New corollary to an old law.
For many years I've lived by a simple rule:
"Never attribute to malice what can be chalked up to incompetence"
I've even used this rule, on occasion, to defend the president against charges that he actually meant harm.
However, given recent events, I must now propose an amendment to this rule:
"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"
posted by The Sum of All Monkeys at 11:44 PM
1 Comments:
A wise thought and wise revision.
Malice has certainly been in the White House, say the Haldeman/Nixon tapes, where they were sitting around the Oval Office chatting up ways to ruin blacks, jews, and intellectuals.
W. is another creature - motivated I think by a profound sense of personal entitlement- (strangely evidenced by the Miers nomination, suggesting to the right-wing, quite rightly, that they've been had, he's not really an ideologue.) His notorious "incuriosity" is a matter of deep indifference, making him a classic rich kid with an expectation of power.
This indifference is not exactly Nixon-esque malice - W. does not get up every day to destroy his opponents, stewing in sweaty paranoia. But it is certainly dangerously arrogant, and a source of the incompetence. His motivation is closer to the kind of patrician tribal promotion: my pals are more important than all of you. The easy corruption of this administration sources from a lack of real interest in anything that doesn't work to the advantage of his faction.
I've been trying to figure out for years whether his faith is genuine, but I realize that to a man of that combination of arrogance and indifference there isn't a clear distinction between a show of faith and faith itself.
It's worth noting that the Italian Fascist motto : "Me ne frego," loosely, "I don't give a damn."
Bush's factional promotion (the kind that leads to economic policy indistinguishable from the wholesale looting of the national treasury), combined with the genuinely Kissingeresque cynicism of the neo-cons, adds up to acidic policy, with no one with a sense of moral responsibility for the nation or for the actions of the government. Those few in the administration already left.
W. is not exactly a fascist- he's too lazy for that- but you get the sense that he would do nothing to stop a coup if all his buddies assured him it was in "our" best interest.
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