Random Acts of Observation

... and thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, have died because of his religious mania.

I always suspected this was what was really going on in his mind - after all, Bush had some pretty close ties with all sorts of millenialist evangelicals - but I simply am boggled by the fact that he came out and told world leaders that they should join in the invasion of Iraq because he was on a mission from God.[1]

Some exerpts from the article:

In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France's President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated.

...

The story has now been confirmed by Chirac himself in a new book, published in France in March, by journalist Jean Claude Maurice. Chirac is said to have been stupefied and disturbed by Bush's invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq and "wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs".

In the same year he spoke to Chirac, Bush had reportedly said to the Palestinian foreign minister that he was on "a mission from God" in launching the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and was receiving commands from the Lord.

You know, this is almost enough to make one think that prospective heads of governemnt should be required to affirm, with their hand on a copy of Darwin's Origin of Species, that they will not in any way allow public policy to be influenced by their personal religious beliefs before being allowed to take office.


[1]And yes, I am totally trying to keep myself from seeing GWB in my mind's eye wearing dark sunglasses and an ill-fitting black suit, singing the Blues while Ackroyd plays harmonica and Belushi does backflips, because that would not only be wrong, but also so disresepctful to the people who have suffered from this man's delusions of divine inspiration.

This time, I knew exactly what I wanted to draw, and why. To my American friends and neighbours, a bouquet of flowers to commemorate an historic night.

I had hoped that it would also be a wedding bouquet for those sisters and brothers whose marriages, and whose right to marry the person they love when that time comes, were on the line in California tonight, but it looks as though that is not to be - at least, not this time. Keep up the fight - the tides are turning, and this too shall be changed.

Now, it could be that I'm completely wrong about this for reason having to do with the technicalities of how financial things work, but hasn't anyone thought about how this proposed bail-out/buy-out could be turned into an incredible opportunity to not just save from disaster, but actually improve the lives of people living in the hardest hit American neighbourhoods?

My reasoning goes like this:

The government buys up all those "worthless" financial instruments containing defaulted mortgages, and this pours money into failing banks, keeping them alive and somehow maintaining "confidence" in the market - which is of course one side of the equation, whether you think it's a good thing in the long run or not.

But the other side is that those mortgages that the government now owns are attached, somewhere down the line, to actual developed real estate that is currently "worthless" because the owners can't pay the mortgages and the bottom has fallen out of the housing industry so no one else will buy the properties.

So - isn't this an amazing advantage for the government of the U.S. to provide vast amounts of low-income housing and provide space for crucial community services all across the country?

I mean, if the government buys the mortgages, it controls the real estate that was mortgaged, doesn't it? I know that if I default on my mortgage, the bank gets to take my house and sell it to recoupe their loan to me. And until that house is sold - which banks in the U.S. are having trouble doing right now which is why those mortgages are worthless - the bank, which owned the mortgage, controls what used to be my house.

So if you do the big bail-out, you've got Goddess knows how many homes across the country that the government now controls that can be placed under the administration of a low-income properties commission, which rents them out to the working poor whose lives have been destroyed by trying to pay off those sub-prime mortgages. Hell, create lease-to-own programs so that over time, people really can own their own homes.

And at the same time, rent some of those properties to community organisations that want to provide shelters for the homeless, shelters for battered women, free medical and legal clinics, after-school programs, agencies that help prepare upgrade employment skills, all sorts of community services that neighbourhoods in distress desperately need in order to get back on their feet in a time of reecession and massive job loss.

Isn't this one way to bail out Main street and Wall Street, as some people are demanding?

I'm not sure where he thinks he's going, but George W. Bush clearly has left the world that most of us live in far behind. I had thought he had a limited grasp on reality, but recent reports make it evident that I was being far too generous.

Thom Shanker and Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times reported last week that during a Monday August 14 "lunch at the Pentagon that included the president’s war cabinet and several outside experts," Bush expressed the following sentiments, which strike me as the maunderings of someone totally dissociated from what is happening in the Middle East.

President Bush made clear in a private meeting this week that he was concerned about the lack of progress in Iraq and frustrated that the new Iraqi government — and the Iraqi people — had not shown greater public support for the American mission, participants in the meeting said Tuesday.

...

More generally, the participants said, the president expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd. “I do think he was frustrated about why 10,000 Shiites would go into the streets and demonstrate against the United States,” said another person who attended. Source

So let me get this straight - Bush doesn't understand why the Iraqi people don't support an occupying army, and he doesn't understand why many people living in the Middle East would rather support Hezbollah than support the U.S.

Now I don't give Hezbollah a pass for killing civilians any more than I give the U.S. or Israel a pass to do the same - a war crime is a war crime no matter who committed it - but doesn't it strike anyone in the White Bubble that just maybe, trying to understand why some people in Iraq, and Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories might prefer Hezbollah or Hamas over America might help them figure out how to try and, in the sad cliche, win some hearts and minds? Or are they just going to keep on killing until everyone who doesn't like them is dead, and they don't have to ask themselves these kinds of questions any more?

Yes, you.


You're probably reading this.

Just in case you had any doubts, yes I am a socialist, a queer, a radical, a subversive, an activist, an environmentalist, a bleeding-heart tree-hugger, altogether the sort of person you don't want in your country.

I disapprove heartily of almost every piece of foreign policy your governemnt has ever adopted, beginning with the Monroe Doctrine (you maybe thought we hadn't noticed your attempts to annex Canada back in the good old days?) and working up to preemptive strikes and invasions.

I also think you have the worst record of civil rights abuses of any developed country, and I rather suspect you do much worse than a good many developing countries, too. (And that's saying a lot, because most developed countries, including my own, have some pretty serious problems in this regard.)

Your internal social and economic policies look pretty much like a disaster to me, but that's up to your citizens to deal with, I'll just boo and hiss from the sidelines on that one.

But don't worry, I have no intentions of risking my health, life and liberty by visiting your country, at least not while the current dictatorship is in power. Yes, I know that if all your master's plans work out properly, that's going to be a very long time.

So just go fuck yourself, OK?

Thanks, and have a nice day.

Me.

I think I start to understand how many Americans must feel watching their news media.

This week, the CBC newsmagazine program the fifth estate is airing a report on the state of the American media from a Canadain news perspective. The report is called Sticks and Stones, and is described thusly by the network: The United States is in the midst of a very un-civil war. It's a war of words that's pitting conservative against liberal, that's already divided the country into red and blue. The new gladiators are commentators like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter and their forum is the television studios of networks like Fox. It's loud, it's raucous, but does it have anything to do with the truth?

Some of the material covered was familiar to me from my faithful viewing of the only U.S. "news programming" my ex-pat American partner will allow on the T.V. in his presence, Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.

What brought it all home to me was an interview with American right-wing pundit Ann Coulter. The reporter, CBC journalist Bob McKeown (who has also worked for U.S. networks CBS and NBC), initiated a discussion about her on-air comments concerning Canada spoken on an American T.V. newsmagazine program Hannity and Colmes: they need us...they are lucky we don't roll over one night and crush them....they are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent.

Part of Coulter's response was a lecture on how Canada had been such a stalwart ally of the U.S. until now, and that our disloyalty (in declining to join the U.S. illegal invasion of Iraq, not that she described it in those words) is fair justification for anti-Canadian sentiment. To bolster her argument, she listed all of the wars Canada had supposedly "supported" the U.S. in, beginning with WWII (how could we have supported U.S. involvement when we were there several years before the U.S., supporting Britain?), Korea (we were there as part of a U.N. action, not as support for the U.S.) and Vietnam.

McKeown politely informed Coulter that Canada had not sent military forces to Vietnam. She told him that it had. He replied that no, we really had not been involved in Vietnam. She insisted that he was wrong, and said that she would send him the proof after the interview was completed. He basically shrugged and moved on. Of course, McKeown noted following that segment of the report that neither Coulter nor her staff ever got back to the CBC with their supposed proof - and that Canada had not sent troops to Vietnam.

But it hit hard. If this woman could take part in an interview for a Canadian audience and shamelessly insist that she was right and the Canadian reporter (who is actually of an age to remember the war, having been a pro football player in the early 70s) correcting her about his own country is wrong... then she could lie to anyone about anything.

But I guess that's really not so remarkable after all. It's just a shock to see it, rather than hear or read about it.

It’s all over LJ, so you probably know about anniesj and her visit from the Secret Service over comments she had made in her LJ that she describes as “some rather inflammatory things about George W. Bush in a public post in my LJ, done in a satirical style.

She has written a new entry in which she responds to some of the discourse that has occurred in response to her experience. Now, anniesj has every right to her own thoughts and responses to this experience, but I also have every right to say that I think she is very wrong in some respects.

In her follow-up, she says:

1. I made a very big mistake in posting what I originally posted. I did not intend to threaten anyone with what I originally said. I was pissed off by what President Bush said, and I ranted about it without thinking that what I said could be construed as a threat against the president's safety. Obviously, I was wrong and I admit responsibility for making an inflammatory post. I apologize to anyone it may have offended, and I will be much more careful in the future when expressing my political beliefs.

2. My political beliefs did not trigger this, and what happened to me was not political. The reason why I was reported to the FBI was because I made the mistake of posting something that could be misconstrued as being a threat to the president's safety. I understand this, I apologize for it, and I will not make the same mistake again. I repeat, I do not seriously wish to harm anyone else on this planet, and in the future, I will make certain that I never give that impression again, no matter how pissed off I get.

sistermarysith has already written a wonderful response to this, but I need to put in my two cents’ worth as well.

Free speech is one of the most important rights that a citizen can have. Any attempt to suppress it is a political act. It’s true that most democratic nations have placed some prudent limitations on some forms of speech, such as inciting crimes, hate speech against minorities, slander and libel. But citizens must remain able to challenge any and all of the cultural and political assumptions, issues, policies, processes, parties, and powerful individuals in their society. And to ensure this, limitations should not be placed on speech because it is offensive, or satirical, or speculative, or obscene, or even violent.

Satire, in particular, has a long history of using violent images to make its points. And satire is a mode of speech that is open to anyone, not just professional comics and satirists. The use of violent imagery in satire does not mean that a real threat is being made. Emotional utterances are another area in which people use a lot of violent imagery that has no literal intent. Again, just saying something violent doesn’t mean you are going to do it, or even that you really want to do it.

For instance, I could make a satirical comment about George W. Bush being too arrogantly sure that he is doing God’s will and under God’s protection to bother getting out of the way of a deadly plague of locusts. Does this mean that I, personally, am planning on making this happen, or even that I want to see harm come to him?

I could write a play about George W. Bush waking up one day and finding himself transformed into a pregnant women, and cover in great detail the agonising process of trying to find an abortion and failing, only to end up bleeding to death on a back-street abortionist’s table. Does that mean I really want to see that happen?

Or I could create an animation in which George W. Bush can be made to walk into a toxic waste dump and die choking on the chemical fumes while all the birds and animals harmed by his environmental policies express their hopes that a new President will do something to let them live. Does that mean I want him to die a slow and painful death?

I might blurt out in the heat of anger or frustration that often surrounds intense political debate, that the world would be much better off if George W. Bush were dead, or even that he deserves to die because of all the Afghani and Iraqi civilians murdered in his wars. Does that mean that I want the man dead, much less that I plan to kill him myself?

I have the right to be offensive. I have the right to think about violent acts, and to speak about them. It may well be impolite and inconsiderate and even counter-productive to utter offensive and violent speech, but unless it’s coupled with immediate threat of bodily harm, it’s still just speech and it’s my right to utter it. And it’s a lot less offensive than sending armies to kill innocents, or wilfully turning a blind eye to policies that ravage the environment.

What I - or anyone - do not have is a right to commit violence, or incite someone else to. And if a government cannot understand the distinction between the act of speech and the act of violence, if it tries to limit speech about a public figure, no matter how offensive or violent that speech may be, that would be an act of political repression, no matter how nice and polite the brown-shirted thugs in their government-issue camouflage suits are when they arrive at the door.

And that is what bothers me, not just about what happened to anniesj, but also about the tone of her response to it. anniesj was silenced, and unless we fight that silencing, it could happen to anyone else. The lesson I take from what happened to her is not to be cautious about what I say, lest someone think it is offensive or threatening and call down the dogs of thoughtcrime upon me, but rather to struggle for the right of everyone to speak in freedom.


First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
-Pastor Martin Niemöller

Theodore Roszak has written an article titled “Where Did the Middle Go?” about the current political situation in the United States. In many ways, it covers pretty much the same ground as most liberal and progressive discussions of American politics today – it discusses the tenor of the political discourse, polarisation in American politics, the recent histories of both political parties, the influence of evangelical Christians on the Republican party, the state of the deficit, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and so on.

What sets it apart, for me, from many other analyses I’ve read of late, in both the American and the international presses, is Roszak’s courage in saying in a straight-forward manner what it seems many others do not want to say: That what the United States government has been doing, both in its domestic and foreign policies, is not the result of a hi-jacking of government by a few neo-con and/or born-again ideologues, funded by corporations seeking political influence. Rather, it is in fact the expression of the beliefs, philosophies, priorities and fears of somewhere around half of the American people.

I’ve read interviews with non-Americans in which they say, in essence, ‘we still like Americans, it’s the American government that worries/scares/enrages us.’ I’ve read many articles by American journalists and commentators in which there is clearly a presumption, explicit or implicit, that the Bush government’s philosophy and policy have strayed – or marched – beyond the bounds of what mainstream America believes and wants.

But the polling numbers really don’t bear that out in my eyes. Even if some of the polls are using questionable methodologies, even if there’s bias, still, close to half of Americans are saying yes to Bush, despite the ballooning public debt, despite the loss of jobs, despite Abu Ghraib, despite the missing weapons of mass destruction, despite the attack on civil liberties contained in the Patriot Act, despite the bigotry of his call for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, despite the MiniTruthspeak of the Clear Skies Act and No Child Left Behind and all of the other lies, despite all the other assaults on truth, common sense and good government.

Roszak writes:

Behind all the Bush-bashing we have seen this year stands the same idealistic assumption that once inspired the muckrakers of old: If only we can get the truth out, the public will rise up in wrath and drive the "lying liars" from power. For that matter, Bush's handlers make the same assumption. That's why they labor so strenuously to exploit all the latest techniques for manufacturing consent.

But what if both sides are wrong about how much can be achieved by shocking revelations on film or in print? What if Bush's political base never needed to be lied to? That might explain why, despite "Fahrenheit 9/11" and all the other enraged documentaries … the polls keep reflecting strong popular support for Bush's "leadership" and why he continues to find cheering crowds, especially at military bases where troops give their commander-in-chief the big "hoo-ah." These people aren't deceived. They know exactly what Bush is up to -- and it's OK with them.

And I suspect he’s right. It’s not just about Bush. It’s about a major segment of the American public, about a significant body of American public thought and discourse. It’s about the assumption of American centrality, if not superiority, if not domination, in the world today. It’s about an attraction to imperialism and fascism among many people in a nation that likes to think of itself as the home of the free and defender of the oppressed.

And this worries me deeply, because the most powerful country in the world is increasingly becoming the representation of everything I despise – greed, bigotry, intolerance, authoritarianism, imperialism, arrogance and ignorance to name a few – and is equally increasingly inclined to impose its position on the world. The mere fact of the presence of such a large block of Americans who support the policies of the current Republican party suggests that, even if their numbers are not sufficient to return Bush to power, any future governments must take their desires into account when creating policy. Which will, in turn result in the U.S. lurching evermore toward fascist and imperialist policies and actions.

Offred, meet Nehemiah Scudder. It’s 1984 forever. Have a wonderful life.