The latest out of Washington as reported on the Net April 6 in a lot of places (Drudge, Antiwar.com, etc.), is that Bush okayed Libby's release of Valerie Plame Wilson's name to the media. This now makes it plain as the proverbial pikestaff that we have a rascal and rogue for president, a man who would do anything at all to retain the luscious power and perks he has been given.
Lenin said it way back and most impressively (I quote from memory): "Once you have given them these privileges they will stop at nothing – not even murder – to retain them." V.I. was referring to the Russian bourgeoisie I think, but it was equally true of his gang, and actually appears to be the universal Machiavellian mode, adopted by all Mammonites since the beginning of human tribal government and intertribal warfare.
Get them before they get you.
Bush wanted to be reelected in 2004 more than anything. Thus the word went out, "Anything goes." And if your power means anything at all, anything at all, you'll get away with it.
I have been watching, quite patiently for me, to see if that will hold true for GB, as it has held true for FDR for nearly 60 years since the death of that charming scalawag, who preceded Bush into the office the latter now holds. It's been known to careful students of the affairs of the realm for the better part of those 60 years that FDR ought to have been tried for some variety of war crime because of his lies and manipulations in getting the Japanese to attack us and his merciless betrayal of our military people in Pearl Harbor when he succeeded.
Then he solemnly promised to keep "our boys" out of WW II, all the while he was working hard to get a lot of them killed pulling England's chestnuts out of the fire. He was a thoroughly bad lot, but people still look up to him as a "great leadah" despite all the recent histories of his years of misrule that make plain he was a great liah and warmongah.
Nobody yet knows for sure how or why JFK was killed (or even Lincoln!), nobody yet knows the full story of Oklahoma City, nobody yet knows the entire story of Waco, and for sure, nobody yet knows the real story of 9/11. We live in the era of unchallengeable government; asked a few reasonable questions or for a few films or documents, they simply stonewall and look blank.
Nixon had to leave because the real rulers of the land got tired of him. You'll recall the "meedja" led the charge in his case. Where are they now that we need them? Will they ever get tired of W? There are signs of it, but there isn't much action. No big braying as in Watergate days. No flashy reporters playing the heroes of the disclosure drama.
The only way Bush can be retired is if "they" – our real rulers that is – push him out with some "spontaneous" media opposition that generates a popular outcry, which the media can then amplify. Or will they decide to let him run his course and keep his bully little war going, which is so good for so many in so many different ways?
I'm betting they'll stick with him. We can fulminate all we want out here in the broad fields of the Republic, but it don't mean a thing, 'cause we ain't got that swing. Not to put to fine a point upon it, we obscure folk out here in the boonies simply don't have any clout in D.C. Bleat as we may, it is inaudible in the chancelleries, History happens to us; we don't make it. As has been said. And it's true. That's what galls so much.
In the long swing of the ages, however, we faceless peons prevail; if anything survives the wreckage that the great ones bring on us, it is we, said faceless P's. They come and go; we go on. The great ones, of course, enter the history books (if any there will be in the years ahead) where, after some time, they receive their ultimate fame, which Dr. Johnson so well described in his "The Vanity of Human Wishes": they leave "a name at which the world grew pale, to point a moral or adorn a tale."
Meanwhile, I, a nobody, a man of no fortune and no fame, am watching along with – how many? – a couple of hundred million of us nobodies, and I admit I continue to hope against hope that I will be disappointed in my pessimism about the power of people to change their ostensible rulers or even influence their policies.
April 8, 2006
