Essentials

I have always voted Democrat, but, during the ‘80s I lost a lot of respect for my own party. In terms of how the welfare system was degrading communities, in terms of reverse discrimination, and in terms of how we had taken a soft line on the Soviet Union, even in some cases failing to make the idea of communist or socialist revolution unwelcome in our ranks, I felt my own party had strayed far from what had once been the party of Kennedy.

When I first heard Rush Limbaugh, I realized he was a bad guy and a liar, but damned if he didn’t have plenty of true excesses of the liberals to coat his lies with. Maybe this will be healthy for the Democratic party, I thought. Maybe this will burn off the chaff, I thought, and make us stronger. When I first heard Limbaugh, I was angry, not at ditto heads, but at the smug liberals who had degraded my own party.

Since then, we have been treated to even worse fascists on talk radio and in the public eye at large, like G. Gordon Liddy, an intelligent, charming fascist, and Oliver North. Both of these guys are ex-cons whose crimes were committed against America, yet they were shaping opinion. This burn off of chaff was getting harder to bear. When former KKK Imperial Wizard and former Nazi David Duke ran for the senate in Louisiana as a Republican, I realized that, apart from his past, his welfare reform platform would have legs. After thoroughly repudiating Duke, the Republicans immediately co-opted his platform whole cloth, adding a lot of deregulation, anti-tax, and “family values” rhetoric, and the Republican Revolution was born, Newt Gingrich sticking his Puckish mucous-covered and bloody head out of the birth canal first. I trace the beginnings of the Republican revolution to the co-opting of Duke's platform in the South during his run for Senate, which is not to say that Republicans are racists, though many are (just like Democrats.) Some of his platform made sense, though, which is also not to say that Duke is a good guy. He is a Nazi who has had his appearance changed with plastic surgery almost as much as Michael Jackson, and I wouldn't doubt it if he liked little boys, too. However, the fact is that the Republican revolution did seem to start right after Duke ran, and incorporated Duke's issues, especially welfare reform, which nobody would dare touch before. As always, the extremes tend to legitimize the moderates. They discovered the so-called "family values" issue, and Gingrich mercilessly hammered Clinton on this, even though Gingrich himself had filed for divorce from his wife after she was diagnosed with cancer, not to mention the long affair, and a second divorce from another wife who had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Yet the regular Joe liked hearing these degenerates go on about family values, and the Republican revolution succeeded. After the Republican revolution, we were then treated to even more fascistic pundits. Ayn Coulter—Sorry, I mean Ann Coulter—spouts even more outrageous hypocritical Nazi propaganda.

But damned if the Democratic Party was not still passing her the ammunition. We let ourselves be defined by our extremes.

When Bush 2 was elected, I figured maybe there was a little voting fraud, but, Hell, the Democrats never pushed to get the Electoral College abolished, and the Supreme Court made the decision, so I would accept Bush as president. Then 9/11 happened. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan from the beginning, unlike Michael Moore, who only supported it in Fahrenheit 911 and even said we should have committed more troops. See, that is what makes people hate liberals: Michael Moore speaking out in the strongest terms against the invasion of Afghanistan, and then coming out a year or two later with 20/20 hindsight to declare that we should have in fact sent more troops. The Afghan government harbored Al Qeada and was in some senses indistinguishable from it. It was a no-brainer. Perhaps there were oil interests at work, but still the job had to be done.

Then, we heard of WMD in Iraq, and the Administration evoked the specter of a mushroom cloud over American skies. Saddam was acting guilty as hell. We knew he had had WMD programs before the inspections, and, in fact, we never would have found out about them if Hussein Kamel had not defected and told us about them. Iraq shot at our jets. Iraq made an attempt on the life of a sitting US president. Even if he did not have nuclear/chemical/biological weapons, we had a right to think he did! Then there were the satellite pictures that Powell explained were evidence of WMD, and there was that lone radio transmission that seemed to reference chemical weapons. We went to war, and I wrote letters to publications that were published, speaking out against the tactics of the demonstrators, and making enemies among my liberal friends for defending the Bush foreign policy. I always thought Bush was the wrong guy to wage this war, being in the pocket of big oil, but I never thought that he would send us to war for a lie. I also realized that most of the problems in the Arab world were the result of US policy. Look at Israel on a map. It is a wedge right in the middle of the Arab world, and racially/ethnically styled on top of that. Look at the Saudi royal family. They are absolute despotic rulers supported by a country that was founded on HATRED OF DESPOTIC RULERS.

However, I personally thought that there was not much of a downside to deposing a brutal Stalin-like dictator with pan-Arab aspirations and a history of attacking neighboring states. I thought the people would be happy to see him fall. I thought the doomsayers’ predictions of quagmire were incorrect like they had been for the previous few engagements. But let’s keep my opinion on what would have been good reasons for going to war separate from the actual declared foreign policy. This made it easier for me to support the invasion, along with my belief that in wartime, we need to band together as Americans. Just because no WMD had been found yet didn't mean that none would be found, of course, and even if there were none, we still had every right to believe that there were because of all Saddam's outward signs of guilt.

At any rate, I supported the Iraq war, despite mounting doubts in the media and outrageous conflicts of interest, until Richard Clarke, the White House’s top advisor on terrorism spilled his guts. Bush, he said, had told him to go find a link between al Qaeda and Iraq, even though there was none. That is, the president was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq, not the truth. Did he simply have a hardon for Iraq? Now I had to take another look at the WMD question, and was able to finally accept that the mountain of evidence suggesting that WMD in Iraq was smoke and mirrors thrown up to support the ulterior motives and worldview of the neocons. As I came to accept, we did not even have a right to think that there were WMD in Iraq. Hussein Kamal's statements, far from what the supposedly liberal media had led me to believe, presented an Iraq that had destroyed all of its WMD not only before Operation Iraqi Freedom but even before Operation Desert Storm! You can't trust the media. You can't trust the government. You have to sit there and read the actual documents. We had positive reason to believe that there were no WMD programs! The specter of a mushroom cloud over American skies was nothing but a ploy by the Bush administration. Then, it was impossible to ignore the Bush links to big oil, the sweetheart deals for Halliburton, Cheney’s insistence that he has no interest in Halliburton even though he still owns large quantities of Halliburton stock. After actually reading Hussein Kamel’s statements, I realized that the media had misrepresented what he said, which was that though Saddam had WMD, he had destroyed them a long time ago. I realized that the books had been cooked. Bush lied big time, and it is costing American lives. The predictions of a cakewalk were manufactured. Clarke was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak.

Now, there is still a good case to make about the importance of going to war in Iraq. As I said above, I personally think that deposing a brutal Stalin-like dictator with pan-Arab aspirations and a history of attacking neighboring states is not a bad thing if it is within our budget and within our tolerance for body bags—that is, if the price, in more ways than one, is right. In fact, the Bush administration has basically fallen back to this position: There were no WMD, but the war is still a good thing.

HOWEVER... we did NOT get a chance to decide honestly as a nation about the advisability of this justification and course of action. We had a secretive president cooking the books, scaring us with mushroom cloud scenarios, and rubbing his greedy little mitts at the prospect of controlling the huge Iraqi oil reserves. There may be a case for war, but that is not the case he made. His case was smoke and mirrors to mislead the public. He has damaged the presidency. He has damaged our democracy. He has damaged our reputation. He has sent people to die for his lie.

This is, or at least was, a democracy. We don’t need a liar of this magnitude in control of it. We should have had the chance to decide like a free people instead of having our president making up some lie that the boogie man was going to get us. He is unfit to lead our troops, because how are we supposed to know in the future, like in Iran, whether he is telling the truth about its nuclear program? I, personally, will not support any action Bush takes in the future, not because I am a pacifist, which I am not, but because he is a lying sack of shit.

I will, in closing, call attention to the fact that, though I have sometimes supported policies that the Republicans own, and though I have nettled the Democratic party for many of the same reasons the Republicans do, I have never been dumb enough to actually vote for one of these country club fascists.