Because You Never Asked

     (This essay was written in the year 2000, just as George W. Bush was about to begin his disastrous run as president. As I put it up on my website before the mid term elections of 2006, I find the bulk of it to be reasonably correct, although there are some ideas the educated reader could quibble with. At the essay’s conclusion, and with the use of good old fashioned 20/20 hindsight, I will address the things that deserve further critical examination. I therefore ask the good reader to file away their grievances and see if any of them coincide with the writer’s further remarks.)

     Writing an essay about our next president, George Walker Bush, is a daunting task because there is really not much to analyze. There is no mystery here, no uncertainty, nothing to speculate about, other then what kind of roadblocks the opposition can erect to policies that could now be considered traditional for the Bush wing of humanity, going all the way back, perhaps, to the species’ first attempts to organize itself. This administration, more than any other in history, is a “déjà vu” presidency, representing the same people who governed during daddy Bush’s term.

     If we were to become more contemporary with regard to what the Bush wing of humanity now considers its vital interests, the substance oil would have to be found at the center of its world. For this administration, as I shall soon explain, oil is its reason to be.

     On occasion, a president comes along who could be more thought of as a press secretary for the interests that control him, rather than the true leader or catalyst for decision making. His real job is to be that of a liaison between the clandestine policy makers he speaks for and the people in Wal-Mart they are trying to manipulate. Ronald Reagan was just such a president, though he represented a more ambiguous set of values than the current Bush presidency will represent. Reagan played the leading role for a more romantic kind of movie featuring liberty, freedom, patriotism, a kind of foggy amalgam of American way of life issues more suited for Cold War politics. There may even have been a degree of naïve altruism involved, something our next administration is totally devoid of (at least the altruism part).

     George W. is just such a “mouthpiece” president and he speaks for a cadre of people with a more focused, self serving agenda. They are well organized, tribal-like loyal to each other, and go back a long way together. They represent a traditional kind of conservatism against which the daily struggle for progress is waged. They are the anchors of the journey towards a higher evolution. Unlike Reagan, whose conservative attitude was a weightless meringue of Midwestern, white picket fence principles, George W. fronts for a much more practical, genuine form of wealth premised conservatism. These people are conserving (perhaps “defending” would be a more appropriate word) material wealth they see as their birthright. It is only when they push the rest of us to the brink of despair, that we finally sweep them aside for awhile so that the human race can move forward a bit.

     This is obviously not one of those moments.

     This administration represents the massive burning of fossil fuels, one of the truly retrograde activities of the human race and one of the heaviest ball and chains around the ankle of the human condition.

     At this point we can name some people, for the oil tribe has been with us quite some time now and some of its chiefs and shamans have become well known politicians. There’s Daddy Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, James Baker, maybe Kissinger is sniffing around the edges, etc. --- a tough, veteran line up. The “tribe” is always looking for someone to be “their” president. When George W. began to show some propensity for politics, they began to nurture him. True, he was a bit of a dull pencil, but he was raised by the “tribe” and could be trusted to the max. His lack of vision and creativity was easily molded to the “tribe’s” needs and his jocular, back slapping mediocrity played well with the clods who actually come out and vote in these exercises in delusionary democracy. In a way, president was the only job they could use him for. “We’ll keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn’t step in doggy doo --- “

     They had their man.

     Now that he is president, we should never forget who got him there and what he is there to do for them. Don’t expect the price at the pumps to go down because the tribe doesn’t want it to. This state of affairs will be accompanied by an anti-dependence-on-foreign-oil mantra, a message that will be pounded home until it begins to hurt the Wal-Mart crowd in their pocket books. They will be bludgeoned with the necessity to harvest our domestic fossil fuel crop and voila! --- before long, with Christmas expenditures looming darkly on the horizon, they’ll say, “go ahead, drill for it under my own house if you want, just give me ten cents less a gallon at the self serve; my wife wants a new bedroom set, my kids need computer paraphernalia I’ve never even heard of, and I want that new Titanium Cobalt Pineapple Head driver that just arrived at the golf shop. To hell with the spics, spooks and Ayrabs, they can bathe in the oil we don’t buy from them.”

     Everything with regard to the price of oil is a contrived fairy tale, and this is the fairy tale George W. was elected to tell. This is the reason why the “tribe” worked so hard to put him in Washington. He has a job to do, but he works for the “tribe”, not the rest of us.

     At one time in our history, the adherence to a gold standard gave rise to the idea of not having America “crucified on a cross of gold.” In a circular kind of way, I will get back to this point by saying that perhaps the most distasteful job I’ve ever had was dipping lobster traps in a petroleum product called “creolite”. This is the same substance wooden telephone poles are coated with and its environmental negativity has now caused the banning of its use on lobster pots. America is now being crucified on a cross coated in creolite. George W.’s job is to keep the oil standard in place. Everything else for the “tribe” is just fluff, politics, an attempt to stay in positions of power. They could care less about God, religion and abortion, concepts that have simply become a scripted role in the theater of Republican politics. John Ashcroft, the Pentecostal witch doctor who has been nominated for attorney general by the “tribe”, is a bone thrown to the religious zealots who have become such a big cog in Republican electoral success. Although these Bible thumping Republicans are not Republicans in the true sense of the word, they have been a wind fall savior to the old guard personified by the Bush clan, who’s traditional, big business values cannot muster enough votes without the Jesus values they’ve become so good at pandering to. The “tribe” has found religion in an attempt to find more oil.

     Another chameleon-like adjustment made by the Bush wing of humanity is their ability to deal with civil rights-equality issues. People dealing from positions of privilege will only grudgingly give terrain in this area when the dike protecting their interests becomes too weak to hold back the ocean of humanity pounding upon it from the other side. Due to the work of those slimy, liberal-progressive vermin, there are now enough people of color and third world types around that have something to conserve, making them “conservatives”. This means George W. can surround himself with minority supporters during those important “photo ops”, even if the Bush wing of humanity has never propagated these advancements for such inferior strains of humanity and never will. If this seems too strong a statement, you can look it up. Such things as slavery, Apartheid and segregation would still exist if no one had ever got in the faces of these people (the southern Democrats of then, personified by such men as George Wallace and Lester Maddox, are now the most reactionary Republicans in our government, driven there by their opposition to such enlightened struggles). Other progressive journeys, such as allowing labor to organize, women to vote, minority opportunity in education and business, etc., have all found their washed out bridges in the Bush wing of humanity. They’ve had to be tugged rudely on a leash in this direction and would run off in the opposite direction if someone let go.

     The one area where the “tribe” has decided to convince us they are doing something new and creative is in the field of education. I remind the reader that keeping America on the oil standard is the “tribe’s” only mission, but you can’t run a presidency on that alone. Governor George W. has supposedly had success in this field by taking Texas from the worst in the nation to almost the worst. As a philosophical cornerstone of his administration, he will now offer a few ghetto kids the opportunity to go to a catholic school with public money, even if they can’t dunk a basketball. In this way, when the “tribe” has another opportunity to elect “their” president, there will be enough people of color around for the necessary photo ops.

     For those of you who think the tone of this essay is too strong, I offer no apology. I’ve lived too long and seen enough. The Bush wing of humanity will only be taken to a better place when the rest of us have the guts to take them there.

     Post Script, 11/06: So here we are, 6 years later. Regardless of whether George W. and his minions can convince or cheat their way into maintaining their iron fisted control of American politics in this year’s election, their run has been an unmitigated disaster which is and will severely prejudice the United States. No amount of lying and/or cheating can change this basic reality.

     Although I am relatively satisfied with the message of this essay, I seem to have missed the boat (and I’m far from alone here) in underestimating the reckless zeal with which the “tribe” would seek their goals. Their war in Iraq is a shameless exercise in imperial deceit and arrogance, beyond any concept of ideological conservative or liberalism. The “tribe” no longer represents any kind of dogma other than their own personal self interest. They are probably the only group of politicians in the country, Republican or Democrat, that would have contrived something like the Iraqi war.

     The essay is perhaps too limited when it refers to an “oil standard”. The “tribe” is more diverse than that, and does see the writing on the wall with regard to oil continuing to be a rentable business. They have begun to push domestic coal as their next panacea for the maintenance of our absurd lifestyle and “their” economic system. The question is, are the American people still biting?