George Bush, his historic landing.

I can't remeber if it was Reform or PC who ran a serious of ads mocking Jean Chretien's face, it was in pretty poor taste and they got destroyed in the polls. They said something like "Is this the face you want on a leader?" Making fun of people's looks isn't the way to get win an election I suggest.

*ahem*

http://www.bushorchimp.com

Clickitty clackitty CLICK!

(btw, muahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! thanks ron)

It worked for George Bush I, who got plenty of campaign mileage out of making fun of Michael Dukakis riding around on a tank.

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Flame if you want. The documents are real, the story they tell is unpalatable:

George Bush spent May 1, 2003 glorying in military pilot gear: He was suspended. He did not get an honorable discharge. OBTAINED THROUGH THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT:

DOCUMENT PHOTOCOPY: Order to suspend George W. Bush from flying for failing to obey an order
http://www.talion.com/suspension.html

DOCUMENT PHOTOCOPY: Statement specifying disciplinary measures, signed by George W. Bush
http://www.talion.com/signature2.html

DOCUMENT PHOTOCOPY: George W. Bush military record, redacted for "administrative reasons"
http://www.talion.com/admin.html

DOCUMENT PHOTOCOPY: Assignment of George W. Bush to disciplinary unit in Denver
http://www.talion.com/punish.html

The facts about George Bush military record:
http://www.talion.com/georgebush.html -- Photos of Bush wearing military pilot outfit yesterday. His PR division faxed talking points to the media to talk about the fact that he was a military pilot. Click this link for photos from yesterday, more document copies, and pictures of the REAL military heroes. Inouye, Carter, Kerry, Hagel, Glenn, Cleland.

We've got a lot to be proud of, but this is one military record that should result in humility by the man that earned it, not mugging and photo ops.

# # # # #

Actually, he looks like he's going to follow his father's example and hurl in a VIP's lap.

http://dewin.oldbattery.com/venura/image.php?id=13036&mtime=1051910371

God, that speech and its setting, which turned an aircraft carrier, a potent but still plainly real thing into a symbol of divine-like power, a platform for the Gods, was too strange and too frightening in implication to be trivially dismissed.

I’m an old leftie (though respectful of what’s now called the paleo-conservative view) and a science geek. So I used to dismiss the Baudrillards, the Foucaults and the Slavoj Zizeks of the left-sphere.

These are the sorts of people who spin complex theories of power relationships woven from sources as far flung as Freud, Marx, Renaissance painters and Lacan. Chomskyist fact tsunamis, washing over the misconceptions of my gung ho friends and associates, seemed to me to be superior weapons against propaganda and jingoism.

But since September 11, 2001, although I’ve found the heavy research and footnote approach of men like Zinn and Chomsky to be invaluable, it is, to my surprise, Baudrillard and Zizek who have helped me understand why so many of my peers are unconcerned.

There are Americans, millions of them, who watched that speech and felt very proud. We must face this.

Never mind that they’re under or unemployed, forget about the creeping police-state feel of the country, let’s not discuss the financial starvation of the states.

Never mind all that.

The aircraft carrier, the service men and women, the square-jawed President in the bright, Arabian sun (now ruled by ‘us’): these are things to swell the heart. We Americans are the most generous, the noblest, the most remarkable and, of course, the most powerful people ever to walk this earth.

And the world best not forget that.

This is what I’m hearing around the ‘water cooler’- triumphalism. It’s a good emotional counterbalance when the SUV is repossessed and the immense house must be abandoned because the mortgage is now too much.

This is not idle speculation from me but the sort of stuff I’ve heard around the office. It is a large part (surely not all) of the national mood. The same people who sat down with their lunches to watch Baghdad being bombed three weeks ago (something I witnessed) are now wrapped up in the neo-Roman moment. Baby steps to a totalitarian lifestyle.

It is Zizek, all the way from Slovenia, who taught me in his essay, “Welcome to the Desert of the Real” that, contrary to popular wisdom, 9-11 did not wake America up from its slumber and allow it to see the world but actually provided a perverse opportunity to sleep even more deeply, blanketed by feelings of ultimate victimization, limitless virtue and infinite power.

The Bush administration knows us well. It has played us well. We are its willing servants.

It is Baudrillard who taught me, in his essay ‘The Spirit of Terrorism”, that these terrorists, the real ones now, not the phantasms and politically expedient endless detention targets of the “Justice” Department, are, religious rhetoric aside, classic nihilists inspired to their destructive acts by “the superpower insisting upon holding all the cards to itself, leaving no room for others to breathe.” They may be evil but the law of cause and effect still rules the Universe – they got there in stages and for reasons. Baudrillard reminds us that so long as we ignore the stages and exertpower, ‘holding all the cards’, the nihilism will grow into a death spiral.

These are times that call for both direct and simple acts, everything from my own efforts to confront the ‘water cooler’ cheers for imperialism to mass demonstrations and voting, as well as an understanding of the psychology and philosophy of our society and ourselves.

Moving the Bushies out of office in ’04 is a good and concrete goal and I’ll do my part. But, as the Buddhists say, the wheel has been set in motion. We will be living with the consequences of the actions of the last two years for decades to come.

Regards,

D. Monroe