Lies

Oh, Bush, Bush, Bush. More lies. More prevarications. More half-truths. More exaggerations and distortions. More alarmist tactics. That's it, isn't it? You scream crisis, and get your faithful all lined up behind you, echoing your screams. Then comes the Bush fix, based, it seems, entirely on divinely-inspired Bush ideology. It's your pattern, Bush. We saw it in your first election campaign, and 9/11 gave you the indisputable opportunity to do it again. Then came the War on Terror. Then the weapons of mass destruction and the Al Qaeda connection with Saddam... And then your second campaign.

And now Social Security. The chosen issue, it begins to emerge, for your second term. What alarms me is not the imminence of disaster on this front, but the way you revert to pattern. Virtually every balanced, carefully reasoned article I read on the subject comes up with the same conclusion: there is no crisis. There are concerns, certainly, and there's a need to make adjustments, tweak a bit here, tweak a bit there. But there's no need to jump immediately into the radical ideological change that you're insisting on. And yet, so I hear, you're leaning on the good folks at the Social Security Admininstration to cheer-lead and promulgate your view--just as you leaned on the good folks at the CIA to validate your preconceived plan to invade Iraq. We saw where that led.

So where are the reasoned arguments about this issue? Where is the thoughtful consideration of other views? Where's the debate? There is none coming from the White House, so far as I can see. Just the propaganda. Just the same old "Trust me/Trust us" rhetoric.

And the sad truth is, Bush, I don’t trust you. I don't trust your rash judgments when it comes to the financial security of countless millions of future retirees. I look at the deficit you've created. I look at what your "privatization" plan would add to the existing deficit. I take into account the fact that you have failed to veto a single spending bill since you came into office, and that you have instead lavished money on absurd and needless military ventures, even while insisting on ideologically-driven tax cuts that the country can't afford. I look at these things and I say, No, Bush, I don’t trust you when it comes to money matters. I don't trust you one little bit.

And while we're on the subject, what happened to all that aid your promised to the sub-Saharan African countries? What happened to the funding for your No Child Left Behind act?

That's another tactic, isn't it, Bush? Mouth a few feel-good slogans to get the votes or rally the support, then forget the promises at pay-out time. In the case of No Child Left Behind, it now appears that your Ron Paige at the Department of Education put out nearly a quarter of a million precious education dollars in payment to a hack journalist for his collaboration on the propaganda front! So your people have resorted, now, to buying the favor of the press? There's some of us out here wondering just how far that goes… There's some of us who still remember the service provided you by Robert Novak, outing the CIA wife of the man who gave the lie to your Iraq war pretext, Ambassador Joe Wilson.

Trust? You broke that relationship with us years ago. I swear I personally cannot take anything on trust from you or any of your people.

And speaking of education, I have a thought or two about Harry. Prince Harry, that is, and his Nazi uniform. I can't believe that this outrage reflected any ill will on the young man's part. It was simple, disgraceful ignorance. He did not know enough to understand that a dress-up party costume could cause offense. He was so uninformed about the history of the past century that he failed to understand the enormity of the Nazis' crime, and to see his action in that context. To him, I suppose, it was just another ancient war. And yet it's safe to assume, I think, that Harry was provided with the best education that money can buy.

Here's my point, Bush. If a "well-educated" young man like Prince Harry of England can be so ignorant, what's happening to the minds of millions of young people here, in our country, who have the disadvantage of geographical as well as historical distance from the events of the early and mid-20th century? The great lesson of the Holocaust--remember?--was Never Forget. But it has already been forgotten, Bush, not just by a few ignorant people, but by multitudes. And this is not something that can be rectified by tests. This goes to the very root of education: the development of a depth of character and human understanding, along with the capacity for critical thought and the ability to grasp complex, even ambiguous or paradoxical issues.

Which brings us back to where we started out this morning, Bush. I sometimes have to wonder--forgive my skepticism--if you and your ultra-conservative friends don’t have a vested interest in the growth industry of ignorance. The better to sell your ideology to uncritical minds.