This topic dovetails nicely with my blog the other day about teenagers deflecting blame. According to an article I just read, Karl Rove admits to a mistake in the Bush White House handling of the Iraq War, but the mistake is not about losing focus in Afghanistan or further destabilizing an already unstable region or fueling global hatred for America by projecting an unreasonable, unilateralist viewpoint. No, his mistake was in not handling the media better after no weapons of mass destruction were found. This is the Bush administration in a nutshell. The invasion on false grounds wasn’t the mistake; it was the spin game in the media that was the problem.
If these pompous, egomaniacs aren’t the most evil collection of jackasses the world has seen in three generations, then I don’t want to see who’s worse. Rove has spent his entire career spinning lie on top of lie on top of lie, yet he’s convinced that he actually occupies the moral high ground. That dick wouldn’t recognize morality if it scalded his ass.
According to the source, he also defends the Federal response to Katrina. Nevermind that FEMA manages major disasters and that the Bush administration fired career professionals who knew how to run the organization and replaced them with incompetent golfing buddies. That wasn’t the problem. Nevemind that it took FEMA three days to get its bearings after the storm passed because the director was more concerned with his wardrobe than the people on the ground. Nevermind that the Army Corps of Engineers had repeatedly ignored warnings about the levee system in New Orleans and didn’t take proactive steps to protect the city. No, none of that really matters.
Karl Rove, the legacy of the Mistake from Texas is and always will be failure on an epic scale. Fox News can spin it however they want and call their one-sided bullshit factory “Fair and Balanced” all they want. The facts are that before the Mistake, we had the most robust, prosperous economy the world had ever known. Now, we are in shambles. Eight years of pillaging the coffers and swindling the Middle Class are what put us here, you lying, arrogant, elitist swine.
Big Owl's Tree 
Wow.
I just wonder what “handling the media better” would actually entail. After 9/11 the administration successfully bullied and/or manipulated damn near everyone into not criticizing their war plans, and the military had “embedded journalists” precisely because they knew it would bring reporters psychologically close to the troops and thus less likely to take a more critical view. They also had FOX and all the conservative commentators on radio, tv, and in newspaper editorials putting the spin out there.
And apparently, if we are to believe Rove, he still had more tricks up his sleeve.
Don’t hold back now, tell us how you really feel.
One observation on the Corp and the levees. Our mutual friend is now the public face in that struggle, and based on our conversations I now have a different perspective. What I did not realize, and something I’m sure most people don’t realize is that many of the levees are on private land, which is essentially rented to the federal government. The levee board is made up of some of the oldest families in LA. Read: oldest money, most entrenched political power, most corrupt, so on and so on. It amounts to one of the oldest and most powerful of the “good old boy” networks anywhere in the country and arguably anywhere in the deep south.
I’m in no way justifying the abject failure of the federal response to Katrina. On the contrary. I’ve simply become aware of facts that have revised my conjectures and admittedly knee-jerk reactions to government response in general and Bush response in particular.
I am amazed at how easily these right-wing clones justify their twisted lies and contradictions. My husband lost his job in April and I lost mine in October. He is a diabetic, and now he has been diagnosed with cirrhosis. Most people assume that his illness is from alcohol and poor diet, but they were caused from complications of pancreatitus. When I hear these right-wing obstructionists on C-Span justifying stopping health-care reform, and unemployment extensions, because it will add to the national debt, I literally want to beat the shit out of them! It is on the record that when their boy Bush was in office they passed legislation that added to the debt too. I would love for these pieces of shit to live my life for a while! Sorry about the rant, but I’m beyond pissed!
Man is, by nature, a being that learns, otherwise we’d still be killing our food with rocks. That begs the question why can’t we follow even the simplest morality systems? The answer… greed. It’s the most basic survival instinct. Get more, live longer.
Greed, itself, is not a sin. I know many religions say it is, but since they depend on charity, they’re not exactly unbiased. Greed is another emotion in disguise. Greed is fear.
Two hungry men are sitting at a table. One is greedy. One is not. There are two steaks. The greedy man takes both and eats for two days because he’s fearful that he’ll starve. The giving man actually does starve.
It’s a simple equation. What is life? Life is time. It’s the days, months and years of our existence. What are we taught? Time is money. By the reflexive property of Internet philosophy then Life is Money. And somewhere in our screwed up brains we decided if we’re greedy, we’ll live longer. The more we buy, the more we live.
Politicians are the tools of collective greed. People are lazy. They’d rather outsource community management issues to that good-looking guy down the street. After all, he dropped by church to say hi. He must be alright. And people don’t mind paying either. Who wants to deal with zoning laws and permits and all that other government crap we invented to keep our little snowflakes safe? In fact, since that guy’s so successful, maybe he’ll make our community the biggest, richest community of all. We can all have better jobs and make more money without doing anymore work. All we have to do is check the right box, and it will magically happen.
So there’s the politician sitting across the table from us. We’re both eyeing our steaks, and he says he needs just a little more, and a little more, and a little more. We say that we need our steak, but he says we’re being greedy. Just a little more. After all he needs steak for the other politicians. You can’t make steak without spending steak. Time is steak. Just a little more. Just a little more. And eventually we’re just left to hate them.
But the question is do we hate them because of their greed or because of ours? Suppose an unfounded war in a foreign country lead to the discovery of a new element, Dubyium. And through international wrangling, America was the soul controller of this fantastic element that could, oh I don’t know, cure Cancer. Suddenly, we go out to our mailboxes, and there’s a check for $15,000. Maybe a hundred thousand or so folks died, but they hated America and burned our flags. Maybe they didn’t exactly do what we thought they did to start the war. Do you think the outcry would still be there? Maybe some. But the bigger that check gets, the quieter those protests become.
The irony of greed is that it’s counterproductive. Once the giving man starves, the greedy man has no one to watch his back. The problem is the second you try to be a giving man, a greedy man comes along and snatches your steak right up.
On a primal level, yes, greed is a survival mechanism, but we are more highly evolved. Our frontal cortex is capable of abstract thought and capable of reasoning through that if I eat both steaks and my buddy starves, I won’t have anyone to watch my back. As human beings, we are capable of better than greed.
It’s not just that our enemies burned flags and hated us more. Our allies did, too. That’s why Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. The rest of the world was saying thank you for getting off the unilateral track the Neo-Cons embraced, thank you for re-engaging the rest of the world in dialogue.
If Dubyium is discovered and something positive for the world does come out of the Iraq War, I’ll be one of the first to eat crow, but I’ve maintained from the start that our focus needed to remain in Afghanistan. So far, those of us in that camp have been proven right.
What makes us have such different philosophies when it comes to politics and war? I’d really like to understand where these people are coming from. Is it psychological? Is it evil? In my opinion, greed is evil.