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The Man Who Would Be Bush
Are Americans unusually stupid or is it something our president put in the water? ? As millions surrender their homes and sacrifice other standards of our nation's economic and political reputation to the caprice of the Bush-Cheney imperium, a majority of voters tell pollsters that they might vote for a candidate who promises more of the same.
Assuming that likely voters are not now thinking of yet another Republican president simply because John McCain is the only white guy left standing -- an excuse as pathetic in its logic as the decision four years ago to return two Texas oil hustlers to the White House because they were not Massachusetts liberals -- must mean that tens of millions of Americans have taken leave of their senses.
If not the white-guy syndrome, why would even a shocking minority of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters say they prefer McCain to the other Democrat? How otherwise to explain the nation's widespread bipartisan rejection of the Bush presidency and yet a willingness to let McCain continue in that vein?
To be sure, as a senator, McCain has exhibited flashes of independence on behalf of taxpayers, as in his support of campaign-finance reform in which he partnered with Democrat Russ Feingold. McCain's investigations of the military-industrial complex's shameless exploitation of terrorism fears set a high standard, as in exposing the air-tanker scandal that dispatched a Boeing exec and a former Pentagon employee to prison. But his political ambition is showing. Although he previously harshly criticized the enormous waste in the Iraq occupation, today, as a presidential candidate, he opens the door to a hundred years of taxpayer dollars tossed down the drain in Iraq. The man who was tortured now hugs a leader who authorized the same.
By so unabashedly embracing the most glaringly failed U.S. president ever, McCain has surrendered the right to be considered an independent candidate, judged on his own merits and personal history. A vote for McCain is a vote for that rancid recipe mixing religious bigotry, imperial arrogance and corporate greed that he had stood against in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election when he challenged George W. Bush, but to which he now has capitulated.
Too harsh? Then consider just how tight the space is between the rocks of our failed Mideast policy and the hard place of our impending financial disaster. The sudden out-of-control spike in the cost of oil -- the key short-term market variable, the specter that stokes inflation fear and limits moves to avoid recession -- is not a natural disaster or in any realistic way the result of inefficiency in the use of energy. What more than doubled the price of petroleum in the short run was not that too many of us bought Hummers, but rather that the political stability of the region that contains the bulk of that oil was deliberately and recklessly roiled.
In the name of fighting the 9/11 terrorists, the Bush administration overthrew the one Arab government most adamantly opposed to the Saudi financiers of that son of their system, Osama bin Laden. Instead of confronting the royal leaders of a kingdom that supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers, we invaded a nation that supplied not a single one. While Bush overthrew Saddam Hussein, who had no ties to the hijackers, he embraced the leaders of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the only three nations in the world that had diplomatically recognized and supported the Taliban sponsors of al-Qaida.
Consider that historical marker at a time when the UAE and Saudi Arabia bankers are buying major positions in distressed U.S. financial and other key corporate institutions. I know, it all sounds too conspiratorial, like imagining that we might wake up from this national nightmare and discover that the CEO of Halliburton, who replaced Dick Cheney when the latter selected himself to be Bush's vice president, now has his headquarters in Dubai, tucked safely into the obscenely oil-revenue-rich UAE that our troops were sent to Iraq to protect.
There is no national outrage, or even seriously sustained media interest, over the fact that Cheney's old company profited enormously from ripping off U.S. tax dollars going into the Iraq occupation. Nor is there even much curiosity about the shenanigans of Halliburton, which is doing business with Arab oil sheiks at a time when the U.S. banks these Middle Eastern oil interests bought into are moving to foreclose on American homeowners.
It's just the sort of egregious betrayal of the trust of the taxpayers that Sen. McCain would have gone after, before he sought to don the soiled robes of the Bush presidency.
Robert Scheer is editor of Truthdig.com and a regular columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle.
© 2008 TruthDig.com
100 Comments so far
Show AllI agree that we are seeing quite a depressing political landscape, but in the decade ahead or so I predict that younger voters will produce is seismic change in this country. For one, the inability of the economy to absorb them into the work force, despite their college degrees, will cause many to become more politically involved, and mobilized. Also, their politics is less influenced by the traditional mainstream media and therefore harder to control. They may not be numerically large enough to put Obama over the top (or maybe they will), but the direction in which the electorate is shifting is clear, and unstopable.
Mr. Scheer,
Not enough people have financially suffered to actually demand justice by pressuring Congress to impeach Cheney and Bush. Hell, they are not evening pressuring a complicit Congress that enabled the Bush cabal to take place. True people are angry, but not enough to demand change in the Executive and Legislative branches. At this point, one would think that bread and circuses would not appease the masses, but it does in the form of "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars." They need to realize that the Bush Administration has committed treason, violated several laws in the Geneva Conventions, and destroyed the Constitution. It is an Administration that overtly authorized torture, and has managed to place its key players in charge of finances so it economically can finish off this country. Because of this Administration, we live in a fascist state, terrorize the world, and have destroyed any fiber of credibility we have left. This ought to be more than enough to enrage every American in this country, but it isn't. I think this country literally has to collapse before we can change and rebuild it.
This country's reaction, or lack thereof, to an administration that makes Nixon look like FDR, has puzzled me from day one. I think that maybe the corruption is just too massive, and the scandals too numerous, for the American people to wrap their heads around. And so the American people have to tell themselves that it can't possibly be as bad as it looks. Because if it is half as bad as it looks, then we are certainly sin big big trouble..
Just like they told themselves that W couldn't possibly be as dumb and as limited as he appears everyday in every situation. I think most Americans just can't let themselves face the reality of what we have let this administration do to our country, the constitution, and the world.
It is amazing how we profess to value freedom above all other ideals, yet when this administration obliterates the bill of rights, the silence is deafening. We must have to face facts, the fascists have won.
John McBush is not the only white guy left. Ron Paul is also white but that is no reason to vote for him. Listen to him, he will give you hundreds of reasons to vote for him.
Unfortunately, America has the government it deserves and until enough people become politically,perspicacious nothing will change. I think Jesse Ventura has it right when he says Americans are a nation of lemmings headed for the cliff.
I am becoming totally disillusioned with not only my government, but a large number of my fellow countrymen. If the electorate is STUPID enough to elect McCain in November, I give up. I'm already serioulsy considering immigrating to Canada. If he is our next presidnet, America just told me and half the country to f*&k ourselves. If that happens, the morons who voted for it can keep it and live with the consequences. They will deserve whatever they get, and I can assure them it won't be pretty.
I'm not even going to try to figure out the logic of electing a man who on most of the major issues aligns himself with the worst president in our history. I think half of Ameica was born without a brain.
I think jimmydore is on to something here. I know over the last 8 years, slowly coming to the understanding I now have I have felt my heart truly breaking...and all the while alternately weeping and raging...Most people believe to their core that we are "the good guys" and believe the hype about our freedoms and our system being the best on earth.....and to face the truth is truly painful. People don't sign up for pain on purpose...Put on these rose colored glasses...with them you won't get a migraine...
to jimmydore:
I'm a criminal investigator who often confronts financial crime situations similar to the multi-faceted and complex frauds that have been undertaken by this administration. When you examine the whole picture, it's mind-boggling. So what you do is find the most egregious offenses, simplify them to where even "the goats can get it", and charge your subject with those offenses. You leave change on the table when you do this, but at some point, you have to bring your subject to justice.
So, to move forward, we need Obama, not McCain. Once we get Obama, we need to focus on the most demonstrable and egregious offenses of Bush and Cheney, and prosecute them under US criminal statutes. It may make sense to identify criminal offenses by other officials (Rumsfeld, Abrams, Addington, etc), and charge them as well.
This administration has had 7 years to make a complete mess of our country, but we could bring them to justice in 2 if we had the right people making the right decision.
No, Americans are MORE than unusually stupid.
Why do a shocking minority of Clinton and Obama supporters indicate a possible preference for McCain in the general election, and a willingness to continue Bush's failed military and economic policies despite wide bipartisan agreement that the country is set on the wrong course?
It's mostly the dynamics of negative attack ad mentality during the Democratic primaries, plus preference for the devil you know over uncertainty and fear of the devil you don't know.
But I say do not despair, especially if Barack Obama gets the nomination.
Once the two party system has reduced all this to a popularity contest between two competing tickets, the negativism will begin to cut in both directions. Do you really trust the judgment of a guy who hums old Beach Boys ditties for yuks on the campaign trail about "Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran" when the red phone jingles at 3:00 am? Does the GOP really think it can go to the well one more time with the Reagan/Bush platform of tax cuts for the rich while everywhere the much ballyhooed trickle down is so vividly drying up?
Fending off the fear mongering over what a populist revival within the Democratic party will mean for the worried, sometimes bitter souls of America's former middle class will be a more difficult problem, but it is not an insurmountable one. Like historian Chalmers Johnson might frame it, the choice boils down to kiting more and more blank checks to maintain a fading military empire abroad, versus redirecting those fiscal resources into restoring some semblance of a just social fabric here at home.
If Barack Obama sticks to the politics of hope theme, and clarifies that the critical decision is to reject feel-good, feel-safe fantasies of global dominance in order to salvage what's left of American democracy, our domestic economy, and respect for the rule of law, even Archie Bunker may decide to bite the bullet this election cycle, rise up out of the Lay-Z-Boy, and go vote for some butter rather than yet more guns galore.
Bill from Saginaw
We live in a nation that despite all its computers is lacking decent accounting information about things that are hard to measure or which are kept intentionally off limits for "counting".
In 25+ years of marriage to Cindy McCain's inherited family beer business, I can assure you John McCain has personally endorsed by his own profiteering an absolute number of each of the following direct consequences of the literally billions of beers that their Hensley & Company directly sold from Phoenix:
Car deaths in crashes caused by drunk drivers.
Increased auto insurance premiums due to drunk drivers.
Clogged hospital ERs due to accidents while drunk.
Abortions elected after unprotected sex while drunk.
Jobs lost due to showing up for work under influence.
Teenage pregnancies with Mom now accessing "social services."
Some of the STDs acquired in unprotected sex while drunk.
Women residing in domestic violence shelters.
Men and women supported by taxpayers in prison due to DWI.
Divorces as direct result of adultery while drunk.
Don't tell me I'm some neo-prohibitionist trying to outlaw beer. I'm not. What I am is an American citizen trying to outlaw John and Cindy McCain from becoming the First Family.
THEY ARE NOT WORTHY OF THESE "POSTS". And if only we had the "accounting" we need instead of most of the dumb-cluck statistics that government actually measures, these two would be as politically dead as two rocks.
Forget "leave change on the table" - over turn the table as Christ did. It's that goat simple. Secede.
Cicero Confused: I appreciate your confidence in the younger generation but it might be misplaced. Living in a metropolitan area and using public transportation, I see young people quite a lot. Even when they are by themselves, they are not reading ... ANYTHING! They are listening to music, either in their heads or through earbuds semi-permanently imbedded in their head. When they are in groups, they talk about are the latest entertainment. The arrogance with which they treat Mother Earth is heartbreaking. Multiple times daily, I see young people throw trash on the ground when there is a trash can two steps away. I see the boys treating girls with disrespect and the girls accepting it. I hear groups of boys talking about how many days they got kicked out of school and other groups sharing how long they spent in jail.
What I don't hear is any political discussion. I hear no young people talking about world events. I heard one young man who had just got a mercenary job brag about how much money he was going to make and how much he was 'gonna get' (ahem) while he was overseas.
I had a discussion with one of the more 'with it' twenty-something's that I know. I told him (a black man) about the rape and murder and other horrors going on in the DRC - a conflict fueled by multinational corporations who only want the natural resources. In Cheney fashion, he said 'So what? My cell phone is old and I'm getting a new one.'
I told another twenty-something about how the old technology in the US is shipped to China and how Chinese children don't go to school but work long days to 'recycle' (i.e. remove the reusable parts out of our throw away stereos, etc.) and the health problems that the children face and the low pay that they get. Her answer was, 'So? It's not going to keep me from getting a new TV' (when the family already has four of them!)
Obama won't change things. Sadly, in my experience, the younger generation doesn't care enough to force the issue.
Are Americans unusually stupid or is it something our president put in the water?
I vote stupid.
I likwise see few young people engaged in anything but exactly what their TV's and I-pods tell them to be interested in.
The only thing i've seen them get enthused about is their universal derision at my electric motor scooter as I ride by. They absolutely can't understand why a middle-aged man like me would ride such a thing instead of a Harley 1200.
Will McClone be elected?
Only IF the election happens.
'October Surprise' anyone?
This is all going just as the Republicans and their right wing media had it figured. They knew the Dems would get into a fight to the death over nominating a woman or a black man, so they designated them as the "front runners" long ago. Of course , they have the perfect alternative candidate for those discontented Dem voters.
We are in great shape, though, with McCain and his beer business, now they are making and selling "Obama Beer" in Kenya as Business Week reports, and Hillary is chugging drinks in a bar. They will all be feeling good and ready for a tough election.
Gus - Right on!
Your two year plan is exactly what is needed, a process jump started by some Congressional and grand jury investigations that focus upon specific criminal acts of the Bush regime's upper echelon that are so blatant "even the goats can get it."
A necessary component of such a prosecutorial approach would include repealing the most horrendous provisions of the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, the FISA law revisions, and other measures that the wrongdoers could point to as evidence that Congress implicitly or expressly approved of their criminal wrongdoing. Such a legislative house cleaning would be both a means towards the end, and an end in itself.
Daniel David - I like many of the things you post, but for the life of me I just don't see how tying John McCain to the beer industry in a negative manner is going to motivate many voters.
Maybe I'm really missing something here. Perhaps the focus is he married into money. Maybe there's something notoriously sleazy about to break into the public domain that I don't know about, exposing scandalous, evil marketing practices of Coors, Annhuiezer Busch, Miller, and all the other brewers of male middle America's favorite beverage, thereby somehow tainting Senator McCain.
If McCain's second wife's fortune came from cigarettes it would be a different matter perhaps, but beer? In the eyes of the under 40 white male demographic niche that's off into Nascar, hunting, and football, disparaging those who bring you your brewskies is likely to boomerang, methinks.
Bill from Saginaw
All of the anger and frustration over the current administration is, I believe, what is causing some Democrats to say they will vote for McBush. I am a Obama backer. I don't like or trust Hillary Clinton. If she wins the nomination I'll be crabby for bit but under NO circumstances will I ever vote for McBush. I think most feel the same way.
And young people or not, the only kind of political mobilization that will do any good will be of a revolutionary sort. As Emma Goldman said, "If voting could change things, it would be illegal."
The best reson to vote for Obama is a dailectical one. Out of the deep disappointment that will arise when his young followers find out Obama is just another war machine/bigbusiness president, a genuine popular movement might arise. To some extent, the movements of the 1960's were a consequence of dissapointment by the idealistic base with Kennedy, and the building successful economic justice movement culminating with Seattle in 1999 was a consequence of disspointment with the failed promises of Clinton.
There's a chance the Dems could win if they dropped their support for big business, took up the concerns of the poor and middle class and gave up on the empire thing.
Heck, Obama, if he supported these beliefs, could become the next Black Great White Hope!
As for me, I'm still bitter...bitter about Clinton's millions, McCain's beer heiress trophy wife, Obama's boyish good looks and gift of gab.
Then there's the bitterness I have about the billions CEO's have accumulated and spend on crazy luxuries life Lear jets, and 400 million dollar yachts, and Bush's insane war which will cost 3-5 trillion and, yes, I'm bitter because I can just about afford my cat food diet and now I worry that Purina might be bought out by some hedge fund. But, please, don't mourn for me, organize.
Heck, I'm bitterness incarnate. But, I decided to move on. I started a group supporting Obama for president. It's called "Bitter People for Obama." Bitter as I am, I think he would be the best president ever.
Imagine where we would be right now if Edwards was the front runner. In every poll taken, he led in any hypothetical contest against a Republican. It almost seems like a conspiracy, doesn't it?
"...must mean that tens of millions of Americans have taken leave of their senses."
USA/Gallop poll: 76% of Republicans STILL support The Decider. That's approximately 41 million Americans who have taken leave of their senses - and have taken up reality-blinding drugs instead.
The good news for the rest of We The People is: "Sen. John McCain outlined an economic agenda that stresses his support for extending the Bush tax cuts he initially opposed, as well as proposing new tax cuts for corporations..."
Sounds like a winner to me!
The most insidious act of this administration has been its co-optation of America's media by facilitating corporate consolidation (i.e. the relaxation of ownership limitations). Unfortunately, most Americans are either too lazy or too preoccupied to dig for the truth and accept the prevalent pro-administration coverage by the MSM as reliable information.
jj
to Bill from Saginaw,
You're quite right that America has many partiers who would probably vote all-the-more FOR McCain if they knew about the magnitude of his beer business.
I believe there are just as many in the evangelical protestant churches who WOULD NOT if they knew. This business of McCain wooing the churches with his anti-abortion stance is about to make me physically sick.
Are we so dumb as to not know that more unplanned pregnancies come out of the experience of being irresponsibly horny while drunk or high than from any other cause? And McCain has sold millions of dollars of the mental "lubricant" for this and now wants the support of THE CHURCH? Telling the ladies they're stuck with the baby that some boyfriend implanted while drunk on McCain's beer. It's "an hypocrisy too far" for me. And it will only work if that whole CHURCH ignores the McCain beer issue. The CHURCH must be made to either get right on this or be exposed and ashamed. McCain CANNOT win without those folks.
Flouride in the water, Thimerosol in the vaccines, and supersaturation of the aether by broadcasting frequencies, who besides me is sensitive to areas where wi-fi has been installed ?
There was a Star Trek Next Generation episode which didn't make much sense to me at the time but now it does -- the Enterprise is providing transport for some 'benevolent alien' group, and the group makes gifts to the whole crew of these virtual game gadgets. Pretty soon the entire crew, from Capt Picard on down, is hooked on playing this game, and all anyone can talk about is what level they've gotten to. Except Wesley Crusher, who -- despite a lot of pressure to join in --refuses to play and ultimately finds out that the no-longer-benevolent alien group has secretly taken over the ship while the crew plays virtual games. That episode aired in about 1993, and while it seemed kind of dumb at the time, it doesn't anymore.
I have not yet read all of the discussion but...
The huge propaganda machine is working so well that otherwise intelligent people are now voting againts their own best interests and don't see it.
As an agnostic and quasi-socialist I am being outvoted, even by my siblings in regards to my mother's health care and future. That fight I will stay with till the end.
I will once again fight for this election. If HRC or McBush wins I will leave this country, and I suspect I will be but a part of the beginning of a mass migration.
I would like to add that it seems that the only ones that complain about this country is the ones on the right: "god damned taxes," "god damn services," "god damned liberals." But let any of us complain and it's "Love this country or leave it." Well, I have started to say that whenever I hear anybody complain about anything. They can't believe it when they hear it. I tell them they're being unpatriotic.
As for the coming election, a group of associates and myself will be hanging banners on overpasses to/from conservative suburbs into the liberal city saying things like "if the republicans don't trust government why do we want them running it?" etc.
See you in Belize in two years.
I think that some of this fascination and approval for McCain, despite his political similarities to Bush, are due to a failure of the corporate media. McCain is consistantly portrayed as the bipartisan "maverick". A lot of people view him as a centrist candidate while completely failing to view that he is quite the right-wing candidate that is taking a pro-war stance.
As long as the media continues to focus their attention on the horse-race coverage of the election and fails to have a real conversation on policies and their effect, I'm afraid that we will continue to see this disconnect.
Unfortunately, a great deal of Obama support appears to have grown from his being the anti-Clinton candidate ...
Now that Clinton's defeat appears as "inevitable" as her expectations of the nomination were dubbed to be a year ago, most of the GOP anti-Clinton mouthpieces and many "independent" forces ARE likely to realign behind McCain ... Obama, they will "suddenly" realize is too much of a social liberal for them or lacks "electability" (I love it when people defect from a candidate due to "electability," don't you? like the winning candidate has YOUR NAME in their book to thank when the dust settles) ...
I worry about it, a lot. The MSM is fundamentally pro-status-quo. I worry about the November election ... but even more I worry about the next 4 years and then the next ...
McCain should have been laughed off the podium six months ago --- that's he's being taken seriously and apparently gaining in popularity is reminiscent of GWB's peculiar assent to the oval office and I think Gore (and even Kerry) were better candidate for president in terms of both experience and character ...
I'm appalled at this state of affairs. I was delighted when this younger generation discovered politics... but their knowledge and involvement and commitment appears to me to be rather shallow and emotional ... when it stops being fun or fashionable... y'know?
If anybody ever said it was going to be easy, fast or fun, they didn't know what they were talking about. I've talked to young people who seem to have been taught that the 1960's civil rights and antiwar movements were "fun" and "easy" and "cool" ... without understanding just how much blood, sweat and tears were involved ... and fear and work and disappointment and fear ...
Scheer's first question is the one currently driving me nuts. TruOrange's comment threw me, a hard reminder. I need to believe in the apparent youth turnout so far, but all comments here ground me in reality. During this week's 'bitter' episode I said to my husband 'Really stupid people are going to decide this year'. He reminded me 'They usually do'.
For sanity, I have to believe that when it is Obama sans Hilary, McCain will have a media opponent, poorly covered, but an opponent. When Obama wins he may only be able to stop some bleeding. The internet may really make a difference in 2008. There are hundreds of races that look good to purge a lot of crazy people. A less crazy Congress may a first incremental change.
We who see through garbage and turn off TV and read as the only way to evolve are of course outnumbered. It is like being in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in a sea of pod people, not knowing who is who. Maybe foul drinking water will get us before my nightmares do. Of course there may be an October, or June, or August 'surprise'. But nobody controls the millions of things that change course for good or bad. It remains wide open.
Sad to be reminded of John Edwards by USAn. I'll leave remembering that he, and Jonathan Turley, and Joe Cirincione, and Gen. Odom, and Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald, and Sam Seder, and Robert Scheer, etc., are among the non pod people walking among us.
Young people do care, what are they to do? Political activism spreads when it is nurtured by older generations. We don't have a bottom up political participation in government, this system of government we have has little to no participation from the general public in decision making. We have an outdated form of government and are hopelessly ideologically rigid. The students from the 1960's parents were labor and leftist organizers from a time when the US had an active and influential workers movement. There were values passed on that don't exist anymore. There is nothing like that anymore, there is no activist culture to be brought up in. It's wrong to pass the responsibility to young people, sorry to say but it's the older people who created and nurtured this materialistic world we live in, where you are what you own and don't care about the well being of others. It's the older generations that did nothing as this country had an immoral and violent foreign policy, usually it took nothing more than a few patriotic platitudes to get the country to support our international violence. It's the older generation who created this hell hole of a healthcare system, who allowed the financial markets to take the place of democracy and who didn't for decades invest in younger people's education. It's the older generation who created the military industrial complex, slowly over time, and did nothing when it started to undermine whatever shell of a democracy we have here and it's the older people who didn't create a culture that fostered political participation. Young people are brought up in a country dominated by corporations, a media owned and operated for the benefit of its owners and the corporate class that pays its advertising revenue (who control what they think and determine their values), in a country who thinks that democracy is simply voting, where their country is extremely violent while their citizens do nothing and where the violent military industrial complex keeps the economy going. To think that they, by themselves, are supposed to create something in THIS environment is to not take any responsibly for the world that the adults here have created. Young people's parents and grandparents have created this mess and they also are monopolizing the benefits of the economic system for themselves at the expense of their younger family members. Older people had social protection, they had a government that created the middle class and didn't ask for them to compete against poor people to provide the lowest wages for corporate America. You can't take all that away, give them a crumbling and immoral country and expect miracles. Young people ARE materialistic, mindless sheep these days and it's exactly the type of brain dead consumers that the older people worked hard to foster for the last few decades in this country. If they do turn it around it will be in spite of, not because of, the older generations.
Bill from Saginaw:
And here I believed that all the intellects lived in Bay City.
I think you are right, Claudius. I think things in this country have to get much much worse before the populace as a whole wakes up.
Reminds me, if I'm not mistaken, about the Goddess Kali, who is the symbol of dissolution and destruction. It is not considered a bad thing in Hindu culture as things that are broken need to be dissolved and destroyed so that a much-improved re-growth can occur.
This country's government is very very broken. There are some who say that this country has outgrown the presidency and will never recover from the corruption. They see a whole new type of government being installed before the year 2100 -- a type of "governing COUNCIL" where no one person holds the last card anymore. I think it's inevitable.
That's why I believe the whole US will come tumbling down brought on my greed, prejudice, and corruption. Totally. Then it can be rebuilt in a new and stronger way so this never ever happens again.
It's hard to imagine a people that elected or helped put in office a man so shallow as George W Bush would not be 'stupid.' Chicken shit is another adjective that is appropriate here. Stupid and scared. Then we can add apathetic. Chicken hawks and chicken shits that don't give a damn until it's biting them on their own dumb ass. Welcome to 21st century America. George W Bush my ass…
Grant...what you mean to say is SOME young people do care and SOME young people are materialistic, mindless sheep.... And remember, the same can be said for every generation. Not all young people of the 1960s were invovled in the movements then...there were just as many Dick Cheney's back then as there are Dicks now... But I do think you're right to point the finger at the older generations for letting things get to where they are now, and to bristle at the comments here that seem to put all hope and some blame in the youngsters..what is that about I wonder too?
WillD:
I have listened carefully to Ron Paul. He has given me a few good reasons to vote for him and many, many good reasons not to.
"Cain, the first murderer, is sometimes seen as a progenitor of evil.[12]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cain_and_Abel
I'm not religious, just curious I am handy with pushing buttons and Wikipedia.
Just had to look it up and share.
The future is so bright.. I am afraid he will treat all of us little people the way he treated the man who saved his life.(sorry, couldnt find link to the article)
Just say NO to Johnny bomb-bomb.
progenitor
One entry found.
progenitor
Main Entry: pro·gen·i·tor
Pronunciation: \prÅ-ˈje-nÉ™-tÉ™r, prÉ™-\
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
1 a: an ancestor in the direct line : forefather b: a biologically ancestral form
2: precursor, originator..
..of evil, folks. Nothing to look at here. Move along. Play on your pods. Loved the comment Alaskamaid.
Hey, It's MC CAIN after all.
Son of a bush!
I agree with BOTH WTF and alaskamaid
"Are Americans unusually stupid or is it something our president put in the water?"
I vote both.
Scheer is definitely on the right track. If you preface this article with a discussion of the lies and fraudulent testimony that got us into Gulf War I under Bush senior, the view gets more interesting.
Just think = we had given our puppet Saddam explicit permission to invade Kuwait - then turned on him, etcetera.
Think about it
The Greatest Country on Earth is gonna vote for McBush 'cause he never tires of telling it how great it is.
thinkingmom, you're right, I should have said SOME. I was speaking generally of course. There are older people who did work hard on these issues and they did lay the groundwork for whatever activism we see today. If you listen to Chomsky he claims that AWARENESS of the issues is much higher now than in the 60's. If he's correct then whatever older people that were active should be commended. I just think it's illogical and wrong to blame this mess of a country on young people. Yes, they're largely mindless and conformist but they're that way by design, thanks to the type of capitalist consumerist country they've been raised in, and whose values they're told 24/7 to follow. If you look at countries that have functioning, vibrant and participatory democracies you'll see that there is a culture that is nourished. Being politically active doesn't mean just voting, it means educating yourself & others, organizing, participation in economic and governmental decision making, etc. That all is missing here, it wasn't in past generations, but it is now.
The McCain support comes from the Americans that are afraid.
The top Iraq myths are:
1. If we leave Iraq we will lose. All the world will think we are losers.
2. The terrorists will follow us back here and we'll have wars in our streets.
3. If we leave the terrorists will team up with Iran to build nuclear weapons then attack us.
4. It is cowardly to back out.
5. We will have to fight them later anyway.
6. The war in Iraq is strengthening our military.
Most Americans are heavily influenced by television. The issue of Iran has been mixed so heavily with the Iraq affair that it is hard to tell the two apart anymore. Ask around and you will see that many people really believe that Iran is directly supporting terrorist operations in Iraq, constructing nuclear weapons, and planning an attack against the USA.
The Clinton-Obama garbage is becoming too dramatic to stomach and others are defaulting to McCain simply because they can't stand the Democrat crap anymore.
Basically the choices are fight until we win - McCain, or maintain a status-quo - Clinton/Obama.
If the American people had any faith in the Democrats at all, McCain wouldn't stand a chance.
There seem to be indications, based on several factors, that under a President McCain there could be a re-activation of the military draft.
Food for thought in the article ...
"Military Draft Needed for War With Iran and Syria?"
By Steve Hammons
Truthout.org
20 September 2006
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/64/22754
hello_kitty, thanks for that clip. You're right, he did nail it, and sadly he's right.
Citizen McCain has already promised us more wars. He said so and he means it. That means: Iran, Syria and possibly Venezuela. None of that can be accomplished w/o conscription. There are, after all, only x number of mercenaries available. The conventional wisdom has it that a reinstitution of the draft will be suicide for any individual or political party that proposes it and pushes for it. But watch, my friends. Citizen McCain will push hard for it; he'll get it; the pimps and whores of the MSM will tell you it's a good thing and one's patriotic duty. And then, quietly, like sheep wearing thick wool socks, young Americans will march without comment over the cliff. There will be a bit of resistance - much less than during the Vietnam War - but it will be overcome by a combination of governmental violence and 36 month sentences to be served without parole for any resisters. Citizen McCain is from the warrior class of the American elite. He is also at the end of his life. For this American Caesar who, like the Romans, sees war and militarism as the highest virtues, and who is getting ready to check out of here, run-of-the-mill political caution can be thrown to the wind, along with countless young lives. This is what you want, America. Go choke on it!
George Carlin made an interesting observation once upon a time. Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, remember there's half the population dumber than that. Democracy indeed.
George Carlin did nail it.....However, those of us living abroad have known for years that the powers controlling the American Political System are not the politicians.
The elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen through computer irregularities. (See the movie "Uncounted"...Read the MIT/CalPoly Tech Study of the 2000 elctions and Election Data Services numbers for the 2004 Election.) And, the control by three Republican Connected Computer Companies: Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia was known by both Democrats and Republicans.....Senator Dianne Feinstein´s committee on the elections found nothing wrong with the elections and anyone who knows her husband Richard Blum knows why she votes 90% with George W.Bush.
The problem is that the National Media is controlled by the same people that control all the "Think Tanks" and all corporations with contracts with the U.S. State Department and Department of Defence.
When Condi Rice admitted that she participated in discussions about "Torture", the Media immediately went with the "Propaganda Machine´s" "Harsh Methods of Interrogation", there was no use of "Torture".
The fact that the American People have been denied the "Critical Information" to make rational decisions is the National Media´s Fault.
There is an International Movement calling for an "Independent Investigation of 9/11"... World Trade Center #7 was an obvious demolition with explosives.....The White House knows that and if you think that the Pope´s Visit to "Ground Zero" is not another "Propaganda Effort", you are wrong........He will pray for all the victims of a terrorist act instead of asking for an "Independent Investigation".....The American people will be asked to forget and go on with their lives.
The American National Media paid no attention to the Iraq Veterans Against The War....The American National Media paid no attention to the Presentation made at the European Union by four experts who question the 9/11 Commission´s "Official Version".....
Until the American People are asked to critically think about the information they have been given, The "Power Elite" will elect who they want to finish the job and they have done that before and no one questioned it.
Americans' fear and ignorance are nourished daily by the corporate media's ever-flowing fountain of McCool Ade. Johnny Bomb Bomb is their man and they will tell you so.
Drink up. It's not bitter and there are no elitist snipers serving it.
I never voted for a Republican in my life and have no intention of doing so now either. Nor have I voted for a Democrat since McGovern ran in 1972, nor do I have any reason to vote for one in 2008.
That said McCain is NOTHING like Bush. As a Viet Vet I find this type of bombast appalling! McCain spent five years in a prison of War Camp in North Viet Nam. By representing him as Bush is a cowardly lie by another wimp who never set foot on a battlefield much like Obama and Clinton. McCain has also endorsed Bill Mckibben's environmental prescriptions: McKikken is a RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST who also regularly posts on this site.
Conversely, Obama and Clinton are endorsing Biofuels and Nuclear as environmental solutions to climate change: both are inimical to the Earth.
More of the same? Yeah, that is what the other two Republican candidates will give us. Obama and Clinton are corporate owned trash.
My vote will go to Nader again.
Doesn't matter who we vote for. McCain will be the one chosen - in whatever manner.
The turning point came and went, un-noticed. Does anyone remember the last time that speaking truth to the lies or shining a light on the wrong-doing brought a swift and brutal retaliation? Can you pinpoint when such things became so immaterial they were answered with a mere shrug, or contemptuous "So?"
It won't matter who we vote for. We're already screwed.
I find it very hard talking to anyone about the current financial, economic, social and political state of affairs in this country. Nobody seems to care. Politics at work is taboo. Friends? Strangers? They are busy shopping and filling their gas tanks. This forum seems to be my only contact with reality: talking to people I have never met before but who share and voice their concern for the future of this nation.
I do not understand how the Dems can be so stupid. I worked at the polls in Ohio last March and I was shocked to see how many Reps crossed the party lines, voting for HC since their primaries were practically over and "el nono" (Italian for grandfather) was the presumptive nominee. It was a clear battle for destroying Barack (I am a fan by the way). The Presiding Judge (Rep) would encourage his party voters to change their affiliation for the March primary election saying that they could change back in the 2008 presidential elections, which, on the other hand, is true. I sent emails to the Institute of Voting rights complaining about this, but their response trivialized my concerns. So, I think the Dems should change the election rules. It is not fair that in April we still do not know who the Dem nominee is. Voting should be done and over with by March of the election year. Allowing people to cross party lines is, in other countries, illegal. What kind of constituency can we have when cheating, lying and being disloyal are praised? I have always voted Dem but I admire the well organized party the evil Reps have created and sustained. Their members are faithful soldiers, they do what they are told.