September 21, 2005
The bodies of the mangled and bloated corpses are no where to be found on
America's news programs. Like the countless dead in Iraq they're purged from
the coverage and stripped from the public record. They've been replaced by
the well-scrubbed visage of the Potemkin-president issuing his comforting
words for his people.
"New Orleans will rise again," Bush crowed, invoking the worn phraseology
of the slave era.
For a White House that prides itself on appearances and spends over $62
million per year on public relations firms; the Bush monologue on national
TV was a dismal performance. His limp promises of restoration, all ringing
with the same free-market timbre that has left Kabul and Baghdad in a
shambles, fell well short of the mark. The ruinous affects of his tenure are
now everywhere to be seen and even the media's impenetrable smokescreen
seems to be lifting.
Disaster follows Bush like a shadow. It is the one inescapable fact that
haunts his 58 years, and it should provide some meager relief for those who
believe that he and his vile regime cannot be brought down.
Just look around; Iraq, Afghanistan, Enron, Cheney's energy-papers, the
deficits, the courts, the UN, Israel-Palestine, New Orleans, the
corporate-corruption, the war-profiteering, the incompetence, the lies;
everything Bush
touches is reduced to rubble. No institution, however protected, can
withstand the onslaught of his withering company; the vast wreckage extends
in every direction.
"Character is fate," Marcus Aurelius said; it is a straight line drawn
from a man's birth to his final hour. Some men will fail in everything they
do and there is no force in the universe that can alter their destiny.
Harken, Arbusto, Spectrum, the Texas Rangers and now the United States of
America; all following the predictable downward spiral into the muck. The
trajectory cannot be amended by simply putting down the bottle. Failure is
an indelible blotch, like the mark of Cain, forever embossed on the soul of
its victim. Its part of Bush's genetic-code, as integral to the whole
mechanism as the cocky-drawl or the lumbering gait.
The Project for the New American Breakdown is headed for the political
land-fill scuttled by its luckless wagon-master corporate-George.
The street scenes of submerged New Orleans, now littered with the
unattended carcasses of blue-faced victims is the Bush legacy. It can be
softened with the dulcet prose of the New York Times or air-brushed by the
feigned-compassion of TV-anchormen, but the truth keeps popping its head up
through the weeds revealing the devastation.
New Orleans won't go away; won't disappear "into that good night."
America's beloved Southern port-o-call has been vanquished by neglect,
pummeled by the erosion of its wetlands and the weakening of its levees.
Now, the tens of thousands of refugees are fleeing the previously thriving
metropolis much like the people of Falluja, Tal Afar and Samarra.
In Iraq the effects of Hurricane George can be seen throughout the Sunni
heartland. Rumsfeld continues to storm through Iraq's underbelly like
Tecumseh Sherman on his march to the sea leaving only tent cities and
desolation behind. The relief agencies are simply overwhelmed by immensity
of the human catastrophe. There's no way they'll be able to meet the
people's needs.
Bush, of course, just shrugs off such sentimentality. What possible
difference could their suffering make? Besides, there's no longer even a
trace of a plan for Iraq, just the fiendish abuse of force and the
drunken-elation in slaughter.
None of it makes sense, nor should it. The nation is sinking in an ocean
of hubris and delusion. Reason and decency have vanished into the desert
sirocco; only the rapture of utter destruction persists.
There's no stopping this juggernaut. Washington's ruling-elite are
hell-bent to continue; flailing away at every obstacle in their murderous
path. This week it's Iraq, next week it's Syria; what possible difference
could it make? America won't be digging out after this orgy of terror
anyway. Bush has led us to the brink. The economy is teetering, our
alliances are crumbling, and the nation is ambling towards disaster. All the
while, the Dear Leader has fixed his vision on the deepest part of the
quicksand and trudges onward.
America won't dodge the Reaper this time.
"Character is fate". Our future is hopelessly shackled to the dwindling
fortunes of our vacuous president, George Walker Bush.
Courtesy & Copyright © Mike Whitney
|
