurrilous charges. Guilt by association, innuendo regarding Obama’s faith, hearsay regarding Obama’s stance on NAFTA amounted to mudslinging. Put, simply, the Clinton campaign showed no regard for the truth; their only concern was to sully Obama’s image in the minds of the least educated late-deciders (who broke for Clinton almost 2 to 1).

All may be fair in love, war, and politics, but I’m a progressive that’s pretty much disgusted with Hillary. I see her as a triangulating politician, one who displayed abysmal judgement on the Iraq War, but who now uses slogans (“If I knew then what I know now”) to cloak the fact that she did not exercise or display due diligence and wisdom when it came to the most important decision of her political career. Put simply, Al Gore and Barack Obama are the only major figures in the Democratic Party with the courage and sagacity to oppose the Iraq War from the beginning. Both men did not simply give speeches, they spelled out their reasons for opposing the war in detail. And their judgement has proven prescient.

Barack Obama is not merely an inspirational leader. Listening to his stump speech recently I came away with the distinct impression that he is the most substantive politician the country has seen in a long time. This is a leader with a deep understanding of how the challenges America faces are interconnected, how the threat of terrorism, our energy habits, the loss of manufacturing jobs, and global warming are all tied together. Further, he has a vision of how the United States can restore its standing in the world. America is at it best and most persuasive, Obama understands, when we lead by example rather than through force.

Obama is a great communicator because he is a great listener. This is a quality the world is hoping America rediscovers. The Europeans and our other allies are looking to America to lead on a range of issues, such as nuclear non-proliferation, but they are looking for an America that listens to their views and concerns. To lead one must persuade, not just dictate, a lesson completely lost on the Bush administration. Obama is incredibly persuasive because he connects the dots and explains how if we all work together we can accomplish particular goals. His is a bottom-up approach, whereas Hillary (and George Bush) employs a top-down style. With a bottom-up approach, however, more people are invested in your success, which makes for a durable foundation for building social change and achieving national aims.

The Bush administration’s essential irrationality – it’s congenital inability to proffer cogent arguments (its reliance on cliches, false-choices, and ad hoc rationalizations) undermined the aims it pursued. Put simply, the sophistry employed during Bush vs. Gore, the demagoguery deployed in the lead up to the Iraq War, and the rationalizations used to justify torture, illegal wiretapping, and other Constitutional abuses have so eroded the Bush administration’s credibility that it has little public support left.

If Hillary Clinton takes a scorched-earth approach to the Democratic nomination – insisting the super-delegates anoint her even if she is behind in pledged delegates, states won, and the popular vote – she will in fact be emulating the modus operandi of George W. Bush. I can’t help but feel that Hillary’s dipping into the Rove playbook -- playing the fear card -- is a bad omen. At this point I don’t believe Hillary can win the top spot without getting ugly, and if she goes that route she’ll very likely doom the Democrats in November.

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