Friday, March 14, 2003

Is George Bush Mentally Unstable First there was the drugged press conference, with the zombie like President talking in a hesitant monotone.  Now comes a column from Paul Krugman in the New York Times, suggesting that like Capt. Queeg, in the Caine Mutiny, George Bush is quite possibly mad. In the Caine Mutiny, the crew realizes that Capt. Queeg finally has come undone when he turns his ship upside down in a vicious investigation of missing strawberries.  With George Bush, according to the Krugman article, his obsession with Iraq is leading him to destroy America's alliances, sacrifice American values, avoid facing the real threats to U.S. security, and to manage to turn virtually the entire world against us.  His madness is his blindness to the consequences of his actions. He has done this before even starting the open phase of the war.  Krugman says that an increasing number of people in government feel George Bush and his inner sanctum have lost touch with reality.  They are so used to dealing with Democrats that they forgot there are people in the world who stand behind their opinions, and don't back down.  They forgot that Europe spends twice as much on foreign aid as the U.S.  They forgot that some countries are far more dependent on trade with the EU than with the U.S. All in all, Krugman's column makes for scary reading.  Couple this with the predicament of Tony Blair, now being called the Prime Monster in the UK, and we have a truly stunning disconnect between leaders and public opinion. My basic problem is that Bush is a liar.  He lies about the budget, he lies about his rational for war, and he lies about the impact of his tax cuts, in fact his whole life is one big lie. He stands for the rule of the rich, a society in which the winners take all the resources, and tell people to basically die in the streets if they can't afford food or health care.  He justifies his lies by saying it's all in God's Hands.  Just as those who burned witches at the stake were convinced they were carrying out Gods will, Bush is convinced that killing people in Iraq is ordained by God. I am so sick of the U.S. media using euphimisims.  Soldiers are not being sent to finish a job.  They are being sent to kill, and they will kill innocent people to pay for Bush's obsession.  In my dreams, I imagine Tony Blair deposed and put on trial for war crimes.  I imagine Bush turned out in disgrace in an orgasm of national revulsion at how one mad man, supported by a coterie of handlers, could destroy so much in our country.  I dream of popular revulsion against the supine congressional politicians who found it easier to line their pockets than act as a co-equal branch of government. Either we rise up in a popular rebirth of democracy, or we will slip into the national madness and disconnection from reality that characterized twentieth century facism.  German facism started with the big lie--about the jews, about the causes of German problems, about why the war was lost, about the communists. When our country starts to live with the lies about Iraq, about terrorism, about the sources of our strength and weakness, we leave open the door to the ultimate big lie:  using nuclear bombs on the rest of the world to save ourselves.  Is this the price we will have to pay for the madness of George Bush. 12:26:43 AM   comment []

© Copyright 2003 Toby Sackton. Last update: 4/2/2003; 11:23:15 PM.