Let’s face it, America has gone to pot. Only around 28% percent of the population thinks our elected leader is doing his job, which means that even half the people who voted for him don’t like him. Cheney’s approval rating is hovering around 13%. We’re stuck in a mishandled war that has cost over 3,500 American lives, $470 billion and the trust of the American people. Violent crime rates are soaring. New Orleans is still a disaster area and a war zone. Regardless of the factual basis of global warming, environmental degradation is a major problem and America seems reluctant to do anything about it (we recently rejected a proposition that was to be presented at the upcoming G-8 Summit calling for higher emissions standards). No one knows how to handle the illegal immigration problem. We are the richest nation in the world and a disgustingly large number of people can’t afford health care. The list goes on.
There are no limits to the problems we could become righteously, and rightfully, indignant about. As Daily Show host Jon Stewart asserted, Bush, Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove should be forced to appear on a 24 hour telethon where every citizen could call up and ask “Hey man, what the f#%$?”
The problem is that, in my conspiracy theorist opinion, only one of those people deserves the blame. Bush is a smarter man than people give him credit for, but he is no evil genius. He’s like that lovable uncle that brings a nice gift to your birthday party, but ends up getting drunk and falling in the cake. All bungled honorable intentions. Besides, the presidency is mostly a symbolic position. The president can’t actually write or implement policy, and thanks to the system of checks and balances, along with the ever-watchful media, the president’s real world power is severely limited.
Cheney is a hypocritical, bigoted old man whose heart, after a lifetime of cardiac disease, has most likely been reduced to a shriveled mass of lipid fat. But Cheney is just that: an old man. He is too fragile, publicly despised and blatantly polarizing to wield the kind of behind the scenes power he is so often credited with.
Rumsfeld was ignorant and arrogant, a truly dangerous combination. He never had a grasp on the war he was walking into, or any sense of what its conclusion might be. Either his intelligence was faulty, which shows he was an inept manager that didn’t have the respect of his subordinates, or he lied about the intelligence he did have, which demonstrates that he is, well, a liar. But Rumsfeld was merely a supervisor; he managed one branch of the government and held no sway in the others. And he’s been gone for some time now, and things haven’t gotten better.
That leaves one man. The puppet master pulling all the strings, operating behind the scenes to manipulate the political landscape and always staying just out of reach, escaping fresh as a daisy when the shit hits the fan. The most powerful, and insidious, man in America. The man with the Heart of Darkness: Karl Rove.
Now you want to know how he attained this power, and what makes him pure evil...but you’ll have to come back tomorrow…
Thanks for reading.
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1 comment:
I'm sorry Gruber, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on some of this stuff...
I think we can all agree that the major reason that Bush's approval rating is so low is because of the war.
With that said, my point is that the American public is wrong on there view of the war and that opinion has been swayed by the media since the beginning. America today is infested with the need for instant gratification. Loyalty has become a quality that few poses. Look at everything from high divorce rate to professional sports, to the American people who switch jobs umpteen times during there career.
Marriage today is about self pleasure not about doing what is best for your spouse. As soon as it stops working, why try harder? It is easier to just get out of it.
Professional sports players only care about who is going to pay them the most money, not about keeping a group of guys together that could develop a bond and have some loyalty to the fans and owners.
And Americans jump jobs like they are playing hop scotch. What happened to the days of our Grandpa's where you worked 40 years for one company? What about working hard for a cause rather that were you can make the fastest buck?
Anyway, those are just three examples and now on to my point about the war. The same attitute carries over. Nobody is willing to see this through. You can't argue death toll to me because this is one of the lowest if not the lowest death toll in American history for a war (I don't have exact numbers) but even look at a war like Vietnam (who some people make comparison with this war) we are talking tens of thousands of deaths. I'm not saying that I'm okay with our soldiers dying, but there is always a price for freedom and protection. I did here a statistic that death toll numbers are not much higher than peace time military accidents (But I don't have anything to back that either). So why do so many Americans call for this war to end? A small percentage actually understand the war and feel that we are not making progress and that resources should be used elsewhere (these people I respect). A large amount of people are pursuaded by the media and the American culture of instant gratification in which i pointed out earlier. Many by there dislike of Bush and the Republican party. Many by there hate for war in general (which is the other group that i can respect). To sum all that up... in my opinion there is only a small percentage of people that disaprove of the war that actually have respectable reason.
Forgive my crude writing, I wrote this fast and in about 5 different times. It might not make sense, but that is okay. I think i responded more just about the war than public opinion about the people you talked about, but they are very much tied together.
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