Bush's Fictional World

Mikaela says:
I have to say that I've checked out of political discourse lately mostly because my rage just has nowhere productive to go. How many times can you say, "This is outrageous. This is outrageous. THIS is outrageous."

Anyone paying attention at all has got to be angry -- from all sides. Bush has dragged all of us to war, put all of us in more danger, and he's in it purely for himself. Now it's his legacy he has to protect at all costs. Even Republicans say it now.

"He's more concerned about his legacy than he is about helping his Capitol Hill Republican colleagues," says one Republican strategist with ties to the GOP leadership.

Yes, well. Hello, welcome to the Truth. How was your trip?

Add to this Alan Greenspan going on record in his new book:

“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

Jeez, but Bush said it wasn't! Even as VP Dick had secret meetings with oil companies. Even as Congress actually debated about how fair windfall taxes were. Fair to send our men and women to die for oil, but not fair to take some oil profits to give back to our men and women? How do you figure?

And now we're heating up the rhetoric to allow us to attack Iran? I wasn't so afraid of this actually happening until the French foreign minister told the world to prepare for war over Iran's nuclear stand-off:

"We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war."

Even the mainstream media, perpetually playing catch up and waiting all too often for permission from those in power to write the truth, have begun resisting Bush's blatantly false, repetitive assertions.

Fred Kaplan wrote for Slate about Bush's Friday address to the nation:

"President Bush's TV address tonight was the worst speech he's ever given on the war in Iraq, and that's saying a lot. Every premise, every proposal, nearly every substantive point was sheer fiction. The only question is whether he was being deceptive or delusional.

"The biggest fiction was that because of the 'success' of the surge, we can reduce U.S. troop levels in Iraq from 20 combat brigades to 15 by next July. Gen. David Petraeus has recommended this step, and President George W. Bush will order it so.

"Let's be clear one more time about this claim: The surge of five extra combat brigades (bringing the total from 15 to 20) started in January. Their 15-month tours of duty will begin to expire next April. The Army and Marines have no combat units ready to replace them. The service chiefs refuse to extend the tours any further. The president refuses to mobilize the reserves any further. And so, the surge will be over by next July. This has been understood from the outset. It is the result of simple arithmetic, not of anyone's decision, much less some putative success."

That's what kills me. We have the evidence. We know the shell game the President continues to play, with American lives and resources at stake, and perhaps the structure of our tenuous Democracy and Constitution, to boot.

Yet, there are no consequences for this President. He gets his last 16 months, despite the lies, deception, deaths, future wars, monumental cracks in our constitution, gutting of the best of our bureaucracies, twisting of our judicial system, warps to the checks and balances upon which our democracy depends... and on and on and on.

Flash forward 16 months. What changes with the next President? Who will have the strength to remove the power Bush & Co. have managed to accrue unconstitutionally to the Executive Office?

Who will get out of bed with corporations who we know can't serve the people's best interest? Who will dismantle the power unjustly and sometimes illegally accrued to the very structure of "corporations" themeselves?

Hilary Clinton? I don't think so. Richardson? HA.

Obama? Jury's still out. Edwards is on board, but can he be elected without the same people whose sticky fingers need to be removed from our government pies?

Can anyone?

So what's a citizen to do? Marching seems too easily ignored, and too easy. So much is being sacrificed by so many that a nice, Saturday march seems almost a slap in the face, compared to what we're all up against.

Writing seems an exercise in whining.

I don't want to run for any office myself, god forbid.

Local elections are more of the same.

And yes, I know -- find a cause, sign up to volunteer, find a candidate I believe in and go door to door. Have the hard conversations in the lunch room. Build community where I can in all my grassroots efforts, blah blah blah.

Even what I sometimes want to see done has been stripped from me as an option, thanks to Sarah Vowell's hilarious discussion of a certain Presidential history pointing out all the pitfalls in certain endeavors by examining each in riveting detail:

• Careful of the dates you pick to ummm... execute your plan. You don't want to reinforce a martyr.
• Careful of your expectations. These things never go over quite like you think.
• Plan your endgame. Most likely, you won't be helped to escape on the public's shoulders, propped up there as a hero!
• Taking down one politician tends to entrench the public and governmental will to see through the actions and follow the direction the fallen man started.

The best I'm hoping for is a better manager than Bush. If we can't have someone at the national level who will say no to Big Money, let's at least have someone who qualified people will follow. We need to build back up the cadre of folks who actually make this country run, the bureaucrats who really do have good intentions and try to work with every administration, or at least despite every administration, to help the American people in the way they know how.

Maybe that would be enough to hope and work for, if we can't ask for less of a liar.