Op Ed cartoonist Mike Thompson published a series of cartoons in The Detroit Free Press entitled "Top 10 reasons to be grateful President Bush is leaving". As would be expected, there have been letters written to the editor which agree with Thompson's opinion and there have been letters which disagree with it. Also not surprisingly, I chose to respond to a letter which disagrees with the opinion and with which, prima facie, I thought I disagreed.
In the letter with which I thought I disagreed, a writer reminds us that "America is not a monarchy". He reminds us that others may have played a part in the financial woes that the nation now faces.
As I began writing this column, I found myself going even further than the writer in making his case. In this column, I don't limit the failures of the so called "Bush Administration" to the latest economic failure. In writing this column, I found myself looking at an even larger picture.
I used to call The United States of America The Former United States of America. In the name of fairness and the hope that my cynicism toward Barack Obama is misplaced, I've once again begun calling this nation The United States of America. At many points throughout its history, however many states which have made up The United States at any given time were, indeed, united. Granted, some states had different ideas than others on social issues, but there didn't seem to be a pall of hate over the nation. There didn't seem to be real hatred between what are called "conservative" states and what are called "liberal" states. A state would actually agree to disagree with another state while conceding that the state with which it disagreed was every bit as American as it was.
Under the Bush Administration, another euphemism I've been replacing with the title The Regime, "conservatives" and "conservative" states have honed in on their differences with "liberal" or "progressive" states much more emphatically than the ideas and ideals which they share.
People like the The American Prospect editorialist Robert Kuttner and I are aware that the divisiveness didn't necessarily emanate from the brain of George W. Bush. There are those of us who realize that Dick Cheney made most, if not all, of the executive decisions in the so-called "Bush White House". It is my contention that the decision to run George W. Bush for president in 2000 was based upon the appeal he'd have with the average American, a person who has recently become known as "Joe the plumber." Cheney, on the other hand, would have appealed to the few people who consider Lex Luthor the hero of that particular Superman movie.
More proof that Cheney is the real leader of The Regime was the fact that, by sidestepping the vetting process he was supposed to have used to help Bush choose his running mate in 2000, Cheney placed himself on the ticket. As I, along with most Americans, was not privy to meetings that took place during that campaign, I can only submit that it's my opinion that the set up was already determined.
Although Bush was not a signatory to The Project for a New American Century, Dick Cheney was one of the original signatories. As you recall, the PNAC is the neoconservative "club" which worked on answering the question, "Now that The Cold War is ended, what excuse can be used to continue to finance and build America's military?" The PNAC decided that, rather than go through the trouble of manufacturing a new "evil doer", it would use the already demonized Saddam Hussein to accomplish its goals. Who better to remind Americans how much they hate Saddam Hussein than a member of the Bush family?
There are many people, including yours truly, who believe that financing and building America's defense was so important to members of The PNAC that merely putting another Bush in The White House would not, in itself, be sufficient to rekindle America's hatred of Saddam Hussein and its prejudice toward and fear of yet another dark skinned population. These people, called "Truthers" for their relationship to the organization and web site called 9/11Truth.org, have gathered a large inventory of evidence which says that 9/11 was planned and carried out by members of The PNAC, aka The Regime, aka The Bush Administration.
We, of course, have gotten what we've deserved for having such a hair brained idea. We've been ridiculed and mocked, as our propensity for individual self-direction has frightened those who either can't or won't bring themselves to believe that American leaders aren't a step above homo sapiens in the evolutionary chain and that, like all other people, they can be good or evil.
The writer of the letter, then, is actually correct, albeit not in the manner in which he thinks he is correct. In fact, I don't accept the premise of the editorial with which the writer disagrees.
I submit that the "Top 10 reasons to be grateful President Bush is leaving" reinforces the deception that's been at the core of far too many crimes, including war crimes, since January of 2001 and especially since September 11, 2001. I submit that George W. Bush's "aw shucks", self-deprecating, English mangling persona, intentional or not, has allowed The Regime, led by Cheney, to accomplish its Constitution bashing and corporate enriching agenda.
An editorial entitled "Top 10 reasons to be grateful The Regime is leaving" would have been closer to reality. The writer would then have had good reason to write "others may have also been responsible for America's woes."
We now have to sit and wait while we learn whether we are entering the era of an Obama Administration or if the results of November's presidential "election" merely guarantees a seamless continuation of a regime of, by and for corporations. It's quite possible that The Regime was installed in 1980 and hasn't given up power yet. If one points to the fact that there's been a so called "Democratic" president during this period, one doesn't necessarily disprove the regime theory. Lest we forget, Clinton's trade policies have served to make a mockery of the American blue collar worker and have been the seed of recent job losses. What more proof do we need that The Corporacracy is the true leader of The United States of America; the true leader of The World?
"America is not a monarchy" states the wise letter writer. Yet, by their social narcolepsy, the majority of the world's inhabitants kneel before a liege lord whose every order is not only obeyed, but defended vehemently by those whose have died, who are dying and who will continue to die social deaths at the edge of The Corporacracy's sword; a sword forged from the finest greed to have ever begrimed this planet.
