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archived: 16 - 22 Jan, 2005 Back Next UPDATED: January 18, 2005 DARKNESS DESCENDING America is approaching its cultural nadir with fantastic alacrity. This Thursday, George Walker Bush will be inaugurated for his second term in the Oval Office. While Bush sees this event in his mind’s eye as more anointment than inauguration, the rest of the world will see it as the opening scene in the final act of the tragedy of the great unraveling of the American traditions of liberty, justice and constitutional democracy. The world sees Bush not as the self-proclaimed holy man and theocratic savior of humanity from the evils of millions of crazed Muslim fanatics he would wish, but as a brazen military dictator who has stolen two elections in a row and is now supported by a multi-layered police state as well as the US media that has become a privatized version of George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth where authentic history is routinely destroyed and re-fabricated to suit the official propaganda line of the totalitarian state, Oceania, the prophetic model for Bush’s America. It cannot be denied that the Bush era is being driven by popular religious obsessions. Never easy with the Enlightenment, American religion has developed a distinctively peculiar character of its very own. During the eighteenth century, Jonathan Edwards delivered fiery sermons littered with fire and brimstone to launch the first of America’s Great Awakenings. This pattern of old time religion breeding mass paranoia has led to the chaotic crazy quilt of religious ideologies proliferating across the face of America. In North Carolina, this patchwork of religious obsession is virtually unique. Not only is North Carolina the home of the Graham family, one of America’s most successful evangelical institutions, but it is also a center of the snake-handling cult. I was fortunate to study anthropology with the late, great Professor Weston La Barre of Duke University who authored an excellent text on Southern snake-handling cults, They Shall Take Up Serpents. La Barre’s magisterial study revealed the practice of snake handling through the lens of one of its most virulent centers, Durham, where snake handling was banned in 1947, but where it still resonates through congregations speaking in tongues obsessed with religious extremism. Bush’s presidency has been one long, extended and painful debacle. The ghastly horror of 9/11 took place one month after the CIA had informed Bush that Osama Bin Laden would strike a major target in the US. Bush retaliated with the war in Afghanistan, but Osama Bin Laden has never been brought to justice, nor even located by the US military. The Taliban are no longer in power, but the fundamentalist warlords are back in control of that war torn nation. Next, Bush launched his oil war against Iraq allegedly to prevent an imminent attack against America with weapons of mass destruction. Bush and Rumsfeld promised that the war would be over in weeks. They promised that the Iraqi people would be jubilant at their release from the grasp of the evil tyrant, Saddam. Bush and his neoconervative cartel promised that the Iraqi freedom and peace and love of America would ring out from every mosque, market and minaret in post-Saddam Iraq. Today, Iraq is experiencing a rapidly escalating civil war that has taken the form of increasingly bold terrorist attacks and targeted assassinations that have led to the deaths of many key government officials in the run-up to the first post-Saddam election to be held later this month. Present day Baghdad resembles nothing so much as Hanoi in 1968 during the onslaught that we recall as the fateful Tet offensive. America sent the searchers for WMDs home from Iraq last week, and Bush has appointed Alberto Gonzales to preside over a global American gulag where torture is practiced on US prisoners held without charges, without counsel and totally isolated from their constitutional rights in a theoretical legal limbo worthy only of the dark vision of Franz Kafka. To placate the populations of America for his lengthening series of global catastrophes, Bush bribed the wealthiest citizens with a relatively meager tax cut. In other words, Bush was allowed to trash American values and the reputation of America as a bastion of civil liberty and democracy for a mere pittance. In the meantime, Bush’s rapidly escalating debt mountain is becoming a Himalaya that has been outsourced to the Chinese who are now financing a huge proportion of the America’s astronomical deficits. It is probably worth remembering that Bush’s father was the first Envoy to China appointed by President Gerald Ford, a post which launched him into the job of Director of Central Intelligence, the foundation of the Bush family’s marketable political futures. The backdrop to Bush’s vulgar inaugural is stark. Bush, Cheney and their cartel of neoconservatives have led America into a foreign policy quagmire of universal proportions. Bush’s disastrous foreign policy is driving the global opinion of America as the world’s greatest threat to peace, freedom, justice and international stability since Hitler. The US military is well aware of the abuse they have suffered in pursuit of Bush’s second term in the White House. Under the gun, underpaid, under-armored and under-appreciated, the US military is paying a heavy price for the Bush Era. Donald Rumsfeld has made so many major mistakes and miscalculations that he will be remembered as the worst Secretary of Defense in American history. Condoleezza Rice will always be remembered as the National Security Advisor who had reports of Al-Qa’ida’s plans to attack major US targets with airliners on her desk on the morning of 9/11, but she did nothing more than lead a Bible study group. History will record that Dick Cheney cowardly vanished into a mole hole for months on end after 9/11 to take command of the US military while doing absolutely nothing whatsoever to bolster America’s homeland security. These individuals will have to answer to the court of history, and they will all be eternally condemned with Bush as the worst American administration since George Washington took the oath of office in 1789. There is no guarantee that the second Bush term will be any less ridiculous than the first. Seymour Hersh has reported that America has covert commando units on the ground in Iran who are now in the process of targeting strategic sites for imminent bombardment. Bush has played the military card so frequently that, even though it is now ragged at the edges, it is likely that he has not played it for the last time. The hubris of Bush and his ilk is limitless, and this stark and humiliating reality will be driven home by the grotesque events that will unfold this Thursday. American plutocracy will be limned in contrast to the war-ravaged nation of Iraq. Halliburton and big American oil will compete with the people of Iraq for the sovereignty of oil, gas, energy and power. Oil rich Americans will continue to get richer at the expense of the third world, while the victims of the Tsunami will continue to suffer for lack of adequate American aid. Our nation is approaching its darkest hour, but the ramparts are heaving under the strain of a new generation of protest. As for me, I shall stand beside the shade of Dr King on the barricades of protest against the monstrosities of Bush’s infinite arrogance. __________________ Since 1968, Michael Carmichael has been a professional political consultant. Beginning as a Student Coordinator for Robert F. Kennedy, he has worked in five US presidential campaigns as well as over 100 major American political campaigns for federal and state offices. In 1985, he founded The Oxford Centre for Public Affairs in the United Kingdom. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement Limited, a global political action organization based in the United Kingdom.
Last Update: 03/23/2006 |
