Why isn't Bush Hate Syndrome a Republican phenomenon?
Sat Mar 03, 2007 at 09:04:21 AM PDT
So we were sitting there with Friday night pizza and cheap wine and listening to the Dixie Chicks' award-winning CD, The Long Way Home.
If the Right Wing Nutters hadn't politicized this group during the invasion of Iraq, I probably wouldn't ever have purchased and enjoyed a Dixie Chick album, since I rarely listen to country. Probably without their intense anger and sorrow over the reaction to Natalie's 2003 remark, the Dixie Chicks wouldn't have been inspired to write these fine songs. Apparently millions of other people have had an experience similar to mine.
But what I want to know is, why aren't rightwingers/Republicans/conservatives all over America jerking in stiff-limbed little dances around their living rooms, quivering in an ecstasy of Bush Hate?
In 2000 they had it all. The Republicans owned Congress. Despite his meager personal gifts, Bush was handed the presidency by the Supreme Court. (Perhaps they relied on de-petaling a daisy or chanting Eeny, meeny, miny, moe to make their choice. Maybe the fix was in. At any rate, they decided for Dubya.)
Republicans and their ilk rejoiced at the prospect of lower taxes for the wealthy, thereby gaining richer rich folks, whose lifestyles they could admire on television. The economy would thrive so much from tax cuts and deregulation that everybody would get richer, as the incomes of the richest approached infinity with the speed of light. Certainly government would shrink under the regime of the party against Big Government. The fiscally responsible Republicans would cut government spending and cut it again. America would talk tough to the world, and back it up with bombs and guns. The Bush administration wouldn't indulge in namby-pamby diplomacy. Everybody would cower before our mighty military. The president would be noted for his straightforward, truth-telling speech.
Well, the rich did get richer. Even 9/11 could be spun as a painful wake up call, offering an opportunity to swagger into the theater of war with guns blazing. The Republicans had a War President! You could almost see the dozens of lines of dominoes, just waiting for a nudge to knock them into a pattern of endless Republican political domination. It was the perfect set-up. Instead, Bush tore into the room like a beered-up, belligerent frat boy, and scattered the dominoes in every direction. The War President proceeded to piss away all the power, good will and moral capital America had built up since Vietnam and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Why aren't the rightwingers/Republicans/conservatives simply insane with rage at Bush and Cheney?
Something shiny in Iraq distracted the War President from Afghanistan. Osama disappeared to devote himself to a life of snarking and planning terrorist attacks. At best, the decision to invade Iraq could be attributed to gross incompetence. Most people believe it was an emotional and ideological decision backed up by lies. The implementation of the decision was bungled spectacularly in every possible way. Now the armed forces, including the National Guards and reserves are being destroyed there.
Bush didn't confine himself to failure in outright war. The administration was caught engaged in illegal spying on Americans and lying about it. All pretence at honoring human rights and the Constitution was dropped when dealing with those accused of terrorism. Yet terrorist acts have become more prevalent around the globe.
Bush persistently indulged his lazy approach to government and appointed incompetent cronies to important jobs. His vacation couldn't be interrupted. Thus the Katrina debacle.
The middle-class and poor are not faring well in this economy. More Americans are poor, and more middle-class Americans are going without health insurance than ever before. Bush responded by trying to whip up a fake "emergency" involving Social Security. Even Republicans saw through the lies. Now he proposes taxes on health insurance lucky Americans currently enjoy instead of tackling the real emergency of unsustainable growth in health care bureaucracy. The national debt has soared. China owns us, credit-wise.
Bush's vacuous saber-rattling resulted in North Korea developing the plutonium bomb. Bush has responded with an attempt to reinstate an agreement with Korea that he had previously trashed as appeasement, because the Clinton administration negotiated it. In the interval, North Korea got plutonium bombs. Iran is heading down the same path as North Korea, inspired by the Bush record of illegally invading non-nuclear powers--UNLESS maybe the Bush administration attends diplomatic talks with Iran and Syria without those countries first meeting all the U.S. demands. (You can see the point of Iran and Syria. What would there be to talk about if all U.S. demands were met before the talks began?) So Bush is being forced to back down from tough talk rhetoric and negotiate, AND he has also weakened our power at the negotiating table.
The Democrats won big in November, and even if the war is stopped before 2008, will win even bigger in that year.
Now the appointees of this administration have been proven negligent in caring for the wounded soldiers they claim to support. They tried to cover up that neglect rather than fix it.
It is almost unbelievable how much of a Miserable Failure BushCo is, except from the perspective of people so rich they are independent of the laws of economics and nations.
Bush fucked up the wet dream of right wing Americans everywhere. Now the Dixie Dicks are in the faces of rightwingers/Republicans/conservatives all over America. They have come back from rejection and threats with the power to say "We told you so. We young, female country singers had more perception and judgment than the Republicans running this country."
Why aren't the rightwingers/Republicans/conservatives in the streets of Washington D.C. by the tens of thousands, screaming in inarticulate rage? Why aren't they protesting in the offices of their Republican representatives, to demand that they stop enabling the executive branch in its destruction of America?
I took this screen shot yesterday. By a happy chance it describes the continuing path of the Bush administration. The rightwingers/Republicans/conservatives still are not afflicted with Bush Hate Syndrome. They are such forgiving and understanding people.
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