Schadenfreude Is My Middle Name
I’m not an angry man. But I am angry.
I’m not a bitter person. But, boy, am I bitter.
And I’m not generally given to vindictiveness. But, you know what? Right now I’m open to persuasion.
The Bush administration is now beginning an inexorable process which will change its status from the worst administration in American history to the publicly-acknowledged worst administration in American history. I, for one, couldn’t be more delighted.
That delight is only partly based on having been on the receiving end of their atrocities these last six years. And it is only partly based on the assurance that those gifts will keep giving for decades into the future, like a bad case of political herpes.
And that delight is also only partly based on their motivations and the scale of their transgressions. People who believe that the regressive right came to Washington to implement a legitimate ideology that just happens to be different from ours, or who believe that they meant well but, ironically, the first MBA president couldn’t manage his way out of an empty wading pool, even with the entire federal bureaucracy to assist him – such people fundamentally misunderstand this administration and the movement which they spearhead.
These are sociopathic predators – nothing more, nothing less – and we are foolish, to the point of acting as enablers, if we fail to call this what it is. This administration is a kleptocracy which came to town to grab everything it could grab, operating behind a hideously deceitful veil of generated fear and false security provision. Boiled down to its essence, this is little more than a classic protection racket writ large. Whether history will reveal that they manufactured 9/11, or purposely stood by and allowed it to happen, or simply screwed up the job of actually providing real national security, they in any case then milked that tragedy for everything it was worth, constantly sowing fear in the heartland, and offering the false promise of protection to a frightened public.
For all these reasons, they are surely getting what they deserve. But, finally, my delight in watching the long-deserved implosion of this American tragicomedy is also partly based on attitude. Never in my life have I seen such high-handed arrogance, such disrespectful condescension for the loyal opposition, such destructive shredding of the very core institutions of Western political culture, such cavalier disregard for the lives of anyone, including Americans.
No, I’m not generally angry, bitter or vindictive. But you rub your noxious garbage in my face for six (if not twenty-five) years and arrogantly dismiss me as an unpatriotic retread for opposing your transparent predations, then, yeah, I’m going to rejoice in your getting what you deserve. And, right now, I’m rejoicing. Right now, schadenfreude is my middle name.
The fun has only just begun, but nevertheless the wheels are already coming off the wagon. The dominoes are already falling, and Henry Waxman has only just begun to issue subpoenas. The water’s rapidly rising, and is now splashing the dirty faces of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and even George W. Bush. We’re running out of metaphors to mix here, but fortunately not jail cells.
You wouldn’t want to face what they’re facing over the next twenty-one months under the best of circumstances. But you especially wouldn’t want to go there with your popularity in the toilet, your credibility so shot that even Republican senators are disbelieving you in public, a corrosive war that, at best, cannot possibly regain public support, and members of your own party seeing that their association with you, your arrogance, your screw-ups and now your scandals all roll up together into a giant freight train called the 2008 Express, rapidly steaming their direction.
Who will be left to throw Bush a rope when he’s finally going down? Trent Lott? No, they burned him, and something tells me he hasn’t forgotten. John Kerry? Maybe he’ll FedEx over some Band-Aids. Jacques Chirac? That’s Old Europe, people. Saddam Hussein? His rope is in use elsewhere.
So one by one they come down, and no one is even going after the big questions yet, like what happened before and during 9/11, what’s happened before, during and after Katrina, the failure of the Afghan war, and the marketing of the Iraq war. Whether we ever get to those or not, we can at least take pleasure in the just desserts already being served, and relief in the enfeebling of Bush and his destructive agenda.
Rumsfeld’s gone. Without question, forced retirement in failure to some corporate pastureland is far too good a punishment for him, even if he does carry the shame of being one of the few people on this planet moronic enough to get fired by George W. Bush. Nor is he necessarily out of the woods, either. If even the merest approximation of the truth ever makes it to a grand jury, Rummy will want to be investing in some very high-powered legal Dobermans. He’ll need them.
Scooter Libby is now gone, and while it’s true that his crimes greatly exceed his likely punishment, even assuming no pardon, it is something. And let us all laugh collectively at the absurd claims of the right, trying desperately to defend him. “Valerie Plame wasn’t actually undercover!” Well, except that she testified she was. And it was the CIA which had initiated the investigation in the first place, out of concern about having its spy networks exposed. “Libby had lots of important stuff on his plate and just didn’t remember!” Yeah, except that what he just didn’t remember was nine conversations with eight different people on the same subject. (Aren’t these the same people who vitiated Clinton for lying about consensual oral sex under oath? Did I miss something here? When did treason get to be the lesser offense?) No one on the jury believed Libby’s lies for even a second. Indeed, they all felt sorry for what was transparently a case of Libby taking a bullet for his boss, Dick Cheney.
Now comes Wolfowitz and Gonzales. I doubt either can last very long, particularly the former, who has more constituents than just the thumb-sucker at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and whose staff is in outright mutiny against the head pirate. It’s breaking my heart, in a schadenfreude kind of way, to see Wolfie hoisted on his own petard, and now flapping in the wind of shame for a third week running. Given his evident insularity of breathtaking proportions (talk about not being able to take a hint!), he probably doesn’t have the decency to be embarrassed for himself yet. And even when he’s unceremoniously tossed overboard, it won’t begin to atone for the destruction listed next to his name in the Big Book of Death. (With apologies to Nathan Hale, I regret that Wolfowitz has but one life to give for all the ones he’s taken.)
But it is a start. After what we’ve been through, it’s amazing and unfortunate how little it takes to provide a measure of satisfaction. Just the same, the visage of European governments and World Bank staff (not exactly paragons of liberalism, either of them) growing nauseous from the smell of rotting predator is always encouraging. And seeing the great anti-corruption crusader indicted for practicing the crassest form of nepotism is only icing on the cake.
Then there’s Alberto Gonzales, for whom the oft-employed term ‘consigliere’ was always far too generous. Sure, the guy makes things happen for his boss, but he’s far more the simple soldier than the clever counselor in Bushland. And since nobody in that sad country is actually principled enough to be a soldier for any cause other than lining their own pockets, we ought to just identify this guy for the sycophant that he is, pure and simple.
But he also happens to be the highest ranking law enforcement official in the land, and if that doesn’t send shivers up your spine you might want to cut back on whatever is your self-medicating substance of choice. Silly Al put on such a show before Congress last week that even Republican senators were eying the political egress, wondering how they could possibly get the stink of Bushism out of their clothes and hair (as if they weren’t one hundred and ten percent culpable themselves, back when Bush walked on water).
No less than seventy-one times, Gonzales’s memory evaded him as he tried to recall the firing of key members of his staff, in the biggest credibility meltdown since… well, since the Libby trial. Imagine a guy who really had a memory that bad arguing the government’s position before the Supreme Court. “I’m sorry, your honor, I don’t recall which side of this case I’m on here.” “I’m sorry, your honor, I haven’t been able to keep all those amendments straight since I lost the cheat sheet I used on my law school finals.”
Perhaps we would have gotten some different answers if the attorney general was subjected to a little of his own justice. Perhaps a few days at Guantánamo would have changed his tune. Maybe the rigors of a torture program he once claimed it was “quaint” and “obsolete” to oppose would stimulate his memory.
But, of course, his absurd testimony was all just dandy for the one guy besides Gonzales himself who could put an end to this embarrassment. Bush’s take was that “the attorney general went up and gave a very candid assessment, and answered every question he could possibly answer, honestly answer”. Bush concluded that Gonzales’s testimony had “increased my confidence in his ability to do the job”.
This last line in particular is just the most recent example of the utterly juvenile content of regressive politics, and the sheer contempt with which we in the body politic are held by these folks. As if Gonzales’s lies to Congress had anything whatsoever to do with Bush’s assessment of him. As if Bush was sitting there watching the television, hoping his attorney general would set the record straight, explain why all of this is not a scandal, and win back his job on the basis of his commitment to good governance. As if the president actually thinks Gonzales told the truth on Capitol Hill. As if that is what he wanted him to do. I don’t remember a looking glass, but surely there must have been one along the way somewhere.
On top of all the injuries of the Bush administration, these childish rhetorical turns only add insult in the sheer contempt they demonstrate for we owners of American democracy. Maybe for the thirty percent of Americans who still support this guy, it works. Maybe for the sheep who are so willfully naive that they let their pastors tell them what to believe politically, it’s okay. But for the rest of us with our very own brains, this is politics that wouldn’t be fit for a sixth grade civics class.
Rumsfeld, Libby, Wolfowitz, Gonzales, DeLay, Brown, Ney, Abramoff, Cunningham and more. Bush, Cheney and Rove are unquestionably next. Even if they are lucky enough to survive the next couple of years in office, they will be damaged goods to an extent we’ve never seen before, reviled and despised, first a joke and then too destructive to any longer be funny. The clock is now actually their only friend. If they had 41 months left to go, rather than 21, I have no doubt whatsoever there would be impeachments. As it is, we may be stuck with them for the duration.
Which is not necessarily such a bad thing. The longer these guys are around (within severe limits, of course), the more thorough a job they do in discrediting themselves and their regressive politics. Let the revelations drip out, one by one, corroding the foundations of their destructive project. Let them stew in the very acids they themselves have injected into American democracy. It is not enough just to destroy Bush, because there will always be more Bushes (starting with a real one – Jeb). It is Bushism itself – the entire regressive political project – which must be beaten into irrelevance, so that it never resurfaces to bring us this ruin again. And at the moment, no one – not the press and not the Democrats – is doing a better job of destroying regressivism than the regressives themselves.
I’m not an angry person, but if it sounds like I’m angry now, I am. I’m furious for the lies which have been told. I’m indignant about the manipulation of our best instincts as a society by the world’s most cynically destructive government this side of the 1930s. I’m outraged that probably a million people are now dead in order to satisfy the personal insecurities of one individual who is the most powerful amongst us, but at the same time also the weakest, the worst and the most emotionally bankrupt.
I’m irate that my country has become hated in the world, known now for its human rights violations, its arrogant disdain for the institutions of international cooperation, and its practice of cheap pretext-driven invasions of sovereign states of the sort that was already becoming morally inexcusable back in the nineteenth century. I’m enraged that my country is seen as the most hypocritical on Earth, calling for democracy abroad while undermining it even at home, ranting on and on about terrorism while protecting terrorists from justice, railing about weapons proliferation in other countries while building new classes of nuclear warheads and leading the process of weaponizing space, yet another frontier of our physical environment to be turned into a battlefield.
I’m ashamed that it was not already embarrassing enough that my country, five percent of the world’s population, produces twenty-five percent of its greenhouse gases, but that our government then also had to scuttle even the wimpy Kyoto attempt at remedying the problem, all the while lying to us about the disaster itself.
I’m incensed at the fiscal, environmental, governmental and moral mess that we are leaving to our children. We are saddling them with our debts instead of trying to advantage the next generation, like every generation prior has done, and this government’s policies are responsible for that. We are leaving them a planet which will be wracked by the effects of global warming, and this administration is responsible for that. We are bequeathing to them an America which is deeply divided and widely hated, and that is the legacy of the Bush government.
So, yeah, as a matter of fact, I’m pissed.
Three things happened on the same day this week. The first was that the stories of the two most visible faces of the Iraq war were exposed as complete, and completely intentional, lies, manufactured for the purpose of selling the war. Army Ranger Bryan O’Neal told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, “I was ordered not to tell” the family of Pat Tillman the truth about how he died by friendly fire. Indeed, Tillman’s uniform was immediately burned and other evidence destroyed, so that a tale of his heroic death in battle with the enemy could be fabricated, complete with the awarding of a Silver Star.
Meanwhile, Private Jessica Lynch testified to the same panel that her heroic story was also manufactured, as were the lies about the abuses of the Iraqis holding her, people who in truth tried to help her and to return Lynch to her unit. “Tales of great heroism were being told. My parent’s home in Wirt County was under siege of the media all repeating the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting. It was not true.” To this day, Lynch says, “I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend“. Perhaps I can help here. Can you say “Old Shoe”? Does Robert DeNiro have to walk onto the set to get the American public to realize just how wholly fabricated everything about this war has been?
Everything, that is, but the death and destruction, which has been all too real. The second thing that happened that day was that nine more Americans were killed in Iraq, and twenty more seriously wounded. We don’t ever get to know how many Iraqis are consumed in Mr. Bush’s Mesopotamian conflagration (for the same reason we couldn’t be told the truth about Tillman and Lynch), but based on the best and most scientific research on this question, a reasonable estimate is that about 685 are killed every day. Not a bad day’s work for a contemporary Caligula, eh?
And the third thing that happened that day, while the administration’s lies were being exposed, and while those lies harvested their inevitable grinding, grim reapings yet again, is that the very same people who brought us this deceit and destruction continued their campaign to annihilate the remnants of American democracy through the use of yet further Orwellian rhetoric.
“What’s most troubling about Senator Reid’s comments yesterday is his defeatism”, said America’s vice-president. “It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage. Leaders should make decisions based on the security interests of our country, not on the interests of their political party.” The president added that the he was disappointed in Congressional Democrats for using the spending bill to make “a political statement”.
It would not be possible for Cheney’s assertions to be more polar opposite from the truth. It would not be possible for him to be more culpable of doing exactly what he accuses the Democrats of doing, for we know for a fact that much of the purpose of this fabricated war (or, at least, the quick and successful war they thought they were fabricating) was to make Bush and his GOP machine invincible in the context of domestic politics, so he could ram through predatory legislation like his raid on Social Security. And we know that the war has in fact been extremely damaging to the security interests of the United States. And we know that when Bush says that, because he will veto a bill it is therefore a “political statement”, he’s actually desperately trying to intimidate Congress into abdicating its voice on policy questions, to prevent them from forcing him to demonstrate before the public the very obstinance he seeks to hide.
All this in one day.
So, yeah, you’re damn right I’m angry. My question is, what in the world is wrong with anyone who isn’t?
And you’re damn right that I get a little thrill from seeing the slightest punishments meted out to the greatest of our criminals. Even if good news hadn’t been so entirely rare these last six years, it would be appropriate.
For these are not ordinary fools, and this is something that Americans haven’t really begun to appreciate yet. If these folks were mere bunglers with proper intentions, I could forgive them. If they were true patriots who simply believed fervently in a different ideology than mine while all their policy ideas turned out to be wrong, I could even forgive that.
But they are none of these things, and the measure of that is to be found precisely in the inversion of truth which is at the core of regressive politics as practiced by Bush, Rove and their fellow predatory kleptocrats. In the marketplace of ideas, lies don’t have to be told to sell policies. In the domain of good governance, memories don’t have to be conveniently erased in order to cover up incompetence and malfeasance.
And this, ultimately, is why I am so angry. These aren’t boobs who couldn’t shoot straight, though they are that as well. And they aren’t true believers of a stupidly destructive ideology suitable only for the most emotionally stunted amongst us, though they are that too. Instead, fundamentally, they are simply greedy marauders who have come to plunder America for all it’s worth.
If they were Russians, or Chinese, or Muslims, our response would be to hate such imperialist exploiters accordingly, and to seek their destruction expeditiously. But because they are Americans, and because they have ironically expropriated all the historic symbols of American patriotism, and because they have so massively and cynically exploited one of the greatest tragedies in American history, and, especially, because the magnitude of their crimes is too existentially debilitating for most Americans to permit themselves to comprehend – because of all these things, we merely revile them, rather than hating them and destroying their movement.
But that is our mistake, and it has already become a lethal one for so many innocent victims of the regressive machine. It’s time for this to stop, and it’s time for us to label this chapter in our history for what it is.
We have a word for Americans who sell out their country for their own profit.
They are traitors.
And we have a word for what these traitors do when they betray our country, our values and our Constitution to pursue their agenda of personal aggrandizement.
It’s called treason.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers’ reactions to his articles (mailto:dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net. “Dark of Heartness, Part I: A Journey Into the (Reputed) Soul of Conservatism” can be found here.
Professor Green has hit the bullseye. The brainlessness of the position that the Bush Administration’s activites have been a mere concatenation of mistakes and misjudgements instead of what they were and are, namely, a stark and shameless declaration of unreconstructed and deliberate criminality is simply unforgiveable. We expect the corporate media tools to employ such dishonest characterizations to protect and promote the Bush agenda. However, an ounce of critical thought would disabuse a rational person of this perspective with the available evidence.
In a court of law, the difference between an honest mistake and a deliberate act can be the difference between a slap on the wrist and the gas chamber. It is not a minor distinction. This is why it is being so consistently offered in explanation.
great article and right on the spot!!
Can’t even comment, he said it all.
Professor Green:
Oh God thank you! You blur the distinction between essay and Gatling gun. How satisfying!
Although you also dismiss it as impractical, you also make the best argument for impeachment I have heard. We are covered with stink and purely for reasons of hygiene we should seek a shower immediately.
Guillotine…. guillotine!
Great commentary. My only response is on the issue of anger and outrage. I’m as prone as the next person to take delight in the undoing of evil doers. And righteous anger can be an empowering thing. And words of righteous anger, strung together in an angry essay bring a smile to my face. And if anger leads to action in a positive direction… then we should all feel angry.
But anger can also paralyze. Outrage must be kept in proportion. It is important to practice a measure of indifference with regard not only to the world, but to our own anger and other feelings. It is important to get up each day, care for children, breathe deeply, live routinely.
Of course the Republican evil counts on not making itself visible, so that for example the effects of war are little felt in suburbia… against THAT vacuum it is necessary to summon feelings of anger, lest Bush be handed the victory of conducting his evil without it being noticed….
But for those of us who read and understand what is really happening, anger is almost useless. We fully understand the nature of the fascist beast. As warriors our strategy is to compartmentalize our anger to a very small part of our awareness, and to take calm action to change the world… whether it means doing the dishes, talking to friends, contributing money, or whatever other steps are needed to bring down the criminal conspiracy.
Anger? Yes of course, and all the pleasure that it involves. But carefully cultivated indifference and calm focussed action are even more important… the steps after anger.
Feel the anger… and leave it behind… or build on it.
David Green is as eloquent as he usually is; that is not news. The content of his essay has nothing new either and that is tragedy. In any land of law as our country pretend to be, perpetrators of law on such a scale as Mr. Green describes, would be put behind bar automatically by the most incompetent court; yet fate of Milosevic is not waiting for our Busheviks.
Why? One of many explanations might be that even such respectful critics as Davis Green are still institutionalized deep public emotions, fanned by our political class, Republican and Democrats alike.
“They have so massively and cynically exploited one of the greatest tragedies in American history…” Really? Is not ridiculous to compare 9/11 with 12/7? But it works and pays big political dividends. “America never will be the same”, proclaimed our leaders immediately after 9/11, Republican and Democrats alike. Did they know something about American people that progressives still cannot grasp?
For America is not the same and do we really understand our metrics?
HEAR HEAR! Get a rope!
Thank you for your voice, DMG!
I share Professor David Michael Green’s anger. However, let us not be too hasty in celebrating the unraveling of Adolph Bush’s evil administration. Cornered rats can be dangerous. This nightmare can still get much worse. If the United States is again attacked, or Bush ignites a third phony war, he could use almost any excuse to declare martial law and declare himself emperor for life.
Though I enjoyed Professor Green’s essay as always, I am saddened to recall that Jim Hightower had pretty much told us the same thing about Bush and his gang back in the 1990s, when Bush was Governor of Texas and everyone in the know knew he was being groomed to run for President. Hightower tried and tried to warn anyone who would listen. Of course the corporate media treated Jim Hightower like an irrelevant loser.
Another great article by Professor David Michael Green….
I wouldn’t have proffer much credence in Shrubs MBA, however….
This was probably an executive MBA paid for by George H W Bush, not the academic variety. Shrub is just too prosaic, dull and inarticulate, for him to have done proper peer reviewed research….
Not unlike his National Guard Service COVER-UP….Check out this site for more info on this….
http://www.king-george.biz/
It would take another David Michael Green to do justice to David Michael Green’s commentary. He is, as always, breathtaking in his ability to articulate issues and truths.
I am not angry, I am repulsed. To the core. I, like Green, am also ashamed. I am stunned that it ever got this far, and back in the late 60s and early 70s, while aware that it was possible, I never believed humanity could really be this craven and stupid. I am unable to fathom the remaining thirty-plus percent of the population who still believe Bush is doing a good job and that we should “win” this war (of aggression for other people’s natural resources) in Iraq.
But the fact is, not only has history shown that this same evil arises time and time again, it has also shown that there is no law, no process, no understanding we can collectively establish that will prevent it from “ever happening again,” although, God knows, that is the same answer everyone comes up with everytime. That’s what the Geneva Conventions were for and it took only a few years for those to fail entirely; can you say “Vietnam?” That’s what Congress repeatedly does, again and again. What is the answer to those who break an existing law? We’ll pass another law establishing that it’s against the law to break the law. Brilliant.
These people are traitors and so much more. If there is such a thing as demon possessed, they are that. Their capacity for murder, for theft, for lying, for total disdain for anything that is good in God’s creation that they can’t exploit is without limit.
But it has always been this way. Always.
I once read a quotation of an anonymous American Indian from the late 18th Century who remarked to a white American, “Someday you people are going to suffocate in your own waste.”
It never took a rocket scientist to see it. It’s as simple and straightforward as that and it always has been. But it appears to take something that we cannot or will not come to grips with to do other than we have done. There is that part of it. And as far as the current crop of sociopaths in the Bush cabal, I’m not sure good people have ever been able to do anything about this type of cretin until it reaches a certain point. But what is it about human beings that so many were ever fooled by them in the first place?
The hour is beyond late. One way or another, there’s going to be a lot of dying. There’s no way around it now. It’s going to be much more than the honeybees and the frogs, the oceans and the coral reefs and the fish, the rivers and the rainfall and the forty-plus percent of all the shorebirds that have disappeared in the past five years.
When the alarm sounds get under your desks, bend your legs and tuck your heads, and kiss your ass goodbye.
Actually, that quotation was from the late 19th Century.
oldgrowthforest,
No matter how many times the ill-informed repeat “It is the best system there is,” the fact remains that the US system was a very early model of democratic government, the equivalent of a model T in the automotive world. But through historical accidents and luck, this model T came to be the most powerful vehicle on the planet. And though thousands of mechanics (in Congress) have tinkered with it over the years, eventually the engine block will crack under stresses it was not designed to handle and the people will have to rebuild the whole car. I am guessing (maybe even hoping) that an economic collapse is not too far down the road and that could be the triggering event.
Huzzah for Dr. Green and his protection racket illumination. However this paticular protection racket has the Supreme Court(2000 election, Roe/Wade) FBI Homeland Security electronic surveillance and other fun muscle- and almost unlimited amounts of sydicated money to farm out jobs that they can’t get away with or don’t have the aptitude for- to private contractors such as felon voter lists to or hackable voting machines. When corporations are receiving a $1000 to $1 payback for corporate lobby payoffs don’t look for any sea change comming out of Washington. Power corrupts- absolute power corrupts absolutely- eternal vigilance is the price of it.
it’s pretty easy to be angry about bush & co; it always has been.
but glee over the demise of a few of them is not action, and action is what we should be taking.
if you’re a tax-paying american (as i am), that makes us the ‘good germans.’ just like all those good germans in WWII, who ‘didn’t know.’
except we do know, and always have.
anger isn’t enough; shame isn’t enough.
the iraqis are doing our dirty work.
when those who still justify the war by saying if we didn’t fight the terrorists over there, we’d be fighting them over here, they’re exactly right.
but just who are ‘the terrorists’?
look in the mirror.
they are us, and we need to start fighting them here.
Thank you Professor Green. I am very glad to read an article which summarizes my own thinking, especially since out of sheer disgust and frustration I have abandoned writing about such things in favor of quick blurbs which reflect my anger and bitterness.
“I feel your pain,”
and I hope everything you dream of comes to pass, but I think you are naively optimistic. Not only will none of these guys go to jail, I doubt there will be any meaningful investigation of their wrongdoing, especially by Congress.
Let’s face it, for all their public displays of hostility toward one another, all these politicians are of the same ilk. They know that if they try too hard to take down one of their own, even one that’s ostensibly “on the other side,” it will come full circle and hurt them. For example, what is it that attracts people to politics today? It’s the perks and the power. If politician A works hard to deny those plums to politician B, eventually politician A will suffer the same deprivation. In other words, they have a vested interest in maintaining the juicy status quo. They are simply not going to rock the boat too much. They will make a few waves to placate the public, but that’s all. The public will be satisfied that the politicians are doing something, however meaningless, lose interest, and go back to watching American Idol.
I believe Rumsfeld wanted to resign long before the 2006 election but stayed on at Bush’s request. So his role as a sacrificial lamb following the 2006 election really wasn’t all that painful for him.
Libby will simply be pardoned when the time comes.
If there is one thing that surprises me about this crowd, it’s their unbelievable arrogance. I mean everybody – except perhaps Laura Bush and the Dear Leader himself – thinks Gonzales should go. Everybody at the World Bank thinks Wolfowitz should go. Yet both of these individuals have insisted that they will not resign. These two people apparently lack any capacity to feel ashamed about their behavior. Of course – and I’m reluctant to say this, not being a psychiatrist – the entire crew strikes me as a bunch of sociopaths, and I mean that seriously. Inability to feel remorse about one’s behavior is one of the traits of a sociopath. I could picture any one of them, had they not been fortunate enough to find themselves in the upper echelons of government, selling bogus securities over the telephone to little old ladies.
The meltdown of the administration causes me to worry rather than rejoice. Just as a cornered animal is dangerous, these people are in a perfect position to create an immense distraction – such as attacking Iran – from their political woes.
And lastly, don’t forget, as astonishing as it sounds, that 1/3 of Americans still support the Dear Leader. Ironically, the Dear Leader’s rapacious economic policies have contributed to the destruction of the standard of living of this 1/3 of Americans, and yet they continue to support the guy. Talk about something to take your breath away. Ultimately, the administration can depend on these people for political support.
Think you’re angry and bitter now, my friend, wait until they all walk away with barely a scratch and nearly all the wealth, which they will continue to steal by any means necessary, and which they will spread stealthily far and wide as they prepare for the next heavyweight match. Oh, they may be on the ropes at the moment, sure, but “the base” is not jumping ship by any means. They’re just buying enough “Democrats” to keep this ultimate pyramid scheme going until there’s nothing left.
I have had the thought that my feelings and thoughts that echo Dr. Green’s were too extreme. But it is kind of nice to actually see someone else feeling the same.
I worry that not enough feel this way or hide it out of fear, patriotism, or shame.
I also agree that not much will happen unless we as a country wake up. The vote for the current Iraq budget bill just simply ticks me off. Barely a majority????
I think they will get away with it…
They knowingly do wrong and don’t care. They get their reward and most likely will not get caught, or if they do they have fiends in high places and can stash away their ill-gotten gain until they get out.
Great essay, but all of this has been obvious to the rest of the planet since the 90’s
Even as bad as things are now, I predict nothing will change. Why? Because “the people” in this country don’t want to hear complicated political news. Bill Moyers’ report this week on the lapdog mentality of the media should be on 60 Minutes instead of PBS. But it won’t, because it won’t sell advertising. The public is being conditioned by the media to crave temporary stimulation over political awareness, because that’s what the public demands. The U.S. public is ignorant and spoiled, and the Bush crime family knows it.
About a week before 9/11 I had a dream that Rip Torn, the CIA-like guy from “Men in Black” was showing me how George Bush was constructed from the inside in order to fulfill the perfect puppet status for a very dark group indeed. Then he showed me the Twin Towers being destroyed and said, “It’s Pearl Harbor all over again. There’s a war coming.” Then he showed me Bush’s puppetry strings and sticks coming apart and how his brain was damaged and said: It’s FDR all over again. He’s going to get his war.”
A week after 9/11 he showed up again and told me that we would be invading Iraq and Iran and that it would be a bloodbath, with the hardest hit being women and children.
During the first week of bombing, he showed up and told me,
“It’s really going to be alright. They are going to lose and 150,000,000 will die before the US is driven back. And he showed me Bush coming apart in public. That would signal the end, and he showed me that the puppet parts were actually people, about 150 real live people who have captured the rest of us. He said, “You can’t fight this and win, but it will crumble, I promise you. Don’t give up and pray for the dead.” What else shall I do? What would stop this I asked. “Just don’t become cannon fodder–that’s the real cause of war. Too much cannon fodder.”
I haven’t seen him since. But I am figuring if something took the time to show me this and how it will end and we will prevail, (except for the 150,000,000 whose lives were short indeed) then it must be available to us all and Mr. Green is the scribe of all scribes and I appreciate his life.
Hey
Bravo, Professor Green. As someone whose outrage has been at a steady boil for the past six-plus years, I found that this comment resonated with me the most: “So, yeah, you’re damn right I’m angry. My question is, what in the world is wrong with anyone who isn’t?”
The answer to your question is simple, yet sad: Americans are stupid.
Paul Craig Roberts, a Republican, former official in the Reagan administration and editorial board member of the Wall Street Journal (impeccable left-wing credentials, eh?), has been a steady, fierce critic of the Bubble Boy’s administration and his war. Here’s what he had to say about Americans’ mentality:
“Alas, we cannot expect too much from a population in thrall to disinformation.”
And:
“Americans, it would appear, are so eager for wars that they welcome being fooled into them.”
There is absolutely nothing to add.
Schadenfreude……JA!
Perfect! I enjoy your comments.
keep the anger simmering as it has healing and energizing effects!
Let me join the chorus. Thank you!
Plus my own story of emotional change in this benighted new millenium. On Sept. 11, I watched live in absolute horror as civilians plunged to their deaths and ran for their lives before my eyes. Like everyone else. And though I was in my late 40s and a political junkie and strongly left leaning pacifist reader of the Nation for years, I was shocked that my son, then in high school, said before the day was out, that it made him mad that Bush was going to benefit from this. In retrospect, Bush and co. played to my last vestige of naivete. The generation growing up have known better from the start. Thank God for that. I was angry; I do feel the schadenfreude except when I worry along with some of the posts,that it too shall pass. Nowadays I’m mostly tired and burned out. Thanks for reminding us that there are some positive emotions left, even when they are rooted in irony.
Dear Mr. Green,
Thank you for outraged eloquence in your article Shadenfreunde is My Middle Name. It is really hard to summon up a vitriol hot enough to be equal to the task of denouncing these sociopathic blunderers. But your article takes a really good poke at it. The only thing that has stopped these people from being as vicious or as murderous as a Stalin or a Hitler are the traditions of a country, which had a fortress of more than two and half centuries of democracy to undermine — although they have taken all the moves of their playbook straight from the most cynical and diabolic regimes of all time. The fact that the media, corporate moguls and the so-called evangelical followers of the Prince of Peace have cravenly and moronically supported their perfidy puts the whole lot into the category of the vilest of the reviled. I hope that we all have the pleasure of seeing them tried and convicted for the war-crimes that they so daily and brazenly are committing. And that someday soon, we will hear and read and see through every major media outlet, and from the throats of every citizen a collective hue and cry for their jailing, if not for their blood.
Thank you, thank you, thank you,
We must allow no rebirth.
None of the characters in this farce must be allowed to “remake” themselves in retirement, as Nixon was able to change his image from disgraced, vile president to “sage elder statesman.”
Bush & Co. must have their noses rubbed in their shit every day for the rest of their lives.
The only thing that Mr. Green forgot to mention was that Alberto Gonzalez can’t resign. As soon as he is out of office, he will be indicted in Texas for obstruction of justice, squashing the indictment of a gang of homosexual prison guard rapists in the Texas juvenile prison system. What tip of the iceberg is this?
There is a psychological term for this Administration’s favorite tactics: Gaslighting.
Wikipedia describes Gaslighting as a form of psychological abuse. It uses persistent denials of fact which, as they build up over time, make the victim progressively anxious, confused, and less able to trust his or her own memory and perception.
Gaslighting is a common tactic/symptom of some mental disorders … People will use gaslighting along with a wide variety of psychologically manipulative/abusive tactics to fend-off criticism of their own actions that they deem too painful to accept responsibility for.
My contention: Bush & Co. have been Gaslighting the American public since day one.
This article has left me feeling very, very sane. Like I’ve walked out of a funny-farm into the bright, clear light of truth. I’m damned grateful when I hear a spade bluntly labled a spade these days.
I agree, Professor Green: The Bush Administration are traitors. They should be called up in court at the Hague for crimes against humanity.
George Bush is holding our troops hostage in Iraq. The ransom he demands from the American people is enough money to secure the oil fields long enough to divide them among his friends.
Someone better send out for pizza and cigarettes before he kills them all.
What Michael Green touches upon is actually a sort of uncomfortable thing, that we are supposed to be liberals, custodians of good will and compassion, and here we find ourselves wishing a piano would fall on George Bush, a fellow hominid.
We need to figure this out. We despise him because he wishes ill upon others. So consistent with our professed values, absent all spoof schadenfreude, what should be done with George Bush?
I would like to propose a faith based rehabilitation program somewhere in Texas, or maybe Arkansas, staffed by Blackwater dropouts and designed to transform him from a phony, smirky, murderous poppinjay into into an acceptable human being. At his own pace, of course. If the power of Jesus can change Ted Haggard into a meth free heterosexual in less than three weeks, imagine the makeover it could do on our brother George over the term of all those contiguous jail sentences. It will be a difficult struggle for him, and he will need everyone’s positive energy plugging for him. But if he stays the course, he just might make it. Praise be.
“There is nothing else to add.” I second that emotion. What next needs to been done is to take apart Leo Strauus’ philosophical views. If anyone took a moment to read Strauus’ essays and discover the names of those who embraced his philosophy, one would find that everyone on that list is a part of, or has been a part of, the Bush regime. And the Reagan regime. And if you go back a little further, you find other world rcognized names and other philosopher’s who saw the world the same way Leo Strauus did. Hitler would have made Leo proud.
There is at least one fine tradition inherited from the Reagan adminsitration. When “No less than seventy-one times, Gonzales’s memory evaded him” is reminds me of Reagan answering questions about the Iran-Contra scandal and he could remember hearing none of the details, and he could barely recognise his staff. A fine fine tradition is continued by Gonsales. Can you imagine if these people ran the country?
Thank you DMG - as usual, you hit the nail right on the head. As I have been saying for a long time - based on their Attitudes and Actions - these Sociopaths are the vilest of Traitors. Their Treason against My Country, their War Crimes against the peoples of the World are a matter of Public Record… and all for Corporate Profit! Kleptocrat doesn’t even scratch the surface of what these heinous Felons in the ‘War Business’ - the Military/Industrial/Congressional Cabal - have wreaked on the US and the World - what are we waiting for??? Bring them Down! They have committed Capital Crimes beyond all counting, let them reap the Consequences!
“I would like to propose a faith based rehabilitation program somewhere in Texas…” Bush has already been there and done that. Prior to his marriage to Laura, Barbara shipped George out to a Christian rehab in El Paso which specializes in “reforming” homosexuals.
DMG, your essay is a catharsis, the sublime expression of my own long-held feelings and beliefs about the Bush Racketeering Enterprise. I mused years ago about the hope that someday, all these predators could somehow be prosecuted under the RICO statutes, and although a few other similarly imaginative citizens have expressed the same idea in this and other forums, the likelihood, as with impeachment, is remote. We may have to content ourselves with the isolated takedowns of the likes of Wolfowitz and Gonzales and Libby.
While wishing someone, anyone a slow death through illness goes against the grain of my self-image as a decent human being, if I were to hypothetically allow myself this one dark impulse, I’d cast that spell on the likes of Cheney and Bush and Feith and Wolfowitz and Perle and Kristol and Carbone and Gaffney and Tenet and Rice and Woolsey and a few dozen other predators, sycophants and toadies whose names escape me at the moment.
Maybe even on Powell, who sold out his strategic wisdom, his legacy as a renowned military leader and his integrity as a statesman when—instead of resigning in protest against the rush to war, which very likely would have caused a surge of further protest in the public and Congress that would have curtailed this debacle before it began—he kept quiet, even after the tires came off the wheels, by sticking his head up the Bush family ass to protect his future speaking fees and his already decomposing “reputation”. Harry Belafonte turned out to be a prophet when he early on labeled Powell the “House N****r” on the Bush plantation. Powell is fully culpable.
These “capos”, whose cynical creation and exploitation, under the transparent pre-text of neocon nationalism, of multiple calamities of phony war, wholesale death and destruction, rampant corruption, moral and ethical degeneracy masquerading as government downsizing (while in fact the government has swollen like a pregnant horntoad), and insidious propaganda that would make Dr. Goebbels proud, should certainly suffer “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”, beginning with public vilification and prosecution and followed by personal ruination, including but not limited to serious and chronic health problems. Such a cascade of retribution should be a “slam dunk” for the key players in this Shakespearean tragedy of global proportions.
Millions of us voted for this evil crew of miscreants, twice. The first time, they were installed by a politicized Supreme Court, so we the people didn’t have to take collective responsibility, election fraud in Florida notwithstanding, and we didn’t. Gore let us all off the hook by his noble if misguided concession.
But the second time, blatant election fraud in Ohio notwithstanding, he “won”…we “re-elected” him to continue his pernicious shenanigans, and whether we liked it or not, we had assumed electoral responsibility and ultimate accountability for his subsequent actions around the world, and certainly in Iraq and the wider Middle East, not to mention North Korea and Iran. The American People could no longer claim to be innocent bystanders to an out-of-control administration…we had become its sponsor, given our stamp of electoral approval.
We’ve all been paying the very steep price for that conscious, willful, profoundly ill-informed and defensive choice, as well as for tolerating the disenfranchisment in two successive presidential elections of millions of poor citizens, through demonstrated electoral fraud in key swing precincts around the country, as if we were all suddenly transported by time machine back to the Jim Crow South when Strom Thurmond was King of the Walk.
As publically unctious, rhetorically dull, and insulated from ordinary Americans as John Kerry has been, he still would have made a far more intelligent, thoughtful, rational, informed and communicative president than George Bush by an order of magnitude off the charts. The insanity in Iraq that has “mushroomed” these past several years would most certainly have been handled differently, and very likely dramatically reduced had Kerry been elected.
Alas, he didn’t have either the personal courage (hard to believe) or the gathered judgment to see the rightness of contesting his defeat in Ohio at the time, rather than caving in to the dark forces of swiftboating and warmongering that were so strong then, and walking off the concession stage with his tail between his legs.
Water over the dam, yes, but with that water has been swept away countless lives and property, all the international good will accrued to America right after 9/11, and our status, deserved or not, as a nation of laws, international integrity and cooperation, rationality, and due process committed to the preservation of the Constitution.
So thanks DMG for so skillfully articulating my own emotional center and apparently that of so many other Americans. Now, while the wheels of a Democratic Congress grind these dirtbags into small, ineffectual little pebbles, if not dust, we must work for the election of a real leader for dramatic change. For me, that’s John Edwards, and if not him, than Obama. The rest of them, (with the possible exception of Joe Biden, who just looks presidential in the cinematic sense, and whose shtick is easier to swallow) including Hillary, represent same shit, different face. Kucinich is in his own category: his message can be uplifting, but he sounds more like a cleryman under a tent than a viable candidate for president.
One can only hope that the rest of the nation realizes that in all conceivable ways, this will be the most important election since Roosevelt beat Hoover 75 years ago. It’s time to re-define America, bottom to top.
>>which specializes in “reforming” homosexuals
Maybe they tied the weights to his brain instead of his testicles as was their usual practice to “cure” homosexuality.
purvis ames April 28th, 2007 9:51 am
This is an interesting twist in a very sordid tale in the black sheep of the Bush Crime Dynasty.
Are there any legitimate referenced sources to support your assertion???
This is so precisely in synch with my own views that there’s not much else to say but “Right on”.
I feel guilty every time I feel schadenfreude, but he’s right–it is unavoidable here. As much as I hate torture; as much as I wish Gitmo to be obliterated from the face of the earth; nonetheless I cannot help but get a feeling of satisfaction when I contemplate Cheney being force-fed to keep his evil ass alive while he’s being waterboarded and hung upside down from the bars in his cell with electrical cords attached to his genitals. I would never do it–life imprisonment without parole in a conventional American prison (bad enough) will do–but I can’t help enjoying the thought.
Perhaps we will live to see Rove put in a cell with Bruno the Gay Biker. –But then again, Rove would probably enjoy that. Perhaps he could be put in a womens’ prison where he would be truly miserable…
Thank you Professor Green. You mirrored my thoughts about our current band of thieves completely. As for Americans not being aware of the depth and extent of shrubco destruction of our country, that will soon change when they see their standard of living in free fall. Hunger has a way of getting the attention of people quickly. Hungry people make heads roll, literally. We are heading for an economic meltdown that will make the ‘great depression’ look like a walk in the park. The republicans that remain as shrub’s base will evaporate when they get hungry and are living on the street. Any republican in the senate or congress that stick by shrub will not be reelected. There is one other problem: leaving shrub in power for the next 21 months will give him the opportunity to attack Iran. I think not impeaching him and cheney is too great a risk to take.
Professor Green brings the overwhelming evidence together very compellingly.
We only need to review the “Project for the New American Century” from 1997-98 to know the intent to invade Iraq well preceded 9/11, thus outright lies, massive deception, greed, need for control, and horrific use of fear is how we got into Iraq.
Most important however, is that none of these crimes be seen as incompetence, or a plan gone awry, but as Professor Green eloquently states- for its intentionally and how this extends to all the administrations policies, including the corruption of the use of morality, values, and faith as a basis for its bankrupt policies.
Thus, to just wait out the tenure is not a responsible or ethical position any American can afford to take. We must, in a fair and reasoned matter, explore, exmaine, and expose all the horrid intentionally so that those who did support this administration, or still do, learn why they can’t trust the reasoning, policies, or actions of any like-minded politicians ever again. Cognitive dissonance will play a role for those who voted for Bush, how do we help them save face while still learning the truth is an important consideration.
Young people and future generations must learn from these immoral and illegal policies and propaganda. We owe this and more to our future Americans and our world and thus we must reclaim our democracy for the ethical principles upon which it was forged.
We are all responsible for this administration’s outrageous policies unless we finally stand up and say, never again and not in my name.
4/28/07
First a General calls Bush AWOL and only comes up with “I hope he changes course.”
And now Schadenfreude Green lables him treasonous and only comes up with “oh let’s continue to witness the rape and murder of Iraq, the disinvestment of the US City and US Treasury, and the commencement on bombing in Iran - with wars devastation on the environment in time of climate change — yes, let’s witness this for 21 months and then have a “hell” of a time in ‘08: Now I’m Angry!
Hating Bush, Cheney, et al. may be cathartic, but it makes as little sense as raling against the deranged killer at Va Tech. These people are sociopaths, devoid of the knowledge of right and wrong, and motivated entirely by considerations of personal gain and power. The real culprits are the enablers within both political parties who have watched the country slide toward fascism and done nothing to stop it. In this sense John Kerry - sad shell of the man who threw his medals over the White House fence - was a fitting Democratic nominee in 2004.
While I share Professor Green’s outrage, I am far less complacent about the prospects for justice - or even salvation. Four months into a Democratically controlled Congress and we have what …?
A handful of investigations, inadequately covered by the corporate media, another handful of Republican criminals like Tom Delay enmeshed in well-deserved legal difficulties, and a single (that’s right, just one) Bill of Impeachment proposed by perennial outsider Dennis Kusinich. At this rate, where will we be, when the 2008 campaign gets into high gear and submerges all other news?
For every Bush official currently facing embarrassment (or worse) there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of scoundrels who have been quietly inserted into government during the past five and a half years and even more unconscionable policies. Who will root them out? When will it begin? I don’t see answers to these questions forthcoming anytime soon. To a large extent, outside Congressional hearing chambers, there’s no public outcry, no massive upwelling of indignation and rebellion. Newt Gingrich still appears on “Meet the Press” (I mean, of course, “Meet Tim Russert”) to put forth absurd and uncontested lies.
I don’t mean to criticize those who raise their voices in opposition here and in other small venues. I just miss a larger chorus demanding change in the general public. And I can’t help wondering whether, we, as a people, like the unconscious and uncritical citizenry of the Weimar Republic, don’t deserve what we’ve got.
God, where to begin … Remember how this short and sweet war and cleanup were going to be paid for? The Iraqis would reimburse us with oil money and would be self-sustaining almost immediately. But wait! Here’s an opportunity to channel billions to Halliburton! So we decide to throw our own taxpayers’ money at the war and rebuilding. I say, don’t fund another nickel until all that unaccounted-for money is found. Then they can use that to buy some more imaginary armor, people, etc.
Plus, there really are huge numbers of Americans who are so busy trying to keep the car running, pay for medication and child care, get in line for free food, stay off the street, etc., that the most they can absorb are sound bites. They skip getting angry about the war and the economy and go straight to cheap alcohol and polishing the guns.
There’s only one way to bring this administration’s expensive and exclusive orgy to an end — require that every single elected and appointed Bushy to swear to tell the truth before allowing one word out of their mouths. Isn’t refusing to testify under oath the same as admitting they plan to lie? So make them lie under oath. That’s what nailed Clinton, and that’s what will nail whoever ends up getting nailed. I’d go so far as to say “I don’t recall” is a lie under oath. Don’t get me started!
Americans are WILLFULLY ignorant. The urge to go along to get along ingrained. To think for one’s self is rarely supported. To date, such a mentality has had certain benefits. I am still counting on China to pull the plug and send the US economy down the drain. When complacent americans are standing in breadlines then they MIGHT start questioning how they got there, but even then I suspect that blame will be cast somewhere other than where it should be. Exceptionalism has been the national driving force since the earliest days of the republic and I don’t see it fading away no matter how bad things get.
I do as much as any other human being gifted with a higher than shoe size IQ agree for the most part.
BUT the mistake lies in presuming that the status quo will just drag itself forward to 2008 where a rejoicing, once again bright shining Statue Of Liberty shows the world where true justice, democracy and the pursuit of happiness have their home.
I don’t think so. My anger lies within an indifferent citizenry that obviously does not have a significant problem with letting the traitors aka cheney bush et al remain at the red button.
That’s totally incomprehensible to me, especially given the knowledge about certain historical similarities regarding ‘cornered rats’.
I cannot find fault with any of Prof. Green’s writing. I can only, from an historic perspective, add that I have not been so ashamed to be an American since the assinations of Kennedy, King, and Kennedy; the travesty of the Viet Nam conflict; and the dishonesties of the Nixon Administration. This shame is deep, and hurtfull, and wide-ranging. I am angry, bitter, and ashamed.
The Bush families, biological and political, have, by their actions, insulted my parents, who emigrated to the USA from western Europe in the early 1900’s, to become involved citizens, raise an American family, and have a chance at a better life than the one they left behind. They, and millions like them, believed in America and its leaders, and in the concept and practice of democracy. (I’ve never known a better, more involved citizen than my dad.)I am bitter, angry, sad, and feel betrayed.
The Neocons are spitting on democracy, using their arrogant secret government, barring media from recording history, and giving the voters a picture of hokey down-homeness, to divert attention from the realities of their atrocities…and shaming people holding opposing views by calling them unpatriotic.
I am angry, bitter, betrayed, and SAD.
This administration has lied, misled, murdered, stolen, conned, and shat on my beloved Constitution; it has sullied the image and repute of a once-great nation, and isolated my country from its allies abroad; it has depleted the coffers of this nation and leveraged the national debt to a place where my grandchildrens’ tax dollars will hardly reach it. I saw this coming six years ago and couldn’t stop it. I am bitter, angry, sad, and frustrated.
The Bushies have spit on the basics of housekeeping: they are ignoring the preservation of wild lands, not cleaning up after themselves, not improving the environment, and refusing to cooperate with the rest of the neighborhood to keep the values (globally) up. I am angry and SAD.
BUT…the icing on the cake, the unforgivable sin, was invoking the name of God to achieve the seat of government, and to garner support for their deceit. The final judgement is His, and I can hardly wait to see it.
Brilliant and sad writing. I call the regime members Fascists. For the last 5 years, every time little george comes to my mind I see the image of Benito Mussolini after his “loyal Italian followers” were done with him. It should not be so different here and now with little george. I sincerely hope that what occurred to “Il Duce” is only done in effigy to this little fascist would-be dictator. He deserves a long, lucid, clear, and education-filled life. Perhaps he will Awaken to his ignorant and murderous way and make the amends to all whom he has caused suffering. We all get to do it in our own way when the opportunity arrives. Peace.
If Cheny and Bush’s brains were cotton, there would not be enough sufficient to make a Kotex for a pissant. Beam me up Scotty……
I have been outraged since 9/11 because I knew the Administration was going to use it to move the global ruling class agenda forward, fast forward, at the expense of the common person, particularly Iraqis and Iranians and
American soldiers (not to mention coalition soldiers, contractors of all stripes, journalists, etc.) and that the American public was not going to “get it” for a long time, if ever.
Now … now that we “get it”, now that it’s common knowledge that the Administration manipulated us into the war in Iraq, now that they are completely discredited, I am as angry by why we can’t/won’t remove them from office and limit further damage as I am about invading and occupying Iraq, a country that was no threat to the U.S.
Impeachment, at the very least, would signal the world that our democracy is capable of mid-course correction and that government of, for and by the people is a possibility, not simply a 1984ish propaganda phrase.
The biggest boost democracy and freedom and “our way of life” could possibly have in the world would be to actually make it work on the grand stage, the stage that every eye on the planet is watching … IMPEACH BUSH, IMPEACH CHENEY!