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Why Bother To Beat About The Bush?Feb 08 '05 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Pros: You get to tell the fatally interest-conflicted U.N. and the impossibly corrupt Kofi Annan to piss-off.
Cons: Nobody but Tony laughs at your Saddam Hussein jokes with you.
INCREDIBLY CONSUMER-INFORMATIVE PREFACE I wrote the following review for a U.K.-based info site at a time when it seemed more timely and relevant (shortly after the U.S. Presidential election). Nevertheless, it's been my polemic-publishing experience that there is no better time to provoke and antagonize people than the present. I'm too lazy and apathetic to conform the op in an American-audience accommodating manner, so please oblige me by pretending either: A) That you are British, or, B) That you are a nosey, busy-body, scruples-challenged 3rd party gossip who has nothing better to do than to easedrop-troll for demeaning, but titillating tidbits of dirt to perpetuate with your fellow water cooler/coffee clutch character-assassins in hopes of getting them to cough up some equally or surpassingly disparaging dish of their own. On second thought skip the 2nd option; I'm sure it's too much of a stretch for you to imagine. Though I posted this under the topic, "Thoughts on US Presidents - George W. Bush," I probably would have felt a stronger inclination to post it under a topic entitled, "How The So-Called 'Watchdog Of The People's' Media-Unreported, Propaganda-Manipulated Attempt To Take Over The U.S. Government Was Narrowly Averted In The 11th Hour By The Whistle-Blowing Blogs Of The Very Sheep It Was Empowered To Protect, But Whom It Had Long Since Abandoned To The Very Wolves It Aspired To Become By Way Of Its Information-Control Enabled Government Takeover Bid," but for some reason, it has yet to be conceived or adopted. You may have picked up on my having a slight disaffection for the media... well you're WRONG! This is one instance where you SHOULD believe everything you read. I'm completely objective, end of bias discussion! In fairness, I must admit to having a daily recurrent daydream/fantasy wherein I unload both barrels of a Mossberg 12-Gauge into Michael Moore's pretentious, 18-chinned face at point blank range, but he's as much a product of the media's unchecked, taken-for-granted dishonesty, its utter disregard for the abusive manner in which it uses its limitless investigative resources and visibility to influence and create news, its conscious refusal to provide ALL of the available and important facts or present even a reasonably accurate and balanced picture of the world, and its manipulative, self-interested agenda, as he is a direct cause of it. Get rid of one falsely-dissembling Michael Moore and another equally disingenuous poison propaganda-spewer would just take his place. Alas, where shit accumulates, flies soon flock. It has become apparent that media reform will only occur when those who the media abuses (i.e., us) refuse to tolerate it any longer. They can sabotage my choice, but they can't take away my voice (at least not anymore, thanks to the WWW). Okay. Start pretending you're a British citizen and that it's only a week or two after the 2004 Presidential election, from this point forward... "BITTER BRITS BITE THE BALLOT" OR "YEP, THAT SONOVA-BUSH IS BACK...:" The other day, after Yankee voters shocked the world by putting another Dubya in the U.S. Presidential win column. I noted with dismay, but no surprise at all, that my British friends and neighbours seemed to be even more upset and surprised about Bush's election win than their American, Kerry-supporting counterparts. Perhaps there was a time when "the sun never set on the British Empire," but it seemed to me I was experiencing a UK solar eclipse, and Dubya's Yankee head seemed to be the sun's obstructing element. I suspect the reason my mates across the Atlantic were so surprised by the outcome, is because they had adopted as true that which the media had represented to them was the truth, but which was in fact, only what the media desired to be true and has attempted to make true: "Everybody in the world hates George W. Bush." The media did not expect the silent, media-unrepresented majority of Americans to rear its ugly head and show the world that it shouldn't believe everything it reads and views; particularly when it comes to Republican politicians. Based on the level of acrimony and the anti-Bush/anti-American sentiment I've witnessed, both generally and on this site, I realize it would be folly for me to attempt to sell you on the idea that Dubya isn't exactly the living embodiment of evil that the media has taken every opportunity to assure you he is. As an attorney, I've discovered while interacting with juries how frighteningly easy false impressions form and how excruciatingly hard it is to divest jury members of these irrational misperceptions using mere actual facts. MINDING THE MIND-FORGED MINEFIELDS If attempting to navigate the minefields of *non-media induced,* likely-seeming, yet false-as-an-Arctic-penguin 1st impressions that jurors irrationally adopt about trial litigants isn't daunting enough, the prospect of attempting to factually-rehabilitate a four-year accumulation of *media-fomented* mistrust, misgivings and misleading propaganda about a politician whose public persona the media has half-truth spindoctored into a multinational symbol of miscreant-cy and misprision, is damn near inconceivable. The sheer relentless persistence with which the media bombards our senses and saturates our defenseless consciousness with its endlessly-repeated, special interest-motivated messages and ideas, combined with our reluctance to compromise the gratification we derive from being able to put a high-profile human face on our hatred and dissatisfaction, multiplied-exponentially by our peculiar, human-natural unwillingness to subject our all-hallowed 1st impressions and sacred personal belief-investments to contradictory 2nd impressions, preclude any likelihood of my success in such a undertaking. [God bless blogs!] The media, as unwilling as it is to convey information in a balanced, complete and accurate manner, has nonetheless, become such a dominating and manipulative influence on our most basic and personal thought processes that it is no longer just an optional information-providing alternative resource we can simply choose to tune in and out at our own discretion. By our failure to confirm the media's information accuracy, question its truth-compromising motivations, exercise a healthy skepticism and draw our own conclusions, we have allowed it to evolve into an outward extension of our own consciousness; ...one over which we exercise little or no control. Instead of merely providing a window on reality, the media is CREATING much of what we perceive to be reality. Woe be to the public figure, celebrity or institution that incurs the media's arbitrary wrath, disdain or whimsical disfavour! Once the media has targeted you as an object of public ridicule or hatred, you're permanently branded. "Nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide." Redemption does not exist for the Kevin Mitnicks, the Michael Jacksons or the George Bushes because the controllers, manipulators and disseminators of our information; not our world leaders, are the rulers of the world. [God bless blogs! God bless the internet!] BURNING BUSH I'm not attempting to claim that the media singlehandedly transformed Dubya into the Great White Satan, but I'm not disclaiming it either. I am suggesting that the media is the difference between GWB being "just another U.S. President" and the living embodiment of all that is bad, evil and wrong with the world, in the eyes of the international community. The media has made GWB its global scapegoat-for-all-purposes; the political figure the world "loves to hate." Hell, why not? Hate sells a helluva lot more newspapers than syrupy admiration or business-as-usual indifference, right? Besides, he's a Republican, so it's not like he's human or anything. GWB has all the makings of a classic media fall-guy: His strengths and positives don't translate well via the "beauty is only skin and soundbyte deep" mediums of the media; "words" and "images." On the other hand, Bush's negatives and weaknesses are extremely photogenic and verbally-expressive. A) The Verbal Bush On the "verbal" side, Bush is not a charismatic orator. He sort of gives listeners an idea of what Demosthenes might have sounded like attempting to overcome his speech impediment by orating with a mouthful of pebbles. He's not articulate, nor clever, nor witty, nor entertaining. He often gets tongue-tied, nervously repetitive and regularly makes the kind of colourful misstatements that would make even the Reverend Spooner squirm in his chair. Whenever Dubya makes a speech, his supporters hold their breath, cross their fingers and pray, while his detractors monitor his every word in giddy anticipation of a flubbed soundbyte to share with water-cooler comrades the next day at work. Most people would be surprised to discover that he's a very intelligent man... according to his military aptitude tests, even more intelligent than Kerry. B) The Video Bush On the "video" side, I'm sure we'll all agree that the White House's gain isn't exactly the male spokesmodel world's devastating loss. Physically, Bush's too-close together, button eyes make him appear like "The Flinstones" cartoon's goofy "Barney Rubble" come to life. He rarely appears relaxed in front of the camera (but this could be because he has never been given any reason to be, yet does have many reasons why he shouldn't be). He licks his lips incessantly throughout his communications. His body language and movement are stiff and awkward; at times almost spastic. In no way does he come off as the slick, image-savvy, waxed fruit politician-posterboy with which the mainstream media's cameras fall shamelessly in love. THE HO' THAT COULDN'T UPROOT THE BUSH If Kennedy ushered in the age of media-romancing U.S. Presidents, Bush appears to be the non-media-darling President who forces us to question and re-evaluate our "if it looks and talks pretty, it must be pretty" media-fostered values. Kerry seemed disturbingly confident he could ride his deliberately non-specific, "I'm not George Bush" platform right into the Oval office and the overwhelmingly anti-Bush media pundits gave him little reason to believe otherwise. Media pundits love a core-value unencumbered, popularity poll-responsive camera-kisser like Kerry because they alone OWN public perception. Consequently, they alone become the power-brokering puppeteer-pimps of any political-prostitute who hitches the puppet strings of his political success prospects to the power of the im-Press. Poor Bush. All he had was his proven willingness to keep his word... Oh yeah, ...and the trust of the majority of Americans. THE WATCHBLOG OF THE PEOPLE? For all of Bush's video and verbal ineptness and for all of the media's innumerable attempts to capitalize on it, Americans apparently were not sucked in by the hype-- perhaps because their trust of, and respect for, the media is at an all-time low. For the 1st time in history, information-seeking voters who had previously been entirely at the mercy of the most politically-corrupt intstitution and dishonestly manipulative monopoly of all; the mainstream (news) media, had an alternative, on-the-spot info-providing resource, ...the worldwide network of webloggers. For once, the so-called "watchdog of the people" was exposed to a humiliating, revealing and corrective dose of the watchdog-like scrutiny it has long since ceased to provide. BLOG BITES DOG PISSING ON BUSH Time and again, throughout the '04 election campaign, the political event-observing, media-monitoring internet bloggers attending the given event, exposed deliberate mainstream-media attempts to abuse the public trust by sabotaging GWB's re-election bid using a variety of underhanded tactics not the least of which included fabricating and reporting false news stories intended to smear Bush's reputation, specifically ordering the network's entire political news-reporting division to focus its damaging and potentially compromising questions on Bush, but to withhold them from Kerry and conspiring with the other mainstream news networks to hold back on a news story they believed would be extremely damaging to Bush, in order to time its release for the week before the election, when it would likely cause the most harm to Bush's re-election prospects. In each case, on-the-scene bloggers discovered the subterfuge and exposed it via the internet, resulting in a lot of embarrassment and fingerpointing among network executives and, in one case, ultimately leading to the public disgrace and forced resignation of the notoriously partisan Dan Rather. The blatant mainstream network anti-Bushism continued right up to and through Election Day coverage, with all of the major news networks claiming a wide, early lead by Kerry, according to their "consistently reliable" exit poll surveys. Once again, the bloggers took the networks to task, sharply and loudly refuting these wildly cockeyed early returns, which, had they not been so forcefully challenged, might very well have discouraged voters from coming out to the polls and casting their votes. THE LESS THAN IMPRESSIVE PRESS'S SELF-EXPRESSION LESSON Many of the pundits have since acknowledged that the record-setting, high Bush-voter turn-out that lead to Bush's victory was at least partially due to an angry backlash by disenfranchised voters against the mainstream media for its blatant anti-Bush bias. If the media wasn't going to accurately and adequately represent them, they would make damn sure their voices were heard at the ballot box. This is about where you (Brits) came in. WHY IS THERE SUCH AN ANOMALOUS-SEEMING DISPARITY BETWEEN UK RESIDENTS' OPINION OF BUSH AND AMERICANS' OPINION OF BUSH? Perhaps, as Ciao-member, slshepley, in his wonderfully incisive "George Bush" op, "What A Stupid Man In A Stupid Job!," contends: ". . .all Americans are stupid, and by electing George Bush in for a second term they are just showing as much." It's not my first choice of rationales, but I can't rule it out because if what slshepley says is true, my American stupidity might be preventing me from being able to comprehend his explanation's brilliance and insightfulness. Nevertheless, slshepley unwittingly provides a striking insight about his less-than-flattering perception of George Bush and Americans in his very next sentence: "Could you imagine him standing for election in the UK, the newspapers would laugh him out of the race." Slshepley doesn't, as one might expect, reflect on how the British voters might respond to Bush's "...standing for election in the UK," instead, his reflexive impulse is to imagine how the press would react to Bush's would-be UK election bid. Not only does he envision the "newspapers" having a personal (as opposed to professional) reaction, but he apparently uses them for his hypothetical's contrast because they're the ones who'd be likely to have the most extreme reaction. I also find it curious (but completely in line with my theory) that he feels so confident about his knowledge of the newspapers' "feelings" about GWB. Theoretically, newspapers are objective fact and information providers; not subjective opinion providers. You can't be both objective and subjective; the two are mutually exclusive. When newspapers circulate personal opinion as news, it shouldn't come as a surprise when "reality" comes as a surprise. DUBYA IN THE FLESH I've met with Dubya and chatted it up with him on a few occasions. The thing that impresses me most about him is that he is "real." Personal warmth and intelligent conversation were never an issue either. We disagree on some positions and agree on others. For me, agreeing with a prospective public office-holder isn't nearly as important as trusting his sincerity. Bush seems to me, both in person and on the soapbox, to exhibit humanity and sincerity, the virtues of which, the glitter-chasing media doesn't generally waste its hollow, soundbytten superlatives extolling and the apparent lack of which in Kerry, represent the reason I feel such a burning disdain for him. I don't think you can fake soul. Attempting to do so just makes its absence seem that much more conspicuous. SOME QUESTIONS TO PONDER 1) What is your source of "Bush experience?" Do you believe "Bush the media-generated persona" and "Bush the person" are one and the same? 2) Do you UK-ers, those of you who have had personal, not media-related, but actual and direct experience socially interacting with Americans, find them to be remarkably different from you? Are you open to the possibility that ignorance and foolishness may not be the sole basis for a majority of American voters deciding to put Bush back into the Oval office? 3) Do you have any connection to U.S.-related public events and occurrences besides the British media? Do you implicitly trust the accuracy objectivity, balance and completeness of the information the media pumps into your brain via TV set and newspaper or do you consciously maintain a healthy skepticism about the perhaps, less-than altruistic motives and the perhaps, less-than-objective perception of the people who process and disseminate your information? If you observed a majority of a country's population act in a manner that you consider disturbingly odd and irrational, would it occur to you to question the veracity of the information your media provides you as a possible alternative to the likelihood that an entire country is stupid or has gone completely mad? 4) Who would YOU consider to have a better basis for determining whether a country's leader best represents that country's interests: the population of a foreign country who receives their 2nd-hand, perhaps limited and incomplete, information about that country's leader indirectly through their own media, or the population of the country who is more directly and immediately effected by the daily actions and decisions of that leader; who have a vested interest in investigating the veracity and accuracy of the "information" their media provides them about said leader? And now... Without further ado... ...The revelation for which you've all been waiting... ~~ ~~ THE *REAL* REASON AMERICANS VOTED FOR BUSH... ~~ ~~ Since you readers have so kindly obliged me by considering the above-cited questions, I will now, on behalf of all Americans, oblige you by providing you the REAL answer to that vexing question: "WHY DID AMERICANS DECIDE TO PUT BUSH BACK INTO U.S. PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE FOR A 2ND TERM?" ~~~ Understanding The American-Voter Mindset: ~~~ In order to understand why Americans do the impossibly foolish things they do, like electing Dubya President for a second term, there are two things you must understand about us: 1) Unlike the rest of the world population, Americans are stupid. and 2) Americans enjoy and desire to be hated by non-Americans. For those of you who may have suspected, but could never confirm it with certainty, we Americans find being stupid liberating and being hated exhilarating. Pissing off world citizens by declaring and then waging a war on imaginary terrorism as a pretext for gaining access to OPEC oil is kind of a rebellious thing that ignorant world powers do to assert their obnoxious dominance. We're a young, stupid and inexperienced country, and we like action and drama, baby! What we DON'T like is countries populated by wiser, more intelligent people telling us how we should manage our affairs! When your anti-American/anti-Bush demonstrations tipped us off to the fact that you're not all that crazy about our Dubya, we knew JUST what to do at the ballot booth on November 2nd! Remember when YOU were a teenager and YOU couldn't do anything right in your parents' and older siblings' eyes? What did you do? Did you meekly bow your head in deference to their superior wisdom and experience? Did you humbly seek out their learned guidance and ask them to tutor you in the ways of the wicked, wicked world? Or did you decide that you would make them suffer for their persnickety superiority; torture them to near-madness by reveling in your youthful ignorance and rubbing their snooty, up-turned noses in your brazen irresponsibility? Exactly. So if you REALLY didn't want us to elect Bush to a 2nd Presidential term, you'd have orchestrated worldwide PRO-Bush demonstrations! It's common knowledge that we stupid, headstrong populations are easy prey for wiser, more worldly country populations who aspire to manipulate us via reverse-psychology tactics. Americans are ignorant, insecure juvenile delinquents. This is what provides us the audacity to do the foolish things we do. You already know this, yet you insist on treating us like we're mature adults! Should WE be blamed for YOUR unwillingness to act in accordance with what you know to be true, rather than what you wish to be true? Our only concern is to grab your attention and maintain it. You may hate us and disrespect us, but we always succeed in getting your attention. Negative attention it may be, but we're neither experienced nor worldly enough to be selective about it yet. So the louder you huff and puff your chagrin and the more indignation you pack into your sneers of contempt; the more you validate us in our wayward stupidity and encourage us in our quest for self-destructive emancipation. Unfortunately, when it comes to scandalizing our global neighbours, too much antagonism is never enough. We keep needing more and more of your contempt to achieve the same rush it previously supplied us. Oh sure, invading Iraq was a big kick in the beginning when it felt fresh and illegal, and y'allz were putting on those bombdiggity, if self-indulgent worldwide peace demonstrations. ...And what a larf we had getting Tony to join in on the ultraviolent frolics with us! But then you started slacking off and mentally-adapting to the idea that America was just doing its typical, spoiled superpower shtick. Alas, the shrieks of outrage gradually gave way to intermittent, under-the-breath grumbling. We Yanks needed another fix... ...but what could we do to put that royal bug back up your bottoms? Having you other countries fussing over us makes us feel sort of... special... --alive and vibrant. You see, we've had to endure quite a bit of the ol' "survivor's guilt" since our world-domination motivated playmates, the Soviet Union, ran out of cold war military funding. Being the only remaining world superpower... well... It's just not the same survival game. The "magic;" ...that "Gun Fight at Okay Corral" do-or-die sense of urgency, quickly evaporates without some major, world democracy-subverting threat to overcome. Ohhhh, the "War on Terrorism" is pretty cool I guess, I mean you DO get to threaten people of a different culture and assert your dominance... but there's still no major adversary and competitor to turn green with envy with our latest technological universe-annihilating marvel. [:::wipes tear from eye:::] You other countries may not understand because you've probably never lost a fellow superpower before. Why did the Soviet Union have to fall? Why couldn't it have just held on?! Why didn't it just work its people harder? ... Extract more taxes from them?! ...Cut back on their education and medicine? Why? Why?! WHY?!! ...Damn nancyboy-superpower! You Brits and the rest of countries of the world have been right about George Bush and us Americans all along... We're all a bunch of power-crazed imbeciles and law-breakers who never evolved past our 19th Century "Wild West" era. George Bush is JUST the sort of cowboy we need to ensure that we never will... ...muhahahahaahaHAHAAAHAhahaHAhaHAHAHAAHAAA! [***SUBSEQUENT ADDENDUM IN RESPONSE TO VARIOUS COMMENTS (added December 12): Perhaps the U.S. and Bush have made some mistakes, I really don't know. I may be naively idealistic, but I maintain the belief that everybody, no exceptions, has a right to be free (autonomous) and to pursue happiness and success in whatever way s/he thinks best. I don't really care if Hussein and Bin Laden have any connection or not. Nor do I care (well, I actually do) whether either one actually has WMD. As far as I'm concerned, those are just public opinion bargaining chips over which political parties vie in a never-ending political battle for a moral high ground that may not even exist. I believe terrorism and genocidal dictators, whether they inhabit Afghanistan, North Korea, Sudan, Iran or Iraq, and whether they threaten, terrorize, rape, torture, kill and/or usurp the personal autonomy of people who live in our country, your country or their own country, cannot co-exist in a world whose inhabitants are born with the unconditional right to be free. We can't reverse the events of 9/11 or those that have occurred since, we can only learn from our human mistakes, lapses in judgment and their resultant failures and move on, applying the new wisdom we've acquired as we go. Hussein is gone and I believe the world is better for it. To pull out of Iraq without providing the Iraqis a system /means to govern themselves would be disasterous. Attempting to appease, co-exist with, and/or simply ignore freedom and life-threatening terrorists like Bin Laden is the formula that resulted in 9/11 in the first place. To repeat that formula, even if by defaulting to it by relaxing our vigilance and suppressing the memory of our horribly-murdered men, women and children and the shattered lives of the people they left behind, would be unforgivable. Until we can figure out a way of eliminating the threat of terrorism that doesn't involve the uncomfortable sacrifices we are currently forced to make and endure, I see no alternative but to support them. In order to support them, we need a leader who is committed to the same anti-terrorist vision; a person who isn't afraid to look like the "bad guy" in the eyes of those who take their own freedom and that of their less fortunate, terrorism-oppressed neighbours for granted. Right or wrong, that's why I voted for Dubya. To each his or her own (that's what "freedom" is all about, isn't it?), thank you for your thoughtful reads/input/rants/verbal abuse, etc.,]. Best Regards, --29th  |
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