Bush in Bizarro World

The President’s ever-sinking approval ratings have been a source of some optimism. Perhaps Americans are not really as confused or brainwashed as I feared. Maybe the country will wake up and take note of the disastrous course we’ve been on for the last six years.

But my glass is still half empty. On the one hand, with a 35% approval rating, the latest poll numbers for Bush are incontrovertibly in the toilet. But the United States is a big country – do the math: with a population of 302 million, these polls translate into the troubling statistic that 105 million Americans think the President is doing a good job!

I find this more than a little disturbing in light of the performance of this administration, which has not had a single foreign policy or domestic success during its tenure. It has been nothing short of a string of unmitigated disasters from the start, and every day it gets even worse.

In the interest of brevity, I’ll simply summarize the most salient examples: the cancellation of the Clinton-era program targeting Osama bin-laden, the intelligence failure that led to 9-11, the escape of Osama along with the top leadership of al-Qaeda and the Taliban during the invasion of Afghanistan, the intelligence failure on WMD’s that was the pretext for the war with Iraq, the entire debacle that was and remains Iraq, the unchecked muscling and military buildup by China, the unpunished detonation of a nuclear weapon by North Korea, the dangerous destabilization of the Middle East, the championing of torture and secret prisons, the squandering of global support in the aftermath of 9-11, the failure to even attempt to broker an agreement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is the central source of MidEast instability.

Want more? Here goes: the further alienation of an Iran that is about to go nuclear, the re-emergence of the Taliban as a force in Afghanistan along with a bumper crop of opium, the jeopardizing of the NATO alliance, the abandonment of the Nixon-era Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and most recently the attempt to introduce a missile shield on Russia’s doorstep that has provoked the Russian leadership to abrogate treaties that ended the Cold War. Yes, the Bush boys and girls have done what we thought was impossible: they have started the Cold War all over again!

We lack the space here to cover domestic disasters in anything but a cursory sweep so I’ll keep the following to a word or phrase that should perfectly illuminate the theme: Katrina, oil company windfalls, the shuttle disaster, denying the existence of global warming, Halliburton, huge trade deficits, Walter Reed, staggering budget deficits, the health care crisis, the Patriot Act, the growth of poverty in America … it just goes on and on ….

When I review the list of failures this administration has presided over, I can only conclude that their leadership (or lack thereof!) is the most dramatic illustration of bumbling incompetence since the movies of the Three Stooges were regularly screened. This should be obvious to everyone - even to their ideological kindred souls -- but apparently that is not the case.

When I was a boy, I remember being entertained by the Bizarro World of "Htrae" (Earth spelled backward) in the Superman comics, where reality was turned on its head and absolutely everything was the opposite of the way it was on Earth. Pundits have suggested that Bush really is from Bizarro World. I think we’ve got 105 million Americans living there with him. And I am not amused.

Reality Check: A Short Feature

During the last six years, I’ve often felt as if Douglas C. Neidermeyer and his gang of neo-fascists from the Animal House movie had somehow hijacked our government and stood the world on its head. Worse, it seemed like nobody who was anybody even noticed that this had gone down, kind of like when the pods replaced everybody in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. When I watched Bush or Cheney on TV, it was like I was the only one in that Twilight Zone episode who knew “To Serve Man” was really a cookbook.
All that is unraveling now. Beneath all that scary rhetoric and incompetence we’ve found . . . well… a lot of scary rhetoric and incompetence. This crummy B-movie is not over yet, but Americans are starting to sit up and smell the burnt popcorn.
Of course, a lot more could go wrong before our celluloid villains leave the theater. So, in the interest of public safety, I have prepared a strong dose of reality to get the audience’s attention during intermission:

Our entire legal system is not based upon the Ten Commandments. The next time someone tries to tell you that, demand that they list all ten. Chances are they will get tripped up after lie, steal & kill. If you check our legal statutes, you’ll find that we have no law against making a graven image or coveting your neighbor’s ass.

Evolution is not a theory. While the process of evolutionary change is open to debate, it is a fact that all higher life forms evolved from lower life forms on this planet. And the earth is billions, not thousands of years old. You don’t have to believe that, but it is true. You also don’t have to believe in dentistry, but then your teeth are likely to rot and fall out prematurely.

Christmas is not in danger. If you have any doubts, visit any mall in the country on the day after Thanksgiving. But this is America, so you have the right without guilt to greet friends with a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or Bah Humbug. If you don’t like it, well . . . Bah Humbug!

Global warming is not a hoax. The earth is getting warmer and the burning of fossil fuels is contributing to the warming process. We may not know precisely how much of this is a natural cycle of the planet and how much is man-made, but we do have the technology to slow the process for our own self-preservation. For years tobacco companies argued that smoking did not cause cancer; oil companies now argue that they don’t cause global temperature change. The end result is similar: bad news.

The Bush Administration has not been strong on national security. In fact, our nation is at its weakest since the end of World War II. As the marines would say, these guys can talk the talk but they sure can’t walk the walk. Our alliances are in tatters, our military is stretched thin, our troops are bogged down in the Iraqi debacle we spawned, Russia and China are throwing their weight around, and we generally look like fools to the rest of the world. Trust me, North Korea would never have dared to detonate a nuclear device if anybody else was in the White House.

Gay marriage does not threaten our society. If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t marry a gay person.

Religion has no place in government. This is why the Founders erected their “wall of separation.” That no such wall exists in the Middle East is the primary reason why people there often butcher each other over doctrine. By the way, Christians did the same thing quite nicely a few hundred years ago.

Putting a yellow ribbon decal on your car and humming the Star Spangled Banner is not supporting the troops. Getting them out of the line of fire when they have become hapless targets of rival factions in a civil war would be supporting the troops.

The mainstream media is not biased against conservative doctrine. There are thousands of media outlets in America. All news sources contain some bias in one sense or another, but the wide variety provides a natural balance. If you want pure right-wing propaganda, however, there’s always Fox News.

War is nothing to be proud of. The use of military force except when absolutely necessary is nothing short of a crime. Some of the most admired presidents of the twentieth century, like Theodore Roosevelt and John Kennedy, used weapons very little and diplomacy quite a lot. You can look to history –The Iliad and the Old Testament come to mind -- for lots of examples of human beings slaughtering each other for spurious reasons. When did America abdicate its role as the torch bearer of 21st century Western Civilization and turn into the neighborhood bully? (I have a hint, but I don’t want to give away the surprise ending ...)

Torture is never in order. Who would ever have thought Americans would be debating such a thing? Imagine the shame of Lincoln or Eisenhower listening in to this discussion. Besides, I thought we learned five hundred years ago that people will confess to anything if you make them scream.

Speaking out against the bumbling incompetence and moral bankruptcy of this administration is neither treasonous nor unpatriotic, nor does it embolden our enemies. On the other hand, waving a flag and a Bible in the wake of organized idiocy threatens the very life and liberty of the republic.

I hope this has helped you through intermission. You can skip the rest of the film. Horror movies usually end badly. In fact, I’d ask for my money back.