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George
Bush: The Unauthorized Biography
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In
Miami -Dade County . . the dead have been known to vote
in mayoral elections. Many Floridians refer to theirstate
as "the banana republic", and a popular protest is to
throw bananas on the steps of government buildings.
Guardian Nov 11th 2000
As
we predicted in our previous editorial concerning the
election in the USA, things have taken a distinctly wobbly
turn. It is becoming apparent that the illusions of
democracy projected by the WASPocracy of the greatest state
on earth has begun to fall away. What always seemed such a
seamless wrapped-up thing has begun to look like a ball of
string unravelling from the centre. And if society itself
was a ball of string, it would be a ball that is constantly
in motion; so once unravelled, it will never be wrapped up
quite the same agaiin
Latest
Results
Gore
48,512,648 - 260 seats in Electoral College
Bush
48,266,681 - 246 seats in Electoral College
Winner
of popular vote - Al Gore, Democrat
32
seats undeclared, 25 of them for the State of
Florida
Governor
of Florida, ultimately in control of election process in the
State - Jeb Bush, brother of George Jnr. (Republican
Candidate)
Allegations
about voting process in Florida so far include: Confusing
ballots in some counties. One such in Palm Beach, known for
rich Jewish liberals registered such a large vote for Pat
Buchanan, right wing independent demagogue that even he
expressed surprise. Numbers given so far talk of up to 3000
votes above expectation for Buchanan, but up to 19,000
spoiled ballots - the result of people unsuccessfully trying
to correct the mistake.Reports of old ladies leaving voting
booths in tears.
BBC
interviewed a Democrat activist (Newsnight 9th 2000) who
claimed that they tried to warn people but did not reach
many voting stations until late afternoon, and were forced
by election officials to stay more than 50 yards from
area.
Democrat
Committee reports Florida highway patrol officers set up a
"safety checkpoint" near one polling station, intimidating
black citizens wishing to cast their vote.
Florida
one of only 13 states in US to deny the vote to former
prisoners who have already served their sentence; There are
an estimated 437,000 people disenfranchised - invariably
poor and nearly half of whom are black
Americans.
Breaking
News: Warren Christopher and James Baker (for Democrats and
Republicans respectively) sent to Florida, to oversee
re-counts and assess mood of local people and party
activists.
Although
the rest of the world has always had its doubts, the
majority of the American people have always been convinced
of the integrity of their political system.
Despite
the fact that there are only two choices ever offered as
President, and most Americans would admit that the selection
of those candidates is corrupt. Popular culture and belief
has always admitted that conspiracy lay at the heart of the
choice of candidates. The original campaign finance bills
were introduced in the 1880's when it became clear that the
masasive unregulated industrial conglomerates of the time
were buying the Presidency.
Eisenhower
again warned of the dangers of the military - industrial
hierarchy subverting the democracy, but not much notice was
paid to the warnings of a retiring
President.
Clinton's
superb fund-raising abilities meant that the Democrats were
able to reach an almost equal footing with the Republicans;
and because his victories were clearly the will of the
voting public; no real attempt was made at reform.
It
would have been a major task to move such a Bill through the
Republican controlled House of Representatives or Senate;
especially since they were already stacking their coffers
for the replay, their revenge.
It
would be foolish to imagine that if George Bush Jnr.'s
father was not an oil-rich billionaire who had been
President, he would be anywhere near becoming the most
powerful individual on the planet. He has neither
intelligence, a vision or any real charisma. He affects the
role of a down-home plain speaking man of the people, when
he is in fact a talentless, conniving rich - boy, who sees
the Presidency as his birthright. Although decrying Gore for
playing class-politics; it is clear that Gore's Democrats
want to maintain the fragile social cohesion constructed
during Clinton's Presidency, whilst Bush - consciously or
unconsciously - would affect a policy agenda which will tear
it apart.
Despite
reports of negative reaction to some of Gore's points
concerning Bush's social policy during the debates; it is
clear from a European perspective that he perhaps should
have gone much further in extrapolating the real effects of
a Republican victory.
Despite
right-wing commentators claiming that the liberial urban
intelligentsia voted for the Democrats while the
"heartlands" voted for Bush; it is now apparent that enough
of the urban poor had been woken up to the real cost of
Republican government to cast their ballots.
It
is unwise to dismiss the poor of the cities,for as they
depend on the farmers for their food; urban workers provide
the means for rural communities to live in a twenty-first
century lifestyle; the two halves of a country are
interdependent. Most of the urban poor.are mainly second
generation families who were forced off the land by the few
still left there in ranches stretching as far as the eye can
see.
The
cohesion of the USA as a political entity has always been a
balancing act. The destructive slaughter of the Civil War
was within living memory only a generation back; and the
ability of the ruling class to produce candidates who can
move society in a certain direction, whilst maintaining that
the will of the people has been obeyed, seemed to have been
perfected by the constitutional and political system in the
USA.
However,
so much of this has depended on the sanctity of the ballot;
and the fact that in such a vast country, the differential
between the two major contenders for the Presidency has been
numerically great enough to suggest that local fraud is
pointless.
The
acceptance of a mandate for the victor has only been
questioned once before in recent times; in the 1960 election
which saw Kennedy defeat Nixon. The election was about as
close as this one; and the vanquished Republicans questioned
the conduct of the ballot in Illinois. The Democrats won the
popular vote and took the White House. It is clear from what
we know now that there was the usual mob-inspired vote
rigging in that election. The people accepted JFK as their
President; but it is certain that some parts of the
Republican establishment ever accepted his election as
legitimate.
It
was probable that if not actual conspirators in the
assassination in Dallas, Texas they were more than happy to
help cover up the trail and benefit from the
consequences.
Nixon,
who never forgave the Kennedy's and needed little
justification as a former right -hand man of Senator Joe
McCarthy, indulged in his own version of conspiracy fixing
of elections in the race against Hubert Humphrey, which he
won.
In
a country as big as the US, with so many regional and ethnic
differences, the "myth" of Government by the people, for the
People, has a resonance which can pull the strands together.
Sections
of society who feel under-priveliged or ignored have to
accept that the general will of the people has chosen
both
The
announcement from the State of Florida expected to give not
only the final tally for the votes cast by its citizens, but
also the name of the next President of the United States has
been suspended for up to a further week. Legal challenges to
the ballots in Florida - as well as other States - threaten
to delay the result even longer.
Behind
Bush are figures who are not shadowy, as much as the forces
of darkness. The Guardian (November 7th, 2000)
produced an article focussing on two of the more prominent
men who will be operating as central players in any future
Bush administration.
As
i started to read the article I began to think that the
Guardian, one of the bastions of independent broadsheet
journalism in Britain, had been subjected to a hoax; or
perhaps was just testing the credulityof its liberal
readership.
A
cold horror started crawling through my bones as I began to
realise that far from being some hilarious parody, I was
reading a dry factual description of the reactionary forces
propelling an idiot frontman into the White
House.
Sadly
George Dubya as he seems to be called in a strange mutation
of baby-talk, is no benign idiot savant, like the man played
by Peter Sellers in the film Being
There.
No
man of goodwill to his fellow man would sentence 148 of them
to death with only a 15 minute review of their final
appeals.
The
Guardian article focussed on two of Bush's closest
advisers on social affairs - a brief which they both appear
to think has been handed them by God
Almighty.
The
photos show two people that you might imagine seeing on a
really odd acid trip. One of them, the ludicrously named
Myron Magnet, is a Benny Hill lookalike who sports white
mutton - chop whiskers, which he claims he was inspired to
grow when at Cambridge (Massacheusetts? )
They
are of such incredible dimensions that they dwarfed a lot of
what he said; which is dangerous because his world is
totally different from the one we all share - although that
might change soon.
Described
as:
'.
. . a cultural hawk from the right-wing Manhattan
Institute" ,
Mr
Magnet decries the liberation of society during the Cultural
Revolution of the sixties. He mourns the death of the mental
straitjacket imposed on the free citizens of the Western
World; through War,recession ,War, austerity, Cold
War.
The
main theme in his book The Dream and the Nightmare is
the dehabilitating effect on the poor of any social welfare
provision. He claims that the spiritual will of the poor is
weakened by making their lives any easier; or the
possibilities of their survival any better.
Like
someone who became a Dickens admirer after seeing a
Hollywood sacharined version of A Christmas Carol,
without ever knowing that the author wrote Bleak
House, he proffers a solution to the United States'
massive - and potentially explosive - social divide, and
inner city problems.
In
hypocrisy befitting the typical Victorian aristocrat or
industrialist; believing that the rich had been rewarded by
God, and the poor should work at it; justifying seperate
moral values for the haves and have-nots, Myron blames the
depressive poverty enjoyed by so many of his compatriots as
a direct result of their acceptance of the liberl attitudes
of the 60's.
He
claimed that the decade
'.
. . permitted, even celebrated behavior that when poor
practice it will imprison them inextricably in
poverty."
So
people don;t do loads of drugs to block out the shituation
that they are in; they are living in a trashcan because
their momma did drugs.
For
millionaires, of course, and the frat-brat sons of
ex-Presidents, a little experimentation isn't a precursor of
moral degeneration; its just a little experimentation. They
won't end up in a back alley, in a cardboard box, being a
tax burden on the rich. They have the safety net of money
coined out of the sweat of the poor folks whose children end
up on the pipe, working the street corner. Thats the cost of
downsizing, relocating, the global corporate
economy.
All
we can say to that pile of horseshit, as they say in the
West, is get real, Myron. George Bush Jnr. however, has
descibed Mr. Magnet's fantasy world for whacked-out acid
casualties with a strange obsession for Victoria values as
having helped
"crystallise
some of my thinking about cultures and of part of the
legacy of my generation."
So,
this is what happens to your brain when you don't smoke
dope?
Anyway,
talking of people who have crossed over the great divide,
looked into the abyss, had a really bad experience and not
come back in the same shape as they were before; you only
have to do a quick check on the other featured 'adviser' to
realise how far over the edge this lot really
are.
If
one wanted to be charitable about the other adviser featured
in the Guardian article, Marvin Olasky; one would say that
he was just a touch confused. Looking like someone who woke
up one day after a really bad trip and thought shit, I'm
a hippy; giving himself a pudding-bowl haircut but
forgetting the beard, Mr. Olasky's case history could well
support this theory.
He
was raised in a Jewish family in Brooklyn; but claiming to
have become an atheist in his youth, Marvin turned towards
the humanistic philosophy of Marxism .
In
a similar episode to one in the life of that other great
shadow player in the history of the Presidency, Lee Harvey
Oswald, it is reported that Olasky travelled on a freighter
to Russia in 1972 to prove his " . . . Marxist-Leninist
credentials.' .
However,
a year later he was back at Yale University in the USA,
doing a cultural studies degree.
Whilst
at college we are led to believe that he underwent a
glorious epiphany without the aid of psychotropic
drugs.
At
some point the overwhelming diet of Hollywood Westerns
softened his brain to the extent that we are told he began
to wonder "What if there is a God?' One assumes that a
self-proclaimed atheiest since his teens, Olasky might have
approached this question a little earlier in his
life.
One
might also wonder, just in passing, whether Olasky ever
thought that a Native American audience watching the very
same Westerns , might have asked the same question with a
different tone in their voice. . .
However,
Marvin emerged from this cathartic experience with the
self-righteous zeal of the most committed convert.
Publisher
of a frighteningly ambitious journal called World
(devoted, The Guardian report tells us, to proving
that Bill Clinton is the Antichrist Incarnate); he has also
started his own church in (where else?) Austin, Texas called
Redeemer Presbyterian. One of the main tenets of the Church
is the unsuitability of the female gender for any position
of power; after all, they were instrumental in Mankind's
Fall from grace in the Garden of Eden.
He
describes voting for a woman as shameful. One wonders if he
doesn't have a certain confusion regarding his sexuality as
well....
Olasky
also has described "liberal journalists" as having a "hole
in their soul" (a hate-shaped hole, perhaps); which is a
little worrying for someone who also manages to hold down a
job teaching journalism at University of Texas (the home of
ethical impartiality).
He
also desribed the East-Coast liberal intelligentsia as being
adherents of "the Church of Zeus" which left the Guardian
journalist a little perplexed . However, in the sort of
right - wing circles where the beliefs of the so-called
"Aryan":churches are common knowledge, this is seen as a
direct reference to the Jewish faith.
The
right-wing rascists who proclaim their "Christianity" as
being that of an Aryan Christ, often point to the close
relationship between the Hellenic and Judaic cultures in the
historic Kingdoms of Israel. Much of that part of the Middle
East was conquered by Alexander, and the Jewish aristocracy
and middle classes intermarried with their imperial
overlords. The Jewish and classical Greek philosophies did
intermingle,and culture and religion of both were affected.
However,
the idea that the version of Christianity espoused by people
who believe that Christ's message has any racial overtones
is authentic, must be seen as a sad act of self-deception.
Surely the one belief of Christ that raised Christianity
above all the ancient tribal religions, and the imperial
synthesis of those beliefs; was his espousal of universal
humanity created by one God.
Anyway,
it is obvious that Olasky could neatly wear the label so
readily handed out by Zionists of "self - hating Jew'. It is
worrying that he should have such a distorted view of
history and so much potential influence on the future course
of world events.
Not
only will these people attempt to influence the governance
of the United States, but they will do their best to affect
foreign policy as well.
They
have already made statements affirming their intention to
persuade Bush to make the provision of international aid
programmes conditional on the abolition of birth -control
and abortion programmes in recipient countries; with no
regard to the Aids pandemic, or the problems of global
over-population.
Magnet
and Olasky believe that the whole state machinery of
safety-net welfare provision and affirmative action should
be dismantled and replaced with soup kitchen charities
sponsored by the rich on a voluntary basis.
What
would be compulsory though, would be the religious
indoctrination which came with every bowl of soup.One
wonders whether these suggestions are in fact the work of
closet atheists bent on undermining any religious belief in
the poor ?
If
the rich revert to their kind-hearted phianthropic ways of
the nineteenth century, and set up a few soup kitchens in
the ghettos; they can wean those indolent, ignorant poor
folks away from the evil weed, the crack, drive-bys and
gang-bangings. Before we know it, they'll be queuing up at
the church on Sunday; and every rich man will again have his
choice of a plentiful supply of serving
wenches.
The
ones not suffering from diseases like TB, syphillus, typhus;
or worn out by too many infant mortalities, multiple
childbirths or scrubbing the rich mans floor sixty/ seven
since the age of fifteen.
Perhaps
even more shadowy and dangerous than these two is a man
named Larry Lindsey, one of the first Reaganite crusaders
for "supply - side economics", famously described by Bush
Snr. as "voodoo economics".
Also
described as the "trickle-down" theory of monetary policy,
this whole agenda rests on the idea that if you give the
rich more than they could ever spend, some of it will
eventually get to the poor.
Another
well-known Bush adviser, Condoleeza Rice - confusingly - a
black woman who is also a Cold War warrior, promises to
renew the adversarial mentality towards Russia and China;
coupled with a promise to withdraw all US aid for UN
intervention which does not correspond to an isolationist,
Christian fundamentalism.
They
are clowns in a carnival of fools, but behind the
greasepaint smiles and moralising platitudes are social
theories which could send the US spinning into an even
greater polarisation of attitude and vision than existed at
the height of the Vietnam conflict.
©
2000
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