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The last refuge of the Bush supporters

By Victor John Serge

 


The last refuge of the Bush supporters, their so far unbroken credo of faith, is that the federal government, for that matter -- any government, is the most efficient then when it does not gather taxes at all. But then again, it can hardly exist on such a premise and such a definition of efficiency. Hearing this argument from the Bush supporters repeatedly, the following questions pop up into my head immediately – do we need the government at all, who are we and who are they, and why then do they seek to take control over the government?

After an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the present Democratic executive branch of federal government, the Californians, who gave the country Ronald Reagan, are called to deliberate upon a new chief executive for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the federal bureaucracy and the efficiency of its parts, which are the piers of the destiny of our empire.

It has been frequently remarked in the liberal media that it seems to have been reserved to the middle class to decide the important question, whether our society is really capable of establishing an efficient central government from reflection and choice, or whether our fate is to depend on accident and money in our political decisions. Particularly now, when Hollywood (Spielberg, Douglas, and Co.) is eagerly promoting the notion that "greed is good" and they are not hypocrites if they openly demonstrate their greed or prostitution, as in the case of that multi-millionaire of San-Diego who chose his wife among 50 women that paraded their legs in front of him and TV-cameras.

They want to say to us that if it is selling your body for millions or stealing millions of dollars from the middle class, then it is OK and it is not prostitution or theft but respectable marriage and business practices. However, if a working woman will ask a man for 50 bucks for her service on 42nd Street in New York, then it is prostitution… because it was done not so "openly" as in Hollywood. That is when Orwell’s 1984 becomes reality and we can no longer discern good from evil and liberty from slavery.

If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we have arrived may be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made. And a wrong election of the part may deserve to be considered the general misfortune of our people and the whole of humankind, which has been looking up to us for the past half of a century.

This idea, in my view, should energize those common folk, who consciously and keenly feel for the event. Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious assessment of our true, long lasting interests, not prejudicial and biased by considerations and not connected with the good of the majority. However it can be, this is a thing more zealously to be wished than prudently to be counted on.

Our present deliberation might involve a variety of views, passions, and prejudices not quite favorable to the pursuit of truth and happiness of middle class.

Among the most formidable obstacles, which the rule of the majority and the middle-class will have to encounter, may readily be distinguished by the obvious interest of the upper class in every State. The aristocrats will resist all changes that may jeopardize their power, emolument and consequence of the offices they hold under Federal and State establishments. However, the perverted ambition of the leaders of the lower class may also contribute to the demise of our rule and our empire. The lower-class leaders may either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of the middle class or may flatter themselves with fairer prospects of their own elevation from the subdivision of the empire, favoring the State bureaucracies as "fairer" representatives of the long-run interests of the lower class minorities.

It is not, however, my desire to dwell upon these observations. I am well aware that it would not be prudent and scientific to resolve indiscriminately the opposition of any two factions by their political values, merely because their particular economical interests might subject them to suspect my intentions. You can never be good for everyone, but you can always try to be good for the majority of them.

The scientific principles of transparency and veracity oblige me to admit that even the aristocrats may have upright intentions. And it cannot be doubted that much of the opposition that has made or may make its appearance will spring from sources, if not respectable by the middle class, then, culpable only as negligence for the lack of interest. The latter means the honest errors of minds that were led astray by preconceived jealousies and fears of the aristocrats. Indeed, the causes which serve to give a prejudice or bias to a judgment of a member of the upper class are so numerous and so powerful that even we, common folk, upon many occasions, fell under their spell, and saw wise and good among us on the wrong side of the issues that are key to us.

This circumstance, if properly pondered, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are so fervent of being right in any controversy. And a further reason for caution, in this respect, might be drawn from the reflection that we are not always sure that those who say that they advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists, who also say that they are protecting the truth, "their" truth.

Personal ambition, avarice, and animosity, short-term group interests, and many other motives, no more respectful than these, become transparent in supporters, as well as in antagonists, of the right side of an issue. Were there not even inducements to moderation, nothing could be more ill conceived than that intolerant partisan spirit, which has indicated the political factions at all places and times. For in politics, which is the implementation of ideology and religion, it is suicide to proselytize your dream by warfare. Heretics were rarely cured by fire and bullet.

Yet, we already have sufficient indications that it will happen in the present election campaign. A torrent of angry and malignant passions have been let loose. To judge from the conduct of the Bush aristocratic camp, we shall be led to conclude that they will hope to prove beyond any reasonable doubt the truth and justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the money-induced loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. However, their energetic commencement will likely finish in another inefficient federal government for the middle class because the Bush aristocratic camp is more eager to stay still than to move forward. The aristocracy has already achieved their American dream, and they will always suspect that the enlargement of the upper class will not only inflate their money but also their prestige, both of which mean power.

Bush, Baker, Reed, & Co. used an array of arguments to try to convince middle class voters that McCain was not worthy of the Republican nomination. Among their arguments are:

• That McCain was not the anti-Establishment reformer he claimed to be. [Probably, because he is not an aristocrat-extremist, as they are.] To convince the South Carolinians that it is so, Bush customarily referred to McCain as "Mr. Chairman," accenting his role as head of the Senate Commerce Committee (which oversees our industries) and alluding to the heads of communistic regimes (like that of Chairman Mao).
• That McCain's proposals were Democratic. "One of the reasons why Democrats may choose to vote here is that McCain has taken the Democrat position on key issues." In a radio ad, a Bush supporter, former South Carolina Governor, Carroll Campbell, said, "McCain is getting support ... from some hard-core Democrats ... Clinton-style Democrats who oppose everything conservatives stand for." [As if middle-class folk can never be liberal Democrats.]
• That McCain's opposition to abortion was questionable, because McCain's campaign chairman, former Senator of New Hampshire, Warren Rudman, has "a very pro-abortion voting record" in the Senate. In the taped phone-calls to the South Carolinians and Michiganians, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson attacks Rudman as "a vicious bigot who wrote that conservative Christians in politics are anti-abortion zealots, homo-phobes and would-be censors." Rudman angered Robertson and Reed in 1995 by defending retired General Colin Powell against their attacks over abortion. Rudman wrote a book about that controversy, in which he stated that there are many "bigots" among the religious extremists. And they should be, otherwise they would not be "the right wing." However, Bush renounces his obvious connection with Robertson, whose long time collaborator until past year was Mr. Reed, and who is now the left hand of the puppet master, Mr. Baker. Bush said that Robertson and the Christian Coalition are doing those calls on their own. Yeah, Right!

Before the South Carolina primaries, Bush paraded with meaningless campaign slogans trying to define his policies as defending the interests of all people. However, after a loss in New Hampshire, Bush was forced to declare himself the anti-McCain, a definition that served him well in an ultra-conservative state but ruined his presidential prospects in the national arena.

Bush said in last week's debate in South Carolina. "I'm not going to let it happen again." And like his father, who once told: "Read my lips, no more taxes," and then rose them, Bush-junior has lapsed into direct contradiction with the facts of life, when "it happened again" in Arizona and Michigan. However, Bush’s strategists, Baker and Reed, defined his course for beating adversaries as to avoid being defined at all and to blur whose interests he gave priority, in order to avoid any such lapses. Bush was supposed to be good to all people — a "compassionate conservati-vist" untouched by old Republican controversies, but he lost that virginity in South Carolina. In order to break McCain’s triumphal march, Bush had to redefine himself as the man who would adamantly defend the interests of the aristocratic minority and save the Republican Party from the moderate republicans, the majority of whom supports McCain. Thus, Bush won a battle, but he lost the campaign.

History teaches us that the aristocrats and the leaders of the lower class have been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotic governments than the leaders of the middle class. And that of those aristocrats and libertines who have overturned the liberties of the republics, dominated by the middle class, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the needs of the lower class people. They all began as demagogues, and they finish as tyrants.

The more closely you examine Bush's parade of slogans, the more you realize that their defining line has been to avoid defining whose interests he will defend. However, the irony of this vagueness is that the different classes of people have different interests, which must be openly debated in order to be socially protected. Therefore, Bush, Baker, Reed, & Co. had to define what they stand for. And what did they do? They decided to define it through what they not stand for.

Thus, Bush was forced to redefine himself as everything McCain is not. He is not the one who would put debt reduction before tax cuts. He is not the one who is soft on abortion and gay rights. He is not the one who would fine tobacco companies and accept the consequent cigarette price hike. He is not the republican candidate who is glad that some Democrats and Independents support him.

After losing New Hampshire, Baker re-packaged Bush as a "reformer with results." Then, Mr. Limbaugh proclaims this slogan the stroke of genius that re-invigorated his campaign. However, what does "reform" mean? From Baker and Reed’s prospective, a reform means whatever Bush has done. Thus, his Texas policy of public education becomes "education reform" and his policy of preventing juvenile crime becomes "juvenile justice reform." And what do "results" mean from Baker-Reed lingo? Whatever resulted after Bush's policy was implemented. If something good came out of it, then Bush can call it a "result." If it did not, then, as in the case of his health insurance policy that important to the middle class, he can say that he tried to do something about it and the "result" is that the policy became a Texas law. Thus, the result is the reform, and the reform becomes whatever is positive in his record. And the magician can come out of the box and pronounce himself a reformer with a record of results, again silencing which class those so-called reforms profited.

McCain is telling voters that he's running against Republicans who want to be the "party of special interests," meaning ‘the party of aristocracy’ and he is accusing Bush of putting tax cuts for those rich before Medicare and Social Security that the middle class needs.

Therefore, Bush’s words about his reformism lacks energy, and his speeches are the stale baits for dummies, who cannot discern their own long lasting from short lasting interests. Therefore, those folks, who are only in the process of the materialization of their American Dream, should go into the McCain camp of moderate reforms, the implementation of which will elevate more middle-class folks into the upper class.


02/22/00

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Victor J. Serge created this page and revised it on 04/13/03