I'm sure my fellow political junkies out there know. They were said during another race for the White House, the one in 1996, and the speaker was Bob Dole. And Dole would use the phrase "Where is the outrage" over and over again during the campaign. It was his heart-felt expression of his total exasperation and frustration with what he perceived to be the voters self-imposed blindness to the misgressions and abuses of the first Clinton administration. But how appropriate both the words and the feelings they express are today.
Like so many other of my fellow Americans, I am at a loss to explain the apparent lack of outrage we should have regarding the high crimes and misdemeanors committed by the current President of the United States. In the past few weeks alone, we have seen two new books published,The Dark Side by Jane Mayer and The Way of the World... by Ron Suskind, both of which outline in great detail how Bush & Co. manipulated, edited, conflated, emended, and out-right forged the intelligence used to start the first war of American aggression. They are just the latest in a line of books and articles that have been written and published since the start of the Iraq War and Bush's War on Terror.
Yet for all intents and purposes, none of them has managed to evince any significant level of moral outrage and calls for accountability by the American people. Yes, the polls show that George W. Bush has the lowest approval rating of any president ever. Yes, the majority of Americans disprove of our entry into the Iraq War. Yes, the polls show that the majority disapprove of almost every aspect of Bush's administration. But, where is the outrage?
The mainstream media and the political pundits, and the TV talking heads will occasionally harrumph, and tut-tut, and tsk-tsk but almost none of them is willing to state the truth about the worst president in the history of our nation. Not one of them is willing to come right out and say George W. Bush & Co. are liars, every man jack of them, as our English cousins say. But the full thrust of our opprobrium must be reserved for all of our senators and members of Congress who have allowed this all to happen. Many of them cowed by the administration's threat to brand them as un-patriotic and traitors became complicit in the actions that ensued. And in 2006, we bought into their promise to bring the war to an end and to stop the lawlessness of the Bush administration if we only gave them the majority. Suckered again.
I do have one theory of why both the media, politicians, and the American public in general are so averse to saying or even thinking what they now know to be the truth. For us to admit that we collectively allowed these awful things to happen automatically implies shared culpability. And it would force us to accept responsibility for the all the unnecessary deaths and injuries suffered by so many young American military and the innocent Iraqis. It is too terrible to contemplate or to bear.
Where is the outrage? Buried deep down inside of us, impossible to express. I think a collective sense of guilt has gripped Americans. Which may be one factor in how McCain despite our hatred for all things Republican continues to maintain his standing in the polls
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