NY Times: Clear and Present Dangers
Sun Mar 19, 2006 at 02:05:05 AM PDT
Allen Brinkley reviews a book, in this
article that tells the story of the beginnings of those we lovingly call neocons, trolls, wingnuts etc. Kevin Phillips, a former Nixon staffer and writer, helped create the framework for the GOP we see and shake our heads at today. The book is:
AMERICAN THEOCRACY
The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century.
Phillips, it seems, has been shown the light and apparently deconstructs the GOP agenda for all to see. Be afraid. We might have suspected how far the far right wanted to go, but this book just might prove our suspicions were well founded.
the neat stuff lies below
the movement of people and resources from the old Northern industrial states into the South and the West (an area he enduringly labeled the "Sun Belt") would produce a new and more conservative Republican majority that would dominate American politics for decades. Phillips viewed the changes he predicted with optimism. A stronger Republican Party, he believed, would restore stability and order to a society experiencing disorienting and at times violent change.
Luckily, some Republicans are cursed with a conscience.
he long ago abandoned his enthusiasm for the Republican coalition he helped to build......No longer does he see Republican government as a source of stability and order. Instead, he presents a nightmarish vision of ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed and dangerous shortsightedness.
Nightmarish vision? Extremism? Fiscal Irresponsibility? Not greed...RAMPANT greed? Shortsightedness. Hmmm. Who among us has had similar misgivings? Maybe Mr. Phillips is a closet dKos afficianado.
Instead, he identifies three broad and related trends -- none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration's policies -- that together threaten the future of the United States and the world. One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of debt -- current and prospective -- that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating.
No shit huh? Maybe Kevin should be enlisted to inform OUR leadership as to what the fuck is going on in this country. They have obviously decided that we (the grunts who combat the lies, find the truth, document the scandals, tally the Congressional votes, monitor the polls) don't mean a fuck to them. Maybe a former Nixon staffer can speak dumbanese well enough to make them hear the words.
The American press in the first days of the Iraq war reported extensively on the Pentagon's failure to post American troops in front of the National Museum in Baghdad, which, as a result, was looted of many of its great archaeological treasures. Less widely reported, but to Phillips far more meaningful, was the immediate posting of troops around the Iraqi Oil Ministry, which held the maps and charts that were the key to effective oil production.
How come when we say it the press ignores us? But when a politico of any measure raises his or her voice the press comes a runnin? It is sickening how lazy and ineffectual our "liberal" press has become. Think the boys and girls of Watergate press hounds would have turned away from illegal spying on Americans, illegal searches and seizures, faulty intelligence that led to our loss of some 2500 American soldiers? Think Tom Delay would have been laughing while getting his mugshot taken? You think every one of Abramoff's secrets wouldn't be a matter of public record by now? Bernstein and that other guy took down an administration with, in my opinion, less credible evidence than today's journalists are armed with. They had Deepthroat. We have Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson, Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham etc etc etfuckingcetera. A dedicated press would be having a field day interviewing, corroborating, writing and exposing every dirty secret these people had to tell. Today? We have Hannity instead of Cronkite. We have Tweety instead of Murrow. We have Brian Williams and not Dan Rather. (I like Brian Williams ok but I loved the Dan Rather that drove Nixon insane.)
that the pursuit of oil has for at least 30 years been one of the defining elements of American policy in the world; and that the Bush administration -- unusually dominated by oilmen -- has taken what the president deplored recently as the nation's addiction to oil to new and terrifying levels.
I'm just shocked, as I am sure all of you are too.
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sorry I had to pull my tongue out of my cheek.
On the far right is a still obscure but, Phillips says, rapidly growing group of "Christian Reconstructionists" who believe in a "Taliban-like" reversal of women's rights, who describe the separation of church and state as a "myth" and who call openly for a theocratic government shaped by Christian doctrine. A much larger group of Protestants, perhaps as many as a third of the population, claims to believe in the supposed biblical prophecies of an imminent "rapture" -- the return of Jesus to the world and the elevation of believers to heaven.
Scared yet?
Don't know about you but I am buying this book.
I'm going to end it there. I'm not prone to spending this much time on a diary, but the article fascinated me. I definitely urge you to follow the link and read the entire article.
update: buy the book here
