The Sorry State of the Union
To listen to Bush tell us about his fuzzy notion of the state of our union, you have to wonder where he’s been the last seven years, six of which, according to Romney, he has “kept us safe.” That overlooks the question where the hell was he when not only the twin towers were hit, but where the hell was he and everyone else (and where are they now) when the third tower, all sixty stories, which wasn’t hit, collapsed in an identical manner at the same time. But that’s another story—and one you’re never going to hear much about. The simple statement of “kept us safe,” is the real key to the whole state of the union. We are a people in fear. That fear has been played like an instrument to enchant us out of our natural rights as a self-declared free people.
The real issue, at least at this time, is the very real state of our union, which, quite probably, has not been so bad off in quite some time. In our history of presidents, Bush is making Herbert Hoover look good. In fact, Hoover was more a victim of circumstances. Today, circumstances are a victim of Bush. Hoover, of course, resided over the great depression of 1929, the same year he took office, his term beginning a downward spiral from what had been pretty good times up till then. The fact that the depression began immediately after he took office pretty much says it wasn’t really his doing that caused it. In Bush’s case, however, considering times weren’t so bad when he took over, the fact that it took seven years to get us into this mess, likewise, pretty much proves it’s his fault. Of course, it’s not his fault alone—let’s not forget Congress.
Presidents can’t really screw things up alone; they need Congress, at least in the beginning. By beginning, I mean they can’t just walk in and become a dictator; they need to have a Congress that will roll over for them and let it happen. After that, then we can start blaming the scoundrel at the top. But let’s not forget this Congress could have stopped him at many points along the way, even impeached him, tried and convicted him of high crimes and misdemeanors, and ultimately relieved the country of him, but Madam Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, ruled that out a long time ago. I personally hold her responsible for not only Bush’s failure to take action on behalf of the wellbeing of the American people, but for his more overt acts of selling out our interests to his crony’s in the corporate world.
If nothing else, one has to ask: Where did all that money spent in Iraq go? (Later on we can ask why and how gas got to be over three bucks a gallon.)
The War has cost us, as tax payers (which we tend to forget, even though it is always our money out of our pocket) in the hundreds of billions, and has virtually bankrupted the country and left us without the resources to finance more needed projects, such as maintaining a crumbling infrastructure, education and health care. What has not yet been calculated is the cost of benefits to veterans and other unforeseen consequences, not to mention the cost of a proposed rebuilding of Iraq…once we thoroughly destroy it. Among our ongoing problems, as citizens, is that we do not comprehend either high dollar amounts or the fact that the government is spending our money. We are talking about thousands of dollars that has come out of each and every household in the country.
Wherever the money went, Congress, who constitutionally gets to write all the checks for expenditures, has “resolved” to let the president have his way and all that money to spend as he wishes. The Constitution says only Congress can declare war, but this Congress passed a “resolution” to abdicate that power to the president. We even have senators running against him who were part of that abdication and thus creation of what is nothing less than a dictatorship.
Then there’s the matter of what Bush calls “the tools to keep America safe.” And what exactly does that mean? It means spying on anyone he chooses, in the name of the “war on terror,” without a warrant. It means an end to habeas corpus. And for the first time in America, we have an argument on what constitutes torture, which means we have come to accept it as a government practice. We are no longer a free country. We can be spied on, arrested without a warrant, held without bail or legal representation or the right to confront our accuser, tortured or sent overseas to be held and tortured by another country, and kept in prison indefinitely without charges. That is not a free country. That is fascism. That is a product of George W. Bush and his regime, and it is the product of fear.
This is the Bill of Rights I’m talking about—civil liberties of the most basic kind. And it is the one thing no one is discussing. It does not come up in the debates, not in the Republican debates, and not in the Democratic debates. In the first Democratic debate the candidates were asked whether human rights or national security were more important. They all agreed it was national security. That’s what Bush has been telling us. What good is security without rights? But they say that because it’s what the people want to hear because they are frightened. We’ve all got it backwards. Bush played the fears engendered from 9/11 to relieve us of our rights, but it looks like that is now the new state of things.
Now there are a couple of slates full of people running for the nomination of their party to run for president, all hyping “change.” They are hyping change because the state of the union is not what Bush would like us to think it is, and people seem to know that too.
The irony is that the fear mongered by Bush and associates is not going to go away. It is a much too useful tool to control the people. It is also what caused our present sorry state of the union.
Pretty soon we’ll have an idea of who may be our next president; at least the field will be narrowed some. We can hope things will change, but one man or one woman, no matter how sincere they may be, is not enough. The people themselves have make things change. They have to demand it and they have to work at it. If not, it’s just going to keep getting worse.
