Chief Muscleman of a Government of Thieves Departs Noisily
JIM KLOBUCHAR
The remaining scraps of fog and smoke that masked the character of the Bush government pretty much dissolved with the resignation of Tom DeLay.
The picture isn’t pretty. What the country was offered five years ago was a new win-win energy and generosity of spirit that would harvest the best in America. The Bush administration would sweep the horizons with the clarity of its vision and stabilize the country with its sure and practiced hands at the controls of government. It would form a partnership of business, government and the advanced thinkers of the social conservative brain tanks to create an exciting synergy that would rescue public education in America. It would reform and simplify the health care system, leave no child or jobless auto worker behind and eventually take us to Mars.
What we have discovered after five years is a government of thieves, con men, cranks and bunglers.
DeLay’s explanation for bailing out of public office while under indictment for corruption was as cheap and blowhard as his performance in Congress. He said he doesn’t want to let the unscrupulous Texas Democrats use his upcoming trial to steal his seat in Congress. So he’s inviting somebody else to defend the high and spotless honor of the Republican Party of Texas which, inspired by DeLay three years ago, wiped out five Democratic seats with the stroke of a pen.
Fascinated I watched all of this yesterday--DeLay’s performance, his role for years as the lead headhunter of Republicans’ muscle squad in the House of Representatives, the face of this monopoly government’s reputation for brisk and deadly efficiency. It reminded me of the first crime movie I saw when I was a kid.
The movie revolved around a bank robbery pulled off by well-dressed men who walked into the bank looking perfectly sociable and harmless, polite to their neighbors in the cashiers’ line and all-around good guys.
In five minutes they had emptied the bank, herded the unsuspecting customers into the vault and walked out as though they had been working this daylight robbery shtick every day for years.
In the movie the crooks walked out of the bank and into the laps of the police.
It took the Bush crowd a little longer.
But something very close to that bank raid scam has been happening to the people’s cash and credulity in this country since Katherine Harris wrapped up Florida and gave it to George Bush, and the Supreme Court installed him in the White House, leaving the voters with their teeth and chads hanging out. The climax of that old Depression Days film might have foretold the script of the reckless burlesque we’re watching today.
The Bush crowd is stumbling out of the bank and into reality and the hard light of day.
The light has not been generous to the pretensions and postures of these people. It has been revealing. It has shocked the American public with scenes of criminal negligence in the flooded neighborhoods and deaths in New Orleans, and criminal myopia in the planning and deceptions of the war in Iraq.
The polls tell us that the American public needed all these years to wade through the government’s sideshows and doublespeak. Add to these its retreat into secrecy, freezing out the public from information to which it was and is entitled; the lies before and during Iraq, breaking the privacy laws, turning the chambers of Congress into a treasure chest to feed the pockets of corporate power with taxpayers’ money; letting its corporate partners use lobbyists as Capitol Hill pimps.
This was a country founded on the principle that government should be committed to fostering the common good. It was a principle and practice that once made this country the lodestar of the free world. For the last five years millions of American were gulled and flummoxed by the Bush money magicians and the political flag wavers and fear peddlers. They adopted a war-is-peace language that turned the alphabet upside down, conscripted God to sanctify bunker-blasting bombs, bankrupted the public treasury and created a free-for-all slaughterhouse in Iraq that misused the men and women in the services.
It is a government that now has no clue about how to extricate the richest and mightiest country in the world from the chaos it has created in the Middle East.
There are some people guessing that a political change in Washington might be the answer. They worry that Democrats may not be able to convince the voters.
I have a question.
What more do they--the Democrats and the voters--need?
The remaining scraps of fog and smoke that masked the character of the Bush government pretty much dissolved with the resignation of Tom DeLay.
The picture isn’t pretty. What the country was offered five years ago was a new win-win energy and generosity of spirit that would harvest the best in America. The Bush administration would sweep the horizons with the clarity of its vision and stabilize the country with its sure and practiced hands at the controls of government. It would form a partnership of business, government and the advanced thinkers of the social conservative brain tanks to create an exciting synergy that would rescue public education in America. It would reform and simplify the health care system, leave no child or jobless auto worker behind and eventually take us to Mars.
What we have discovered after five years is a government of thieves, con men, cranks and bunglers.
DeLay’s explanation for bailing out of public office while under indictment for corruption was as cheap and blowhard as his performance in Congress. He said he doesn’t want to let the unscrupulous Texas Democrats use his upcoming trial to steal his seat in Congress. So he’s inviting somebody else to defend the high and spotless honor of the Republican Party of Texas which, inspired by DeLay three years ago, wiped out five Democratic seats with the stroke of a pen.
Fascinated I watched all of this yesterday--DeLay’s performance, his role for years as the lead headhunter of Republicans’ muscle squad in the House of Representatives, the face of this monopoly government’s reputation for brisk and deadly efficiency. It reminded me of the first crime movie I saw when I was a kid.
The movie revolved around a bank robbery pulled off by well-dressed men who walked into the bank looking perfectly sociable and harmless, polite to their neighbors in the cashiers’ line and all-around good guys.
In five minutes they had emptied the bank, herded the unsuspecting customers into the vault and walked out as though they had been working this daylight robbery shtick every day for years.
In the movie the crooks walked out of the bank and into the laps of the police.
It took the Bush crowd a little longer.
But something very close to that bank raid scam has been happening to the people’s cash and credulity in this country since Katherine Harris wrapped up Florida and gave it to George Bush, and the Supreme Court installed him in the White House, leaving the voters with their teeth and chads hanging out. The climax of that old Depression Days film might have foretold the script of the reckless burlesque we’re watching today.
The Bush crowd is stumbling out of the bank and into reality and the hard light of day.
The light has not been generous to the pretensions and postures of these people. It has been revealing. It has shocked the American public with scenes of criminal negligence in the flooded neighborhoods and deaths in New Orleans, and criminal myopia in the planning and deceptions of the war in Iraq.
The polls tell us that the American public needed all these years to wade through the government’s sideshows and doublespeak. Add to these its retreat into secrecy, freezing out the public from information to which it was and is entitled; the lies before and during Iraq, breaking the privacy laws, turning the chambers of Congress into a treasure chest to feed the pockets of corporate power with taxpayers’ money; letting its corporate partners use lobbyists as Capitol Hill pimps.
This was a country founded on the principle that government should be committed to fostering the common good. It was a principle and practice that once made this country the lodestar of the free world. For the last five years millions of American were gulled and flummoxed by the Bush money magicians and the political flag wavers and fear peddlers. They adopted a war-is-peace language that turned the alphabet upside down, conscripted God to sanctify bunker-blasting bombs, bankrupted the public treasury and created a free-for-all slaughterhouse in Iraq that misused the men and women in the services.
It is a government that now has no clue about how to extricate the richest and mightiest country in the world from the chaos it has created in the Middle East.
There are some people guessing that a political change in Washington might be the answer. They worry that Democrats may not be able to convince the voters.
I have a question.
What more do they--the Democrats and the voters--need?
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home