Check Please
Dr. X posts this from the desk of a University of Chicago-trained econometrician somewhere near Sacramento:
"I think Bush the Younger has been seriously misunderstood in some matters, and, for the most part, sincere in his intentions. You could make a list of the things you don't like, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of those things were things the Clintons did too, would have done too (e.g., the Iraq War), or will reverse in 11 months or so. The point being, much of what this heinously arrogant and inept administration has done, can be undone, once remotely competent leadership is in place.
"But there is one thing that can't be undone. While the GOP has reveled in insult politics, graft, and appeasement of the religionists, other countries have been training engineers, biotechnologists, and mathematicians. There are in the world nations that believe you should get a good education even if you are not rich. This is not one of them.
"The Bushies have given the rest of the world an eight-year head start on the future, and we are well and truly fucked. Or so says Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz. Sounds right to me."
posted by Latouche at Large at 9:45 PM
4 Comments:
Your points on education are very well taken, but please see Standard Paragraph.
There has been no misunderstanding of George W. Bush. There is nothing essentially sincere or honest in him, and in particular, there is no evidence to believe in a basic impulse to decency. His personality, as exemplified by his actions, pushes toward an inexhaustible indifference that seems to border on the sociopathic, and his administration is a rat's nest of compatible personalities - and he may be nothing more than their figurehead.
It was Katrina merely brought these characteristics into the open. Nearly 1900 people died, a large percent as the direct result of the President's utterly self-absorbed and arrogant personality, which I can only assume extends to every policy impulse he initiates. Any other recent president, save perhaps Nixon, would have had the moral instinct to motivate, organize and save lives.
The Clintons have their own problems, and hold egos of some note, but they are fundamentally loyal to the nation, and are genuinely interested in its health and progress. The fact that the Clintons are more or less corporatists does not alter the fact that Bush is not only a malevolent force in America, but is a crypto-fascist, disloyal and damaging to the American democracy, and his cronies in company -and in companies -consider our laws nuisances and treat our democracy as disposable if it furthers their economic and personal interests.
If one's narrow focus is monetary and budgetary policy, the differences between the administration are going to appear in nice clean percentages, squeezing and growing a massive federal budget here and there. It is like comparing the interest rates under the Medici in Florence ( generally around 5%) and now (around 6%) and declaring the governments comparable. This misses the profound damage to America as a society, as a culture, as a democracy, how this administration has divided the country and made torture and oppression our open policy, assaulted with all available political force our most ancient legal rules and freedoms, undertaken an accelerating attack on the health of the very Earth, all of which projects from the interests of an ever-shrinking circle of their cronies.
There is no misunderstanding of George W. Bush. America as a nation, as a society, is being hurt, intentionally, bodily, not simply missing competitive opportunities- we are citizens before we are consumers, and it is in our disappearing identity as American citizens that we take these injuries, that the destruction of our future is being accomplished by selfish, greedy, cynical men.
That the wounds may not prove mortal excuses nothing.
I must say I quite agree with the First Sea Lord on this one. Also, claiming that Bill Clinton would have started the war in Iraq is unsupported, bordering on ludicrous.
Clinton actively supported the Iraq war. Read this.
It was well known that he supported the actual Iraq war as it was happening, in general terms. So did the Senator. We're left to speculate on whether the Clintons would have invaded Iraq had they been in office, whether, more pertinently, Al Gore would have, and whether their invasions would have in any way resembled the Bush Administrations.
My suspicion is that the answers to these questions are "no." I think the Clintons and Gore would have been vastly more effectively at diplomacy, would have kept up and maybe stepped up the bombing campaign, but may well have avoided the actual invasion- and if it had come to that, their conduct of the war is likely to have been much more effective militarily, because they understood that all real war is political, not simply tactical.
I am not opposed to all war. I am opposed to waste, death, destruction, and suffering for a cause that boils down to more reliable resource extraction and a muffed attempt at personal political glory for the president and his inner circle.
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