Alas, As It Ever Was
Scott Horton’s response to the “torture president’s” 28 January 2008 State of the Union address is well worth a read. But one interesting effect of his analysis is that it reminds us that Bush has not changed in seven years
What Horton describes about the SOTU has been true from the beginning, from 1999, 2000, 2001.
On Dubya’s style as a leader:
Bush spurns the tools of a democracy—building consensus through dialogue and reason. Instead he favors the tools of tyranny—governance through fear and intimidation, laced with a strong reserve of hypocrisy.
On Dubya’s “vision”:
But if Bush’s address offered a single, unifying vision last night, then it was taken straight from the nightmarish future described by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-four. It was a future driven by a massive private-public partnership focused on surveillance on the citizenry, invading every remaining trace of privacy and quiet. A government run wild in its snooping and meddling. And all of this has been and will in the future be justified by invoking the mantra “terrorism.”
On “national security” priorities, and the fight against “terrorism”:
Isn’t it telling that Bush’s highest priority now is not national security or the safety of American citizens, but shielding telecommunications companies from liability for their past criminal conduct? … Bush peddles immunity to his corporate sponsors who work tirelessly with him in the consecration of a new imperial presidency, no longer accountable to law. Criminality must be rewarded, Bush reasons, and he calls on Congress to do it, and in so doing, to make a mockery of its Constitutional role as definer and protector of the law.
More on Dubya’s approach to democratic leadership:
Without popular support, and without reason or even cogent arguments which could sustain his position, Bush turns to his most trusted technique: fear-mongering. If Congress doesn’t give me just what I want, then Congress will be responsible for whatever attacks befall the country, he reasons.
Alas, this is the way it always has been. The first words out of my mouth on the morning of 11 September 2001 were: “Let the wiretapping begin!” I knew what the attacks would ultimately mean for citizens’ rights the US, even before I knew the origins or other consequences of the attacks themselves. It was the era of the Pentecostalist Ashcroft’s DOJ, which had already shown an interest in increasing social control and ignoring civil rights. I knew they would be looking to use the attacks to further their own social, economic, and political advantage.
There has been a lot of talk about change and the future during the 2008 presidential race, and a lot of implied or direct comparisions to the current president and his administration. But what has always been stunning to me, and remains surprising now, is how much credence and consideration the man is given despite the sometimes transparently fake face he presents. He was never anything other than “a man of decidedly modest abilities crazed by power, convinced of the rectitude and clarity of his own vision.” (Horton) Without the so-called war on terrorism to provide a massive hand-waving distraction from judging his character and intentions, we might have seen him for the failure that he is sooner, and either not re-elected the man, or impeached him by now.
