Doublespeak Comes Easy To Bush

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Doublespeak Comes Easy To Bush
Bill Gallagher
March 08, 2005

’’I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions." — Dorothy Day (1897-1980).

DETROIT - The hollow words of politicians dominate public life in America and the nonsense they spew is repeated, usually unchallenged, in the echo chambers corporate media dutifully provides. Their words are worshiped, their deeds escape scrutiny.

George W. Bush says he wants to "liberate" and bring "freedom" to the Muslim masses in the Middle East, "reform" Social Security, and protect the environment with a "clean air" initiative.

Tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the rich are intended to create jobs and "help middle-class Americans." Forty-five million Americans have no health care at all. Those who do are paying more and more to keep the benefit, and for many the unconscionable cost of prescription drugs is simply unaffordable. Bush and his Republican minions in Congress assure us there is nothing fundamentally wrong with health care and all we need to do is offer "vouchers" and "personal medical accounts" for the growing number of the uninsured.

While these issues get drips of attention in the media, we are deluged with coverage of every imaginable detail of Martha Stewart’s release from prison and Michael Jackson’s trial. How could we live without hearing about Martha’s first post-prison cappuccino and Jacko’s bedroom reading? The Busheviks just love these mindless diversions. They know that, in the unlikely event the American people ever wake up from this stupor and start paying attention to matters of real substance, they are in deep trouble.

Caught in the squeeze of undeniable truth, Alan Greenspan briefly suspended his usual partisan pimping for the administration and admitted that Bush’s budget deficits are "unsustainable." That is where the real crisis is, not in the Social Security trust fund. Predictably, the media gave Greenspan’s dire warning little play. Instead, we got more sound bites from Bush’s standard snake-oil sermon about his plan for "saving" Social Security.

The media focus on Bush’s words, while the action he is planning requires borrowing trillions of dollars, adding more to the "unsustainable" federal deficit and doing nothing to address the long-term funding requirements for Social Security.

The systematic torture of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison got about two weeks’ worth of play on television news. The ongoing atrocities at Guantanamo and illegal imprisonments there are given scant attention. Another quickly departed story revealed that the Bush administration kept the lid on the 9/11 Commission’s finding that the Federal Aviation Administration got dozens of warnings well in advance of the terrorist attacks and ignored them. In sparkling reports, Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times described how the FAA got intelligence indicating that al-Qaeda was planning airline hijackings and suicide missions and did nothing about the chilling warnings. The story had traction for about two days.

The fact that the FAA had long stonewalled the 9/11 Commission and a subpoena was needed to get the relevant information gave the story even more resonance. Add the Bush administration’s suppression of the section of the commission report until after the election and you have a major news story that screams for more explanation and honest answers. We got none of that.

Right-wing talk radio, the Fox News Channel and other reliable conduits for Bushevik propaganda ignored the story. Most of the mainstream corporate media waved at the serious story and fed the American people a steady diet of Martha Stewart’s jailhouse recipes, Michael Jackson’s weirdness and UFOs.

The pre-eminence of banality led Frank Rich of The New York Times to observe, "What’s missing from news is the news."

The U.S. Supreme Court did make real news last week, outlawing the death penalty for juveniles 16 and 17 years old (younger juveniles already were excluded). Nearly all the teens on Death Row are in the deep-Red states of the old Confederacy, where lawmakers and executioners want no bad child left behind.

In the 5-to-4 decision, the justices in the majority certainly did become social scientists, ruling that evolving standards of decency redefine the meaning of what "cruel and unusual" punishment means. The high court engaged in another enlightened exercise in sociology in 1954 when it declared separate but equal public education was "inherently unequal."

Three years ago, the court prohibited executing mentally disabled people. Perhaps we can now see hope for abolishing the barbaric death penalty altogether. That would be unsettling for our Lord High Executioner, George W. Bush, but somehow our republic will survive.

The Supreme Court death penalty story lasted a day, but the court’s consideration of arguments over the display of monuments of the Ten Commandments dominated the news last week and will for months to come.

One of the monuments in question is on the state capital grounds in Austin, Texas. While the Lord presented Moses with the tablets on the sacred ground of Mt. Sinai, the replica is on the defiled ground of one of the most consistently corrupt governments in the history of Western democracy.

Never mind that George W. Bush was once the governor there — that’s just a minor post in Texas politics — generations of bribed legislators and the lobbyists who paid them to steal from the people left their stains on Austin long before Bush came to town.

The fuzzy debate over what is a secular display and what constitutes government promotion of a religious creed and establishment of religion is always heated. If we really want to get serious about separating church and state, Utah would be out of business.

The right-wing rage and the fervor of the evangelistas over displaying the commandments make me nervous. The display former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore defiantly tried to keep in the court building there is now on a national tour.

When a federal district court ordered the tablets removed, Moore became a martyr for Moses. Unaware of the irony, the faithful are now kneeling and praying before the golden calf of Alabama’s Ten Commandments.

The words and symbol mean everything. When government action routinely shatters the commandments, it means nothing.

Personally, I would prefer a public display of the eight Beatitudes, the words of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. Unlike the authoritarian do’s and mostly don’ts of the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes praise virtuous action and recognize the plight of the poor and oppressed, for which they will be rewarded.

The Beatitudes are really the charter of Christianity and represent a revolutionary approach to life. Those who suffer and those who bring them comfort will see the kingdom. The rich who do not share, the powerful who persecute and exploit the poor and the self-righteous are out of luck.

Dorothy Day embraced the difficult call of the Beatitudes and that is how she lived her remarkable life. Heroic actions defined Dorothy Day, not hollow words. She was the editor of the Catholic Worker and stood against war and for pacifism. She was beaten for her beliefs and the Postmaster General once shut down the paper and prohibited her from sending anything through the mail he considered "treasonable."

Dorothy Day lived among the poor in lower Manhattan. She was meek and merciful, always a peacemaker. She once said, "Don’t call me a saint. I do not want to be dismissed so easily.’’ George W. Bush and his ilk see no sin in waging war to assure material gains for their own comforts and corporate interests. They figure there is no explicit commandment forbidding that.

Dorothy Day saw the world differently and said, "The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up."

Damn those Beatitude.