Tax My Rich White Torturer
Schools? Health care? As if. Your taxes pay for brutality and Wall St. bailouts. Feel better?
Just so we have this straight: You are not paying taxes merely to fund torture and bomb-dropping and the killing of countless innocents in Iraq in a futile and lost war that’s not really a war and is far more of a massive fiscal, tactical and moral failure which will end up costing the nation an estimated $3 trillion, burn through any remaining sense of national dignity and leave repercussions that will last for generations.
Ha. You should be so lucky. Because your tax money is right now also funding the Fed’s unprecedented and rather shocking multibillion-dollar bailout of rich bankers and fund managers who have, through their greed and excess and with the implied blessing of former Chairman Alan Greenspan (whom many consider the architect of the collapse in the first place), helped bring about what is shaping up to be the worst fiscal crisis since World War II.
There now. Don’t you feel better? Isn’t it a good time to be an American? And is it not, despite the notorious dishonesty of the players involved, still a bit hard to believe?
Yes, I know it’s George W. Bush. I know its Dick “Satan Loves You” Cheney. I know it’s Wall Street. Hence, I know expectations are at rock bottom. But as far as torture is concerned, it’s still profoundly disturbing to watch the world’s most powerful leader, the president of what was once considered the most reasoned, humanitarian nation on the planet and the one that ostensibly set the ethical bar for all nations, actually veto a bill that would’ve banned some of the most brutal forms of torture known to man, techniques we know for a fact do not work.
Repeat: Torture does not work. Waterboarding does not work. It merely coerces the tortured into telling you what you want to hear. The CIA knows it. Torturers know it. God knows it. No matter, because America is apparently still being run by inbred white collar thugs who would blind their own mothers for an uptick in Exxon share prices.
By the way, it has also come to pass that this same president, amid an appalling laundry list of scientific and environmental abuses, has actually worked firsthand to worsen the quality of the very air itself.
It’s as true as it is disgusting. It turns out that Bush himself stepped in to force the already troubled Environmental Protection Agency to defy its own mandate, its own scientific recommendations, ordering it to raise the limits for allowable ozone (it was about to recommend the exact opposite), all for the benefit of his pals in Big Energy.
No president ever dared such a move before. In fact, Bush’s action was so unprecedented, so galling, so against the very structure of government itself that an army of White House lawyers had to scramble to rewrite the legal justifications for the lower air standard. Do you smell that? That’s the scent of the most shamelessly foul leader of the free world. Breathe deeply, because it ain’t over yet.
So then, torture, pollution, more war, Wall Street megalomania, incompetence like some sort of satanic mantra. If you had any lingering doubt that Bush was an arrogant and petulant man-child with the mind of a violently overpampered 10-year-old? Please abolish it now.
Ah, but wait. It’s not all bad. After all, Congress - with the eager support of the infuriatingly mindless Democrats, by the way - just rushed through an economic stimulus package, costing even more billions of dollars we do not have just so the IRS can rush you a check for a few hundred bucks, presumably so you can race right out and make a down payment on that foreclosed three-bedroom two-bath hunk of shiny tract home hell in Antioch - “The Finest Slum this Side of Stockton” - with enough left over for a burrito and some vodka. Voila! Economy saved. Or maybe not.
Do you feel stimulated? Do you feel reassured? Oh wait, I’m sorry, gas is now $4 a gallon and therefore by the time you actually made it to your tract slum and back, well, your stimulus has evaporated into a gassy vapor, just like your shares in Bear Stearns. Whoops.
Maybe now is when the real dark period begins. Sure the last seven years of the inept Bush regime have been miserable and shameful, sure we’ve been humiliated, mortified a thousand ways from Sunday by an administration that would yank the legs off a dog if it meant a thank-you note from Dubai.
But now Bush is in his final year. This is both the good news, and also the very, very bad news. Because we are now in the death throes of the worst administration in modern history, entering the period of serious consequences, of economic collapse, environmental impact, record oil prices, international recoil, rashes, boils, inexplicable vomiting. Fun for the whole family.
Know this for a fact. Bush does not care. He is detached, supercilious, viciously ignorant of anything but how beautifully he has served his corporate masters, of how he has raked in billions of dollars for Halliburton and Lockheed Martin and Exxon and the coal industry, mercenary armies and military manufacturers and his dad’s Saudi friends. He is on no one’s side but theirs, and he always has been.
Some say this pain, this fiscal crisis, this enormous instability will last a few years. Some say no way, it will be at least a generation or two before we can right this ship of state again, so deep are the wounds and so insane is our national debt and so violent the damage to our reputation, our identity, our enfeebled infrastructure.
But I’m more with those who say, no, the truth is we will never truly recover, that America’s former ranking as Gilded and Irreproachable Empire No. 1 is dead and gone. India and China are dramatically changing the game, peak oil is nigh, fresh water is the new gold, the planet itself is in paroxysm, Mother Nature is quickly revealing her hand - or rather, maybe just that one big, stormy middle finger.
But maybe this is the best news of all. Because the sort of gluttonous empire Bush so disgustingly represented was doomed to failure. The center could not hold. Dubya may not have hastened the apocalypse like the evangelicals desperately prayed he would, but he certainly is hastening the end of the bloviated American ego.
So maybe the real question is not can we return to our former ill-gotten superpower glory, insular and unparalleled and reckless and arrogant, or even peaceful and defensive and ironclad. The true question is, do we have the slightest clue what we want to become instead?
Thoughts for the author? E-mail him. Mark Morford’s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle.
© The San Francisco Chronicle
Ah Capitalism, that system that claims to hate interference from the State… unless it needs a bail out because it is SO incredibly bad at what is supposed to be able to do.
The history of capitalism is inefficency, government help and only suceeding when state sponsorphip, zero competition and an exploitable poor exist. Honestly, my Grandma could run the US mortgage industry better than the big banks and, well, she’s been dead for 7 years.
We would like to think that we can pick up where we left off after WWII but is not going to happen.We will be luckey if anybody pays any attention to us after all the dirt starts coming out after the elections and it doesn’t matter who wins.We’ll either be a facsist state (mccain) or a poor representation of a Democracy.Are we up to fixing this mess? Tony
Last night I picked up the phone and a recorded telemarketing message admonished me to “listen to an important message concerning my eligibility for the government’s economic stimulus package”.
It quickly became apparent that the same financial industry jackels that perpetrated the current “financial crisis” and have been taking advantage of distressed borrowers are now preying upon the rest of us by attempting to steal as many of our “financial stimulus checks” as possible.
Unless Congress quickly re-regulates the financial industry to pre-Ronny Raygun standards, and the Federal Reserve immediately starts increasing interest rates, the US will see a series of ever worsening financial crisis and runaway inflation that will continue for many years. Each succeeding financial crisis will take more money out of the hands of the 99% and put more money into the hands of the 1%.
Blaming these problems on capitalism is like blaming domestic abuse on marriage. Marriage ain’t the problem.
Capitalism generates motivation and juices the economy; regulation keeps the resulting effort within productive and beneficial channels.
The trick is to keep the capitalists from writing the rule book.
When did tar and feathering go out of style?
Only now are all of the misinformed who cheered Bush’s swaggering and arrogance, starting to see bits and pieces of the policies their pro-Bush votes have produced. Finally they are seeing it in their pocketbooks and are confused at how “bad luck” has befallen them. One has to admit, that to get people to vote against their own family, ethical, moral, and financial interests while fixating on things like gay marriage and whether or not a Vietnam Veteran deserved his medals has been a stroke of sad genious on behalf of the Republicans. Maybe now as Americans awaken and see that they are poorer, they might also become smarter.
We can only hope for improvement when the third party gets back into the process. We have the Republicans, Republicrats (Corporate dems) and Democrats. True Democrats are still vastly outnumbered by the two parties of the Aristocracy.
I’m surprised that MM didn’t make more of the real consequences of “the stimulus package.” A giant handover of tax dollars to oil companies and Wal-Mart. With every act and deed Bush and his cronies spit on America. And the complicit Congress went along with it so they could appear to be doing something also.
This would get their attention - everyone spend their “rebate” checks on guns and ammo.
as the cost of the war escalates and we keep hearing about the 3 trillion dollar war and the fact that we are now 9 trillion or more in debt (and counting) the following comparisons might be helpful in illuminating just what IS a trillion.
I googled the question “what is a trillion?” and got a bunch of articles. One of them had this eye opening comparison:
1 million seconds = 12 days
1 billion seconds = 32 years
1 TRILLION seconds = 32,000 years!
It’s hard to get your mind around what a trillion is. We understand time fairly well so this gives us a good idea of the geometric expansion between a million, a billion and a trillion.
Think about it folks. We are being had in a monumental way!
“Capitalism generates motivation and juices the economy; regulation keeps the resulting effort within productive and beneficial channels.”
Um… no. What you’re doing is showing us your fantasies and proclivity for fairy tales. The historical record shows that Capitalism redistributes and concentrates wealth to the owning class and keeps it there at everyone else’s expense.
Never mind the “rulebook,” pay attention to history and stop making excuses for Capitalism. What you’re doing is extinction behavior. We tried Capitalism. It doesn’t work. Next.
Tax revolt.
Taxation without representation, just like under the first King George…
Torture works pretty well as an instrument of political repression and terror. That’s the real reason governments keep using it. Accurate information is just a bonus. That’s what torture opponents must get into the public’s head.
“The true question is, do we have the slightest clue what we want to become instead?”
Read The Great Turning by David Korten. Transformation. We know more than we think we know about what is worth the gigantic effort of becoming.
Oh, and militantliberal is right about the real purpose of torture.
Coyotebreath,
You’ve demonstrated perfectly how after the bewildering fall of man folly still echoes through the ages. There is no hope for us. I wonder if there ever was.
I think we need to find new words to mean beyond outrage. I feel like most of the rest of the world in my anger at US excess but after reading Americans like Mark and others on CD I feel so much sorrow and anguish for awake Americans trapped in the insanity. Australia has always had an anti-authoritarian lean due to us getting the convicts, so we have been protected from the full weight of capitalisms worst. I also feel sad because in the collapse of the rotten system the people at the bottome will suffer the most. God is a really wacky guy eh.
“Repeat: Torture does not work”
Rudolf Höß
Capitalism DOES work. Unregulated capitalism DOES NOT work. It was unregulated capitalism that caused the great depression of 1929, and it is now unregulated capitalism that is causing our soon-to-be-depression of 2008.
The beauty and bane of capitalism is that it relies on greed, a natural human impulse, to work. Without regulation, wealth will inevitably become concentrated in a few hands. With regulation, that phenomenon can be avoided, and whole societies can benefit and flourish.
The day the republican party rampaged their way to power, the decline of America was imminent. It was all over.
Burn Republicans not garbage!
It should be considered treason for any American to be a Republican. A political cleansing needs to take place int he USA in order to save itself. To be a Republican should be punishable by death in the USA. That would put them in their place and think twice before ruining the USA again.
Just a suggestion. If you get a “rebate” check. Go to your local or regional FAIR TRADE store and spend it there. Send your money to any place other than a US corporation or Chinese made Walmart plastic crap. Buy a beautiful sarong from India, fantastic coffee, musical instrument. Or better yet, give that check to a charity that fights injustice, pollution, hunger, poverty, or works for civil rights or civil liberties. That is of course if you don’t need it to feed your family that month. DON’T spend it on oil or gas. Heck use it to tune up your old gas-guzzler at a local auto shop. Just a thought.
“But I’m more with those who say, no, the truth is we will never truly recover”
That’s a tough one, it’s been on my mind too. Where will we be, what kind of lives will my children live? It doesn’t seem that anyone believes we’ve been permanently changed, and they assume we’re still the world superpower, and of course will remain so. Must remain so. That we will return to “normal” sometime soon, in a few years. It’s what we’ve grown up with, it’s all we know. Cause, we don’t know crap about history.
I’m a lightweight for sure. But I remember the USSR. They were beaten down economically, weren’t they?
Funny, I remember some psychics making predictions for the new year, this year, saying something like “it looks like people in the US are going to lose weight next year, we’re going to get more healthy!”, and my first thought was…healthy? They were happy; I think they’re stupid. If we lose so much weight, on average, that psychics pick up on it, it means what? Sure. That sounds…healthy. Starving animals are dying animals. I’m hoping they’re qwacks. I really am.
But add up all the factors that could make food shortages happen (remember the bees?), and I’m left thinking we could see another depression from that problem ALONE, forgetting everything else. Just like Iraq, it looked messy to start with, and became far, far worse than most people had any idea it could. And here we are now. Already in recession, and haven’t even paid the bills yet. Expensive fuel, everyone growing corn for more fuel (at about 1.1 units of energy produced for every 1 unit of energy required, is what I remember about ethanol?), farmers exporting wheat to better paying customers overseas, the bees, floods here, droughts there, and that’s just the stuff I know of off the top of my head. And I’m average, just typing away to save my sanity.
What I really don’t understand at all is why everyone else doesn’t have the same worry. In some ways, in some parts of our nation, we already ARE third-world natin status. Anyone look at our infant mortality rates lately? And imagine how many people worldwide probably plan on making a buck off it. Off us. Off of our misforture. It always happens. I think they call it “opportunity”. And they’ll laugh at us while they do it too, imho. Behind their hands, crowds of laughter at the stupid, arrogant, hungry Americans. Our poor reputation will do us in as much as anything else.
We tried to tell them. When they voted for Bush twice, they signed off on it. The end.
Charlie Chaplin was right in Monsieur Verdoux, “Numbers justify.” The rich get richer and the little people get screwed.
IF I get a rebate check, which I seriously doubt, I intend to donate the entire sum to a non-profit anti-war or pro-environment organization. Just my little way of giving the corporate criminals another “up yours.” I have been so angry and disgusted for all eight of these agonizingly stupid years, it just amazes me that I find my catharsis by reading articles like this wonderfully written piece just so I don’t give up in complete despair!
arise,
If you repeat something enough DOES it make it true? AND IF YOU MAKE YOUR LETTERS BIGGER DOES IT MAKE IT MORE TRUE?
Thanks for the idea, robalb. Anyone who has a home and is eating regularly can donate the insulting rebate checks to Cindy Sheehan or some anti-war or environmental justice group?
A piece that should be syndicated throughout the US and the world.
NateW March 27th, 2008 10:54 am
Too true … and mathematics shows that it gets worse and worse as the number of people in a community/polity increases. The optimum number in a community is in the low thousands. Go local.