Reasonable Expectations

REASONABLE EXPECTATIONS

By Peter Fredson

December 28, 2005

The great majority of Americans reasonably expect that their leaders should uphold American traditions, virtues, ethics and morals. As we look back on the G.W.Bush record in the Presidency, over the past five years, we compare it against the reasonable expectations most Americans have of their Presidents.

One of the great virtues is openness, candor, and transparency, clear exposition of facts, frankness, honesty, truthfulness and forthrightness. Statements of Presidents must bear some resemblance to their deeds and activities. Deceit, dishonesty, trickery, pretense, cheating, duplicity, fraud and deliberate misstatements are considered to represent failure of a leader to govern except by guile.

We must, therefore, ask which end of these dichotomies represents the daily strategy of George W. Bush? Is there any resemblance to openness and honesty? Or, is there an enormous swing towards secrecy, hiddenness, obscurantism, and deception? Do his words represent any connection to actuality? Is our President more addicted to fantasy than to reality? Who does he fool most, the public or himself?

Egomaniacal self-deception, narcissism, dry-drunk syndrome, manic behavior, severe dogmatism, or sheer stupidity may represent some explanations of his self-duplicity. Is his indoctrination into Born-Againism, into messiah-hood, into receiving invasion instructions from the Great Jehovah to blame for his dogmatism?

Is he indeed a pliable puppet of hypnotic fundamentalists, a dangerous Vice President, a trickster advisor, corporate neocons, the military-industrial establishment, or a product of world domination practice?

We would expect that patience be a prime virtue of leaders, but we know that Adolph Hitler flew into rages “biting the carpet” and that to oppose him ensured a very quick execution squad. We have similar stories of the raging Imperial President when confronted with alternate views of his assumptions, when he flies into cursing rages.

The latest is that he reportedly said “The Constitution is only a God...m piece of paper” when his regal authority was questioned. We know that his lack of remorse at violating the constitution comes from his assumption that he is either the law or above the law, complicated by being chosen by his God and therefore never to be questioned without hell-fire raining down from the sky.

He has been told by sycophant attorneys that his power is unlimited because he is a War President and that his power to abuse, torture, incarcerate indefinitely, kidnap, infest secret jails around the world, spy on his own “subjects”, and to declare as treason any attempt at criticism. His appointments of highly undesirable cronies are a remarkable testament to his beliefs.

Who in the world would think of waiting for Congress to go on vacation and then appoint a John Bolton to be “Ambassador” to the United Nations, an organization he detests and would like to see eliminated as a threat to the neocons dominion of the world.

Who else in the world would appoint a fun die fascist like Ashcroft whose main task was to institute the elimination of civil rights, privacy, free speech, assembly, reading of “suspect” books, opening mail, listening in on bedroom conversations, and putting brassieres on statues?

Who else would appoint Condi Rice, the Black Angel of Death, to lecture countries on liberty and democracy, and to declare in public in her tiny bureaucratic voice that there were no kidnappings, no surreptitious flights, no secret jails, no torture, no abuse, no violations of right, no indefinite suspensions, etc, etc. etc.

Finally, because this examination of Bush’s verisimilitude attitudes could go on indefinitely: who ate the cake, strummed the guitar, cut brush, when thousands of people were drowning and starving on the Gulf Coast, and then resorted to photo-ops to relieve the distress, the deaths, the poverty, the homelessness by patting little black boys on the head, or offering some fundy sycophants a sandwich, or making a series of speeches with Hollywood lighting and patriotic or sacred backdrops, to compliant captive audiences, smiling like a jackass, then swaggering, strutting and even smirking to show his “concern” for falling popularity polls.

Who is President? Who is in charge? Exactly where did the buck stop, or is it still circling the block? Is there any corruption? Has anyone been punished? Of course, Karl Rove was punished by giving him several billion dollars to help reconstruct New Orleans, which he will undoubtedly use wisely to create several more billionaire cronies.

Apart from Senator Byrd, (and a few others) who is watching the Constitution being ignored in favor of regal pronouncements?

Impeachment? Not while any Republican Senator has breath and elections are still a long ways away. Either hang together, or hang separately! Three more years of the most dangerous terrorist on this planet! Watch out Syria, Iran, and maybe Venezuela. Condi is watching you!