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03/09/2006:

"Something must be right with Bush…"

By Juárez Polanco; Translated into English by the author and revised by Nancy Almendras.

Ever since George W. Bush was given his first imperial leadership of the northern country (by people placed in the Supreme Court by his own father), I don’t know if I should laugh, scream or cry whenever I discover what he’s been doing and saying to the planet over which he reigns.

Yes, that is right: We laugh so hard that it hurts when we’re talking about the creator of bushisms, those brilliant thoughts worthy of anthology that are destined to live forever. The examples speak for themselves: “The future will be better tomorrow”; “It’s time for mankind to enter the solar system”; or among the most erudite, “More and more of our imports are coming from abroad”; and “A low number of voters is an indication that less and less people are voting”. The land trembles, sky eclipses and winds sing a triumphal march: he’s the Great Architect of a shadowy and illogical century, full of contradictions, deaths, and mostly, stupidities.

Bush’s latest came this week. Now it seems he told Bill Sammon, a The Washington Times correspondent, that Bin Laden helped him to win the November 2004 elections against John Kerry. This is in reference to the video broadcast aired four days before those elections, in which the leader of Al-Qaeda criticized Bush and reminded the US people about the 9/11 attacks, still fresh in North Americans’ collective memory. According to The Examiner, Mr. George said, “I thought it was going to help. I thought it would help remind people that if Bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.”

His logic and wisdom surpasses me by far. I’m thinking about the Latin-American dictators of bloody hands: using bushistic logic, the opposition of our people was an irrefutable indication that something had to be right with those dictators. I’m thinking about the Nicaraguan case (the country from which I come): the fact that Sandino didn’t want anything to do with the invading yankees, meant that something had to be right with those invaders. What a great judgment!

What’s right with Bush? His imperial conquests in Afghanistan, Iraq and now probably Iran? His colonizing trail disguised under a Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) that will create in Central America and Dominican Republic more of what’s happening in Mexico, something called by his own ally, Mr. Fox, “inevitable poverty zones”? His telescopic sight of destruction aiming to Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and any other country that won’t say Sir, yes, sir?

Neither do I understand the logic of North American voters, because it’s clear that they’re alone too, under the aquiline tunic of their President. He has kept silence about multimillionaire bankrupts like Enron. New Orleans was erased from the map only because Bush didn’t want to do anything before, during and after Katrina. Thousands of jobs were cut as was, Medicare, Medicaid and education, simply to fatten even more the military spending for an invasion of a country. The costs have reached exorbitant and offensive numbers (US$ 244,577,928,372.00 is the cost of this war as of the moment I’m writing this article, according to nationalpriorities.org), causing the worst national US debt in recent years.

However, I do have an idea of why North Americans voted for Bush; they were motivated primarily by fear.

Whenever one is guided by fear, the irrational and rational blend easily. Fear alone could have given Bush an election that was already in Kerry’s hands, and there is no doubt that there was fear pervading US soil the day of elections. Both Bin Laden’s video and the continuous reiterations by the mass media of attacks and destructive images, along with those anthrax attacks that came and vanished, so effective and at the same time so ephemeral, helped build an atmosphere adequate not only for Bush’s win, but also allowing him to pass the National Security laws; the most far reaching and illegal laws of US history. Today, these laws squash human and civil rights, to include home privacy, freedom of speech, of religion, and academic freedom.. As an example,, in his recent State of the Union, Mr. Bush made public a plan that allows telephone and mail interventions without prior judicial warrant, as declared by US laws. Nevertheless, Bush is only formalizing what was previously being done. It’s no surprise that Chavez ironically calls him “Mr. Danger”.

This “Mr. Danger” who led his citizens into a war by claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, later acknowledging that he knew that they did not exist. This “Mr. Danger” who created lunar craters in Afghanistan in search of a “never found” Bin Laden. This “Mr. Danger” who has sent young soldiers to kill and be killed in an absurd war. This “Mr. Danger” who has suspicious oil businesses, and also has friends with suspicious oil businesses. There is so much to talk about him, that in my huge ignorance I can’t find what’s that right with him that he claims to have.

What Bush doesn’t know, or maybe knows too well to say it, is that polls show that the North American majority don’t believe in him anymore (in regards to financial and economical leadership, the handling of the situation in Iraq, and the war as the right road to fight terrorism). Bush knows he is a chosen (p)resident of the White House thanks to his dad’s friends and the influence of his brother Jeb Bush (Governor of Florida, state that technically gave him the victory in 2000). He also knows he was then elected as a product of fear, confusion and hate, and he’s so pissed off that he has no idea about what to say or do to hide it.

Like Umberto Eco said, we should not pretend that governments are led by philosophers and erudite people, but may rightly expect people with good sense and lucid ideas. Bush demonstrates that is easier and easier for leaders to gain the citizenry’s support by means of fear, distrust and hate, and more and more difficult to attain it through sincerity.

Among the minority who still believe that something is right with Bush, the most avid activist is he. We who are a minority according to him but a majority according to simple mathematics, those who live south of the imperial border (maybe in their own belly, as we have been swallowed so long ago), have and breathe another reality, a reality not waiting any magical bushism to camouflage the misery to which we have been directed.

We, Latin-Americans, confirm that something must be right with Mr. George Walker Bush, for in the end, and without him wanting it, he has united more and more people around the globe in solidarity and given them (given us) the clarity to know that Earth should not and will not be annexed to his Majesty Bush’s Empire, and that its inhabitants, I mean, us (and the US people excluded and forgotten), deserve and demand respect.

Yes, something must be right with Bush, something wonderful and prodigiously beautiful. The increasing union of people around an achievable hope is the best testimony.
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