connecting*the*dots

All signs point to George W. Bush being a man of God, right? I mean, apparently the man upstairs told him to go to war — and we’re now at war — so there must be some truth to the observation.

Ludwig Miles van der Rohe, the architect of architects, famously stated that “God is in the details.” Just as compelling of an absolutist argument is the entire argument for Intelligent Design, which essentially states that life is too complex for evolution to produce our existence, so a master creator must have designed every particular detail of our being to work within a grand scheme of this stage we call Earth.

Using such logic — living in the modernist world of W. — wouldn’t that hold our most innocuous squakings and flubs as being divine instances of truth? That Freud guy had some major God love running through his veins, eh?

The Huffington Post
W: “My Government”
by Marty Kaplan

Here’s how W is defending the Dubai decision: “The more people learn about the transaction that has been scrutinized and approved by my government, the more they’ll be comforted…”

For a moment, set aside the “trust-me” part of this, and focus instead on the “my government” bit.

If he’d said “my administration,” I wouldn’t have blinked. “My cabinet” would also have raised no hackles. If he really wanted to use the word “government,” then how about these pronouns as antecedents for “people”: “their government” or “our government.”

But no, he said “my government.” I don’t think that’s just a garden variety Bushism, a trivial malapropism. I think it goes right to his understanding of who he is, and who we are. It’s not a Freudian slip; it’s an Orwellian siren, an anti-democratic red alert.

The founding documents of our nation talk about the government, our government, a government, any government. If my is used, it’s said on behalf of the citizens, not their rulers.

But W really believes that it’s his government. He doesn’t see himself as a steward, a trustee, a caretaker, someone who temporarily gets to steer the ship of state because of the momentary consent of the governed and an enduring set of rules. No, he believes it’s his ship, his state, his rules — his and his ideological fellow-travelers.

The heads of some countries with parliamentary systems, like India, sometimes say “my government”; when they do, it means ‘my Cabinet,” “my temporary ruling colition,” “my majority” — which could fall in an instant, if there were a no-confidence vote.

But in the US, we don’t have governments that get made and dissolved year-round; we have Administrations, that get formed every four years.

In the American context, unless it’s an ordinary citizen like you or me speaking, let’s recognize the expression “my government” as what it really is: a deeply troubling oxymoron, the inappropriate yoking together of a democratic institution and — well, a moron.

In 1998, I found myself working for my first professional web design agency. I stress professional not only for the brilliant talent within the walls of the shop and the output they generated, but for their business etiquette as well. You see, I was specifically trained that when speaking with a client, I was to refer to my design iterations as “our” ideas and “our” designs. Self-referrential language shifted the focus of the client from the team to the individual, and within such a big money, high-pressure profession, that’s the last thing an account executive wants to deal with.

How does this anecdote fit with this latest Bushism? I honestly don’t know. But if it isn’t too much too ask from his highness, how about acting professional and pretending for a minute that we’re in this together, because unfortunately, we are.

(via Matthew Gross)

So I ended up watching PBS Frontline last night about the Saddam/Iraqi crisis going back 25 years.

Either our government is perpetually run by a bunch of short-sighted morons or we’ve always had long-term vision for conflict and strife. I really don’t know which one is more frightening, but at least one is the truth.

The CIA gave Saddam power. Our tax dollars went to overthrowing the previous Iraqi government (which in the process led to close to 1,000 executions by Sadaam on coming to power) and handing the reigns of a strategically important country in the Middle East to a wanna be dictator, who frequently and vociferously declared that he longed to be the “Sword of the East” to destroy the West.

Now please answer this question for me: Were the men running this nation at the time so stupid to think that this wouldn’t come back to haunt us? OR were they so obsessed with overthrowing Iran that putting a maniac like Saddam in office was just an afterthought as long as he could do the job? That seems to be the standard operating procedure for our government; insert dictator in land a to accomplish disputable goal b so our hands don’t smell like c.

I went to art school, but hell, even I took Algebra. If a=b and b=c then a=c. Karma is fuzzy math, our actions are not.

So now we swoop in to “defend the safety of Americans.” Oh yeah, we also want to end an era of human suffering in Iraq. I guess it only took us 12 years to realize that there were human beings there, and not just brown people. I mention that because after we kicked the shit out of Sadaam the first time around in Desert Storm, we urged the Iraqi people to overthrow the government… from the decks of our aircraft carriers.

And what happened when the people actually rose up to take back their country? General Stormin’ Norman gave the Iraqi’s permission to fly armed helicopters in the just established “no-fly zone,” leading to the systematic killing of the resistance movement.

All the while the Iraqi people are pleading for us to come in and finish the job of taking out Saddam, Colin, Daddy Bush and the rest of the world sat back in containment mode.

Look, I’m not against removing Saddam, but this country has made so many blunders in Iraq since the 70’s, I’m just discusted how we’re attempting to storm in there and sweep the proverbial dirt under the proverbial rug.

Sadaam is our Frankenstein. Where’s the accountability?