An Irrelevant Campaign of 'Just Words'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In the US the 'political season' occurs every four years and lasts four years. In four years, many words are said and inversely fewer mean anything. Do the math. The campaigns are but a sop to public delusions that the US is a 'Democracy'.

The US was the creation of Northern commercial interests and remains so today. For those who wield power, the campaigns are a light diversion in which mock debates are held about things that don't matter. When the dust has settled, the power brokers still broker power, the slaves are still lashed to the wheel. Every four years you are thrown a bone to gnaw on until another bone is thrown you four years hence!

John McCain came dangerously close to saying something meaningful when he said we may stay in Iraq for 'ten thousand years'! Just words? Obama said that the decision to invade Iraq was 'the most important foreign-policy decision in a generation' --'just words'! Unless he means that it was a bone-headed, fascist decision that has bankrupted the nation, destroyed the Constitution, enslaved the American and the Iraqi peoples, enriched the rich, and resulted in the murders of over one million Iraqi civilians. Why didn't he say that? Perhaps, that's not what he meant! Perhaps, it's all just words!

Sure the so-called candidates talk about 'Iraq' but in buzzwords, fashionable but meaningless phrases, Pentagonese and 'cute speak'! 'Cute speak' is 'pre-fab', 'lego' language, clauses and phrases assembled on-the-fly: one from column 'A', one from column 'B', one from column 'C'.

I may package this on flash cards and call it "Instant Pundit". You can be assured that you will always come up with something that that will pass for network TV analysis and will mean as much, that is, nothing. Just words!

That Americans actually talk like that proves that almost every child was left behind but managed to get a job regurgitating banalities on TV. It's 'cute speak', it's called 'failing upward'.

Does anyone really know what the candidates positions are? Has anyone bothered to ask Obama if he will rescind the very real harms done by Bush upon the Constitution? Has anyone bothered to pin McCain down on just when and how he intends to rob seniors of Social Security?

How does either candidate feel about the fact that, by decree, habeas corpus has been denied as an essential point of law in the US? It is that real and definable issue less important than the more reported facts that McCain is gray and Obama is dark tan? Or the other non-issues making 'You Tube': McCain said 'cunt' and Obama stole 'just words'! So what? Are they not 'just words'?

Have either McCain or Obama said anything worth stealing, anything about 1) the criminal manner in which we got into Iraq; 2) how we get out; 3) war crimes trials for those who got us there? Past this point, neither candidate has ever really said anything at all. Just words!

That the candidates are speaking in 'code words' may not be their fault entirely. The public has spoken via 'focus groups' and 'studies'. The candidates are just telling you what 'you' have said 'you' want to hear: just words! You want to hear meaningless platitudes, slogans, and claptrap. You WANT to hear bullshit! Keep in mind, however, that it was Albert Speer who said that the Third Reich was erected upon utterly meaningless platitudes --'just words'.

Among the few politicians who dared address real issues with real and meaningful words was John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. It was bad enough that America died on November 22, 1963, it died again on June 5, 1968. It has died daily since. And since that time politicians have feared to use real language to describe real issues in real terms for real people since. It's all just words! Very few --like Sen. Paul Wellstone --did But they, too, are dead.

The darker places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.

--Dante Alghieri

The government of the US has become a fraud upon the electorate, a dictatorship which every four years pretends to be a republic. Just words, apparently! No one dares reveal the truth that the 'emperor' is naked. No one dares speak above the level of buzzwords or slogans. Fewer remember what 'truth' sounds like. Critical thinking skills were 'left behind' among the many children left behind in Texas under Bush!

One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected, is that of imagining themselves special instruments of the Divine Will.

—Bertrand Russell, Ideas that Have Harmed Mankind

Even as I write, Bush is trying to justify to the nation his having arrogated unto himself the powers of a dictator. All this was foreseen by our founders and statesmen. Bush thought them 'just words'!

Consider the following warning from the venerable Joseph Story, whose commentaries on the Constitution have guided Supreme Court justices since the Marshall court.

§ 1486. The propriety of admitting the president to be commander in chief, so far as to give orders, and have a general superintendency, was admitted. But it was urged, that it would be dangerous to let him command in person, without any restraint, as he might make a bad use of it. The consent of both houses of Congress ought, therefore, to be required, before he should take the actual command. The answer then given was, that though the president might, there was no necessity that he should, take the command in person; and there was no probability that he would do so, except in extraordinary emergencies, and when he was possessed of superior military talents.

--Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution

Bush's fallacious refutation of the vernerable Joseph Story is a highly revelatory remark that has been attributed to Bush.

The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!

—George W. Bush

Just words!!'

Now --there is some disagreement about whether or not he said it. It doesn't matter. If he didn't say it, he might s well have! His every action proves that he believes the Constitution to be either 'just a goddamned piece of paper' or --worse --'just words'!

Bush often appropriates the language of the old west without understanding it or its significance. He's not a real cowboy. He's a phony. But --today --it doesn't matter. It's 'just words'.

When he is impeached, Bush may very well barricade himself in the White House, claiming that he is "Commander-in-chief", that he is not subject to a mere order from Congress, that he is not subject to a "goddamned piece of paper"! He might get away with it because 'just words' will have lost the power to motivate 'the people' to the defense of the only republic they ever had, will ever get! Republic! Just a word I suppose. See how insidiously the establishment has defeated you. They robbed you of the power inherent in the ONLY weapon you had against them: just words!

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GOP: Sick People Desparately Seeking Scapegoats

The GOP is a sick party of sick people. Nasty, mean-spirited and delusional, it blames its favorite phantom menace, liberals, for all our nation's woes though liberals have not wielded real power since the New Deal. How rational, therefore, is this perpetual, tiresome GOP jihad? Republicans may very well be "nuts" but that misstates the situation. What we are witnessing from outside America's increasingly radical, imperialist party is the ugly puss that oozes from an open sore: Republicanism, desperately seeking scapegoats.

Bush's tar baby, Iraq, has become the GOP tar baby, not easily scraped off. Thus the GOP is the party of monumental failure, a party that will most surely preside over the dissolution, the fall, the complete collapse of the "great" American empire. It is no wonder that Republicans now blame one another and the Democrats. The GOP will try to suck democrats into the quagmire. That is to be expected; it is the nature of evil that it tries to compromise its opposition. Still - a murderer bears more responsibility than those who merely fail to stop him.

Democratic regimes, moderate to a fault, have provided little relief from right wing oppression and orthodoxy that has all but killed America. The myriad of sins heaped on "liberals" and "secular humanists" by goppers is most certainly a deliberate campaign of frauds and lies -the kind we come to expect from the party of George W. Bush, Alberto Gonzales[See: Senate Conservatives Refuse To Put Gonzales Under Oath], Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich and Jack Abramoff. But what, I want to know, is the GOP still pissed about?

Joe Klein, Who Claimed Liberals "Hate America," Now Slams Progressives' "Bile"

By MARC McDONALD

Time magazine blogger Joe Klein is upset with the way the progressive blogosphere is treating him these days. In his latest piece, "Beware the Bloggers' Bile," Klein expresses bafflement that he's been criticized by liberal bloggers recently.

Klein writes that much of the progressive blogosphere these days is "is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance."

Klein expresses dismay at his critics and tries to play up his supposedly liberal credentials. He writes that he's being unfairly targeted. As far as he's concerned, "the left-liberals in the blogosphere are merely aping the odious, disdainful—and politically successful—tone that right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh pioneered."

Wow, that's a pretty heavy charge.

There's only one problem that the supposedly reasonable and "unfairly" criticized Klein fails to point out.

The fact is, Klein himself has been guilty of the most vicious, Rush Limbaugh-like attacks on liberals in recent years.

Here's an example (as reported last year by Media Matters). On April 11, 2006, Klein declared that Democrats wouldn't find success among voters "if their message is that they hate America -- which is what has been the message of the liberal wing of the party for the past 20 years."

Let me see if I understand this correctly: Klein claims liberals "hate" America. And then he turns around and claims that the progressive blogs are guilty of "intolerance" and Rush Limbaugh-like tactics because they dared to criticize him.

And what is Bill O'Reilly so pissed off about when clearly the sorry state of American society is his fault and that of Fox, the propaganda arm of the GOP and the GWB specifically:

Anger and bile pour from Bill O'Reilly's every pore. O'Reilly is mad at a world that his targets could not possibly have created or influenced except marginally. In fact, we liberals have more reason to be angry at much, much more than has O'Reilly. Delusional, paid very well to lie, Billo obliges with more lies. Typically, he blames the phantom menace for the hell of his creation.

Certainly, recent GOP vehemence is of a radical sort, substantively different from Barry Goldwater and, more recently, Pat Buchanan, who, from time to time, experiences moments of critical lucidity rare in a Republican.

PJB: Does ‘The Decider’ Decide on War?

Why does Congress not enact the resolution Nancy Pelosi pulled down, which declares that nothing in present law authorizes President Bush to launch a pre-emptive strike or preventive war on Iran – and before launching any such attack, he must get prior approval from both houses of Congress?

If we are going to war, is it not imperative that, this time, we know exactly why we must go to war, what exactly the threat is from Iran, what are the likely consequences of a US attack on a third Islamic country and what are the alternatives to war?

-Pat Buchanan

All makes sense when one realizes that the GOP does not hold power legitimately. The election of 2000 was a fraud and the GOP leadership must know this. They planned it. Secondly, GOP members are not angry because liberalism failed but, rather, because it succeeded. Clinton, specifically, but every other Democrat as well will never be forgiven for proving the GOP to be wrong about almost everything.

If "liberals" and Democrats are to be faulted, it is for not having opposed the GOP more effectively, more strenuously. If you listen to the GOP, however, you would think the Democrats had actually accomplished something. I wish they had. Democrats might have been justified in shouting in the face of GOP criticism: "Bring it on!"

The nation may be as truly screwed up as the GOP thinks it is but it is only the GOP who's had a chance to do the screwing. Indeed, the nation is screwed up -by the GOP. Democrats have had neither the time nor the money to do much and, true to form, it hasn't.

The GOP meanwhile has done much --to America, not for America. The GOP stole enough votes and sold enough souls to screw both the nation and the world. And to our everlasting chagrin they have succeeded but not admirably.

The responsibility for the fall of the American empire and its imminent financial collapse must be laid at the feet of George W. Bush and a record of over twenty years of incompetence [See: Time Archives], frauds, and just downright mean-spirited evil! I'm talkin' GOP! I'm talking about the gang of crooks who screwed us, the nation, and now the world.

As the race for the White House heats up, the many failures of the Bush coup d'etat are manifest. GOP candidates will naturally try to distance themselves from the failed emperor even as they try to tar the opposition with an old canard - "liberal". There is little else in their bag of tricks save another terrorist attack.

A WHILE before 11 September the American historian, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, suggested that despite the "absence of international checks and balances" in the modern unipolar world, the United States would not "stroll too far down the perilous highway to hubris . . . No one nation is going to be able to assume the role of world arbitrator and policeman" (1). Like many American intellectuals, he remained confident about US democracy and the rationality of decision making. And Charles William Maynes, an influential voice in US foreign policy, asserted: "America is a country with imperial capabilities but without an imperial mind" (2).

But now we must face facts: a new imperial doctrine is taking shape under George Bush. Now is reminiscent of the late 19th century, when the US began its colonial expansion into the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific, the first steps to world power. Then the US was seized by great imperialist fervour. Journalists, businessmen, bankers and politicians vied to promote policies of world conquest.

-Philip S Golub, Westward the course of Empire, Le Monde Diplomatique

To be fair, American criticism of empire is not the sole province of left or right. Arguably, Pat Buchanan, remembered, primarily for his "hate speech" to the GOP National Convention in Houston in 1992, has often been as critical of American imperial ambitions as Gore Vidal who rails from the opposite end of the political spectrum.

There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side. And so, we have to come home, and stand beside him.

- Pat Buchanan, GOP National Convention Speech, Houston, 1992

For Vidal, American Empire, is but a tragic reprise of the fall of Rome. Vidal's term "national security state" denotes and sums up the oppressive nature of the Military/Industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about. In his Decline and Fall of the American Empire, Vidal attributes the creation of the American empire to a conspiracy between Democratic President Harry Truman and Senator Arthur Vandenburg who told Truman that he would have to scare the hell out of the American people in order to pull it off. Indeed, I cannot remember a time in which the American people have not been afraid of something -commies, black people, immigrants, drugs, porn, Russians, terrorists and most absurdly of late: Michael Moore, french fries, and the Dixie Chicks.

In the meantime, we seem almost accustomed now to a White House increasingly disconnected from reality, a new Nero, whom early Christians most certainly believed was the Anti-Christ.

Additional resources:

• America: What Went Wrong
• The Fall of the American Empire
• What Price American Empire
• Former Reagan Advisor: Bush 'bankrupted America'
• The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

The Existentialist Cowboy

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Bush is on a mission from God

Many if not most fundamentalist Christians have believed for some time now that Bush is on a mission from God. Typically, Bush encourages this belief. There is evidence that like all cults, the GOP, communicates to its base in code words designed to assuage the base and dupe the rest of us. The attack on Social Security was of this form. So, too, the war of aggression in Iraq.

There is only one reason a political party would want to communicate with its membership using "code words": it wants to hide its real agenda. It wants to keep non-members in the dark. That the GOP has eschewed good English for propaganda and "code words" is a dead give away: the GOP is not a political party. It's a kooky cult.

A very recent use of "code words" to communicate covertly with a cultist base, was found in a statement by Condi Rice:

"What we're seeing here ... are the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we are pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one."

"Birth pangs" is found prominently in scripture:

And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs."

(Matthew 24:3-8 RSV)

It is fair to ask if Condi Rice, a "self-professed evangelical" is, in fact, communicating a message to Bush's whacked-out, Republican base, many of whom have tried to justify the US war against Iraq with scripture and vague, weird references to rapture. Was Condo re-assuring the dogs of war who still support Bush? It would be alarming to know just how many of these folk truly believe that Bush is on a "Mission from God" to bring about Armageddon and, hence, the rapture.

The GOP has been taken over by hard core extremists and religious ideologues. I became aware of this in the early eighties. A state rep race used the term dynamic conservative to describe its candidate. I was curious -never having associated the word "dynamic" with conservatives. In this case, the code word dynamic conservative had been the product of a Chicago based political consulting firm that had been associated, at some point, with Congressman Phil Crane who had been, until his defeat in the elections of 2004, the longest-serving Republican member of the US House of Representatives. Interestingly, Crane went to Congress in 1969, succeeding Donald Rumsfeld who had been appointed to a position in the Nixon administration.

I had thought the phrase -dynamic conservative -an oxymoron. Was the candidate dynamic? Or was he conservative? Contradictory? Well, focus groups don't have a problem with that. And neither, apparently, do cults. There is a difference between mere jargon and code words, used by the GOP to both reveal and conceal. A code word is a signal to initiates, but a mask to everyone else.

Code words are designed to keep the public in the dark while GOP cultists communicate in code with one another. When Bush tried to destroy Social Security, he wished to reassure his radical base of robber barons and fanatics while concealing that fact from normal, hard working folk who depend upon Social Security. How to do it? Bush uses code words, understood by the base for what they are, but taken at face value by the rest of us. In this case, Bush's solution was the code word: privatization!

Admittedly, more odious and overt bigots have gone underground. And that is Bush's problem: how to communicate with them without giving the game away, without revealing to the world what he really is. Both dynamic conservatism and compassionate conservatism deserve special mention. Neither label, of itself, is a sure indicator of cultism. Both, however, serve a single purpose. They are the face the candidate shows his base; they are the glitzy store front he shows the world.

It is significant that both labels came into being at about the same time -a post Watergate world when the GOP began to realize that if they simply told the truth, they would lose. Lying, therefore, became GOP strategy. It must be kept in mind that the GOP had been under siege during Nixon's Watergate scandal and again when Ford pardoned Nixon. The bunker mentality born of those times is most certainly a defining characteristic of cults. There are others.

A cult is unquestioning in its commitment to a leader just as the GOP rank and file were unquestioning in their support of George W. Bush. Indeed, there were numerous billboards, presumably paid for by local GOP groups, which proclaimed Bush "Our Leader" or "The Leader". In another language that is "Der Führer".

‪As with any cult, the GOP leadership dictates how members think, act or speak. Until Iraq fell utterly apart, it was verboten to question, doubt, or disagree with "Der Führer". This was a time of "freedom fries", the Dixie Chicks boycott, and the orchestrated demonization of Michael Moore.

At this time many fundamentalists considered Bush to be "the Messiah" who had come again on a special mission from God to save humanity, or perhaps, to start Armegeddon. Even if that were true, I prefer the Blues Brothers. The sound track is better.

Blues Brothers: Soul Man

Cab Calloway: Minnie the Moocher

Like many another cult, the GOP is elitist -but to point this out is called culture war, a code word understood by the GOP's elitist base. ‪ There are two senses in which the term culture war or cultural war is used. It was Pat Buchanan who first used the term cultural war to assure the religiously inclined that the opposition -liberals and Democrats -are evil:

There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side.

-Pat Buchanan, 1992 Republican Convention

Hitler used the same, simple-minded tactic. Aryan good; Jew bad!

There is yet another sense in which the GOP uses the term culture war to assure the affluent base that "greed is good". In this sense of the term, culture war immunizes Gordon Gekko wannabes from evil liberals, indeed, anyone possessing a concscience.

Michael Dougles aka "Gordon Gecko": Greed is Good!

Interestingly, the movie "Wall Street" was a hit during the administration of Ronald Reagan. Most of us saw the Gecko speech for what it was --a brilliant portrayal by Michael Douglas of a corporate raider in an era which celebrated to our chagrin and, of late, our ruin an utterly failed economics, an utterly failed mentality.

It is a warning to those who might be inclined to blow the whistle on GOP economic policy. To criticize improvident tax cuts as benefiting only the super-wealthy, for example, is labeled culture war. Merely labeling is enough to make weak-kneed Democrats fear and tremble.

In the GOP, as in any cult, "der Führer" is thought to be above the law. Nixon said "...if the President does it, it is not illegal". Bush has claimed similar "executive privileges" that are equally cultist in tone and effect, equally absurd. Because Bush is thought to be above the law, exempt from the restrictions of the US Constitution, the GOP has internalized an "us-versus-them" mentality. In smaller cults, this often leads to conflicts with society as a whole. The situation is complicated, however, when the cult leader, der Führer, occupies the Oval Office.

A cult will teach or imply that its ends justify any means. Means, for Bush and the GOP that enables and assists him, means trashing treaties, breaking international law, committing war crimes, perpetrating torture, waging wars of naked aggression. Like other cult leaders, Bush has often claimed that his "higher mission" justifies the various tortures and atrocities that have their origins inside the Bush bunker...uh..White House. For example, Bush could only have been referring to tortures and/or summary executions in his 2003 State of the Union address:

All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way -- they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies. (Applause.)

-George W. Bush, State of the Union, 2003

As far as anyone knows, none of those referred to by Bush received a trial. If so, it was a secret trial and therefore, a violation of international law and treaty. Or, Bush was simply lying through his teeth as he most certainly lied in his first debate with John Kerry. It was at the end of one of John Kerry's stronger moments when he explained that George W. Bush would prefer the people believe that it was Saddam Hussein who attacked the US. Bush snapped petulently: “Of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that.” Then he stumbled:

“Of course we’re after Saddam Hussein -- I mean bin Laden. He’s isolated. Seventy-five percent of his people have been brought to justice.”

Oh really? The fact is there is no credible data on al Qaeda at all. Then or now. The CIA had estimated at the time that al Qaeda consisted of about two dozen operatives. 75 percent of two-dozen doesn't sound very impressive. But it does raise new questions about the US capture, detention and torture of the 3,000 detainees referred to by Bush in his address. We have only Bush's word that any were connected in any way with al Qaeda.

Since Bush made his remarks, the tortures of Abu Ghraib have come to light. It is fair to ask if Bush had merely communicated to his understanding base, his cult of torture and atrocity. In any case, true to the cultist nature of this illegitimate regime, Bush would justify both lie and atrocity on these grounds: he was on a mission from God. Again, I prefer the Blues Brothers. They didn't murder or torture anyone.

If Bush is on a mission from God so, too, the GOP which makes it all possible with its money and support. Those cult members in danger of getting caught are often thought to be justified in lying in order to protect "der Führer". This occurred during the Watergate scandal to protect Richard Nixon and it has happened during Bush's illegitimate occupation of the Oval Office.

There are many other characteristics of cults. I am confident that all apply to the GOP, a society apart where members are encouraged to obey "der Führer" without question even as his policies have proven disastrous for the people of America, indeed, the world.

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