Duh Preznit's ol' teechur is spillin thuh beeans on his former C student:
"At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago, George Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that 'people are poor because they are lazy.' He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to 'free market competition.' To him, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was 'socialism.' "
No Rockefeller Republican, Dubya. I suppose it's nice to see that he didn't have to grow into being a Reactionary Pigfucker, he was always that way. Those New Dealers, they hated Our Freedom. Naturally the underlings try to flatter Duh Preznit's filosofee:
"Recently, President Bush's Federal Appeals Court Nominee, California's Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown, repeated the same broadside at her Senate hearing. She knew that her pronouncement would please President Bush and Karl Rove and their Senators. President Bush and his brain, Karl Rove, are leading a radical revolution of destroying all the democratic political, social, judiciary, and economic institutions that both Democrats and moderate Republicans had built together since Roosevelt's New Deal."
Karl, cut that gal a check. Laura, send a dinner invitation to Judge Jancey Broom, she seems like our kind of peepul.
Anyway, Thuh Preznit sure puts his philosophy into practice, and this is greatly aided by his penchant for finding just the right folks to get the job done; people like:
"In June 2003, Bill Moyers said that 'Karl Rove has modeled the Bush presidency on that of William Mckinley (1897-1901) and modeled himself on Mark Hanna, the man who virtually manufactured McKinley. Mark Hanna saw to it that Washington was ruled by business, railroads, and public utility corporations.' President Bush's tax cuts have given over 93% of their benefits to large corporations and well-to-do households with over 250,000 dollars of annual income (about 10% of the U.S. households)."
Well, yeah. Doesn't it make sense?
Foreign war to gain Imperial possessions and insure pathways to or outright control of certain and "essential" natural resources?
Check.
A war which was instigated by a cabal of manipulative backroom fucktards and academic or patrician geostrategists?
Check.
Holy Roller of a President who claims God dictates his foriegn policy?
Check.
Foriegn Policy of the whole administration built by demagoguery of and pandering to racist, sectarian and tribalist hatreds?
Check.
Thoroughly corrupted by corporate money?
Check.
I've been saying that the Bush II administration most resembled McKinley's since, oh, at least the start of Gulf War 2. Why not make the similarity total by Rove emulating the Ohio greengrocer's role as backroom manipulator, Enforcer, donor liason, Master of Corruption, and campaign strategerist?
Check!
Rove = Hanna; Bush = McKinley; Graham, Jr = Strong; Wolfowitz = Root; DeLay = Lodge; Rummy = TR; Powell = Hay; Condi = Mahan; Perle = Brooks Adams.
Of course you have to allow for some entropy, for some of what Brooks Adams's brother Henry might have called "degradation", because obviously the modern analogues are both massively intellectually inferior to their century-old counterparts, and, adjusted for era, much more morally bereft. But it's still a decent analogy; for describing intent, design, manipulation factors, it's a farking bullseye.
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Update --
I suppose Cheney and Rummy could both be TR, Cheney more because of his office and uber-hawkiskness. But then he's a behind the scenes guy, whereas TR was a notorious loudmouth, in Henry James's estimation, "the mere monstrous embodiment of unprecedented and resounding noise," which more than resembles Donald Rumsfeld. But TR just doesn't have a proper analogue here, or anywhere else for that matter.
Another player in the war-as-theft was Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana, whose current equivalent is Joe Lieberman. Beveridge introduced the first child labor legislation, which no doubt would earn him Crazy Davey's enmity if only Davey knew. But anyway, although Beveridge was good on domestic issues, he was a shameless cultural bigot and hawk, a total apologist for Imperialism, which more than anticipates Lieberman's shameless enthusiasm of the current Imperialist adventure.
posted by RETARDO MONTALBAN @ 1:17 AM
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