In the political realm I'd take a bathhouse full of page-prowling Mark Foleys over a heterosexually monogamous George W. Bush any day.
As the nation sits transfixed on Republican inner-circle "inappropriateness," the commander in chief is running around the country debasing his office, his party, and the national conscience like never before. His shamelessness would have given Joe McCarthy pause and the Founding Fathers second thoughts, but stacked up against voyeuristic scandal, it fails to rate the front page.
Bush prides himself on being unacquainted with any such side, of course, and as political attacks go, the "soft" charge lies almost within contemporary boundaries of acceptable partisan derision. But, ponders the president, why stop at almost acceptable when there's gleeful contempt for contemporary boundaries to be had?
So he pushed further, now conjuring up the rhetorically pathetic straw-man argument: "If you don't think we should be listening in on the terrorist, then you ought to vote for the Democrats. If you want your government to continue listening in when al-Qaeda planners are making phone calls into the United States, then you vote Republican."
Intellectually insulting enough, right? Pathetic enough, right? Even laughable enough?
Not quite. For the night before, Bush had laid bare just how malodorous his politics have become, declaring at a fundraiser in Nevada that "It sounds like [Democrats] think the best way to protect the American people is wait until we're attacked again."
With those 19 words, Bush reconfigured the boundaries of political discourse, no matter how contemptible they may be, and no matter how contemptuous of common decency.
That any president of the United States could, would proclaim that the nation's loyal opposition is content, even eager, to countenance the potential slaughter of its fellow citizens just to score political points in the interim is so wretchedly loathsome, it leaves one slackjawed.
Well, it left me slackjawed anyway, and here I thought I was finally immune to the numbing effects of Bush's ever-escalating tactical felonies committed against good taste, collective decency and acceptable boundaries. In my book – and I should hope in anyone's book – those 19 words outdid the infamous 16 of three years past with their stunning precision of deliberate ill intent.
His words were no soon-regretted, off-the-cuff remark spoken in the heated atmosphere of national debate, such as Bob Dole's "Democrat wars," or momentary whimsy, such as Ronald Reagan's "We'll begin bombing in...." Rather, his words were calculated, premeditated, pre-engineered to achieve maximum vilification and engender maximum partisan hatred. They were as unworthy of a president as unworthiness gets -- beyond the pale indeed, but perhaps just as egregious, absent above the fold.
By the 20th century, the 19th-century low of "waving the Bloody Shirt" had become the agreed standard for condemnable political rhetoric. To be justly accused of it was more shameful than exercising it. Now, a sitting president has not only crossed that boundary of impropriety and established a new low, his excessiveness is treated by the press – the constitutionally intended watchdogs of civic virtue – as something less than leading noteworthiness.
Both embrace a casual tolerance of extremism and, to put it mildly, bode badly for the 21st century.
This may come across as mawkish and melodramatic, but what the hell: Frankly, my heart aches for my country's seemingly unstoppable unraveling.
During a press conference at the Kent firehouse, an emotional Governor Rhodes pounded on the desk and called the student protesters un-American, referring to them as revolutionaries set on destroying higher education in Ohio. "We've seen here at the city of Kent especially, probably the most vicious form of campus oriented violence yet perpetrated by dissident groups. They make definite plans of burning, destroying, and throwing rocks at police, and at the National Guard and the Highway Patrol. This is when we're going to use every part of the law enforcement agency of Ohio to drive them out of Kent. We are going to eradicate the problem. We're not going to treat the symptoms. And these people just move from one campus to the other and terrorize the community. They're worse than the brown shirts and the communist element and also the night riders and the vigilantes," Rhodes said. "They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America. Now I want to say this. They are not going to take over [the] campus. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America." Rhodes can be heard in the recording of his speech yelling and pounding his fists on the desk. .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
"On domestic issues as well as ones of foreign policy, from Ronald Reagan's mythical “welfare queens” through George Wallace's “pointy-headed intellectuals”; from Lee Atwater's characterization of Democrats as anti-family, anti-life, anti-God, down through the open, deliberate attempts of Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove to constantly describe opponents in words that made them seem bizarre, deviant, and “out of the mainstream,” the entire vernacular of American politics has been altered since Vietnam.
Culture war has become the organizing principle of the right, unalterably convinced as it is that conservatives are an embattled majority, one that must stand ever vigilant against its unnatural enemies—from the “gay agenda,” to the advocates of Darwinism, to the “war against Christmas” last year.
This has become such an ingrained part of the right wing's belief system that the Bush Administration has now become the first government in our nation's history to fight a major war without seeking any sort of national solidarity. Far from it. The whole purpose of the war in Iraq—and the “war on terrorism”—seems to have been to foment division and to win elections by forcing Americans to choose between starkly different visions of what their country should be" .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=13899092
The above, the first link here .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=64534374 .. "even now our fascists, our Congressional Republican/Tea Party traitors, as always self-righteously spewing the same old fascist utter lies and bullshit, toy with seizing an opportunity to, by simply obstructing normal and necessary government function, quite literally and entirely gratuitously completely blow up our economy -- now there would be some grassroots anger to channel; just gotta win the blame game ("Stabbed in the Back!"-style [ http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=13899092 ], of course)
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