Asked by reporters if he'd received his own rebate check yet, Bush "paused for a few seconds and looked at his aides before saying, 'Not to my knowledge. ' "

Asked how he planned to spend the money when the check did arrive, Bush said, "Charity."

Which charity?

"I don't know yet."

Then, the coup de grace.

Bush was asked why he would donate his tax rebate to charity instead of doing what he's encouraged all of us to do with our shares of the $38 billion temporary give-back -- buy things to goose the slumping economy.

"It's something people ought to do," he said.

How to explain the contradiction?

It could be the rumored stupidity of Bush the Lesser, proof that there is truth behind all the jokes and Doonesbury cartoons about an empty puppet in the Oval Office and a Dr. Strangelove-like cabal manipulating his strings.

Haw-haw. The man can't even remember from one day to the next the cornerstones of his own economic policy. Haw-haw.

Or it could be something else, something even scarier than stupidity. The arrogant disconnect that comes with privilege.

Despite all the down-home rhetoric that George W. chomps on and spits out like cheekfuls of Redman, he and the most veteran of his puppeteers are a pretty cynical group of wealthy and powerful individuals. They know there are really two sets of rules: one for all of us dopes who can't imagine asking an aide whether our tax rebate check has arrived, and one for them, the noblesse oblige.

Their rules are long on things like capital gains taxes, and short on things like waking up at 3 a.m. from fear of losing your Medicare benefits. Their rules don't encompass monthly in-home lotteries where you have to choose between paying the energy bill or your insurance premium. The only worry they have about the cost of prescription drugs is whether their stock portfolios include shares in the top-earning pharmaceutical companies.

The rules for us dopes involve a lot of mixed signals, like being told, "It's your money, not the Washington bureaucrats'," yet being nudged toward Wal-Mart or Home Depot to separate ourselves as fast as possible from our $300 nuggets of "tax relief."

After all, consumer spending (we are reminded hourly) accounts for two- thirds of the U.S. economy. It is our responsibility, especially in a downturn, to keep buying more stuff. Whether we need it or not. Whether we can afford it or not.

The rules for us dopes say we should pay no attention to the $20 trillion many of us -- especially those who earn below the median income -- have wracked up in consumer debt. Nor should we bother about the 24.99 annual percentage rate that banks have begun to slap onto our Visas or MasterCards because we were late with a payment, not to them, but to some other lender.

The dope rules say we should focus instead on our consumer duty by snagging one of those multiple offers that come our way for brand new platinum or titanium charge cards with $15,000 lines of credit and free miles.

The dope rules say we should ignore the fact that this summer's round of "tax relief" is really an advance against next year's tax bill. Come April '02, look out for the boomerang effect. Minus a big economic rebound, it will have to be paid back. So, too, we should not question the wisdom of an obscenely expensive anti-missile shield for outer space even though, to continue current levels of funding for the poor, the uneducated, the ill and the environment, Congress will have to dip into $9 billion of our Social Security trust fund.

As for all the firings, layoffs and jobs cut through attrition -- thousands every week now -- well, the last thing we dopes should do is let that shake our all-important consumer confidence.

George Orwell's "1984" begins with protagonist Winston Smith questioning the contradictions in the ruling party's philosophy: War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The novel ends with a broken and brainwashed Winston believing that "2 plus 2 equals 5."

George W. Bush will not buy stuff with his tax rebate. He will give it to a charity to be named later. Do as he says, not as he does. Ignorance is Strength.

©2001 San Francisco Chronicle

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