Lie Down with Dogs

Strung Ducks: Tea Baggers by any other name (Wiki Common)

There must be a simple way to break through the mental fog of the Baggers.

Possibly clichés would work. Clichés are simple. Most people know what they mean. Maybe we should offer the Baggers some clichés they could use in lieu of brains. Maybe that would help one of them blaze a new trail, prevent them making a president who inherited a huge can of worms from being the fall guy to the previous president, that “ordinary guy” they so admired, despite (or because) of his being a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

For example, here’s the very first I’d like to present for their consideration:

You reap what you sow.

Teabaggers need to reap what they sow

OK, Baggers. This means that if you give stinginess, you will receive stinginess in return.

Example: You want to deny benefits to those who are out of work because of the greed you so admire.

Think about this: If you end up out of work, you will be denied assistance if there is any truth underlying that cliché. And truth underlies most of them. Moreover, because your admiration of greed is tinged with abject fear that what you think you worked for will be taken from you,* I expect divine justice would require that you all become panhandlers, preferably in a state or city with no tolerance for the down-and-out. I’m thinking Texas, Arizona. Places like that. Except they are too warm. So maybe the Dakotas, where winter would actually be problematical.

Do you still want to deny relief to others to save what you think you worked for? You do? OK. Let’s move on and try again.

Flea-bitten Baggers

Next cliché:

If you lie down with dogs, you’ll get some fleas.

This means that by becoming door mats for the unprincipled wealthy, such as the Koch Brothers, John Bonehead, Bachmann et al, you are likely to end up scratching in misery as they move off to a new, clean bed and you are left behind with the “fleas”―the nasty little bad parts of blindly following greedy, unprincipled jackasses they forgot to tell you about. This would include being caught along with everyone else when the financial system implodes, and ending up in the gutter when the taxes you pay as an enormous percentage of your income are increased yet again to ensure that rich folks’ taxes fall from the pitiful rate they pay now to virtually nothing. But then, no one ever lost money betting Baggers were not as dense as a London fog.

Do you still want to be in bed with the likes of the worst of the Republican Party? With fleabags like Rick Perry? It’s only a matter of time, of course, until he disappears in some legal ignominy or other because he’s already got one hand on the chicken coop.

Bunking with Mongrels

But you Baggers still want to be in bed with those mongrels? OK. Here’s another one:

Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

This seems to be what a lot of Baggers are doing, trying to stick with the Republican Party, which it knows gave us two wars, a tanked economy and a bad rep all over the known universe (in addition to No Child Left Behind which is reason enough for any god one might posit to smite the US into oblivion). But what didn’t happen is that the US didn’t open its doors to the less-advantaged; it slammed them, thereby circling up the Koch Brothers' Mercedes and the Bagger’s Golfs. It didn’t join the rest of the civilized world in various treaties concerning the environment and international criminal tribunals, thereby making the US safe for those who would rather waste plastic bags because who cares if tortoises choke to death, and safe for George Bush because―heh, heh―now they can’t haul him in front of a world court for crimes against humanity and get him judged by a bunch of panty-waist Froggies or something.

So Baggers, what if you actually understood that plastic depends on oil, and oil is precisely what you’re afraid of losing to such an extent that you permitted George to finish his Daddy’s war games. Except of course he didn’t finish it because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, especially if the apple is rotten and can’t roll.

There really is no reason to continue, except for the hope that even one single Bagger will have a lightbulb go off in his/her head, and understand. It might only take one. After all, birds of a feather flock together. And, as similar in their idiocy as Baggers are, if even one of them changes his/her tune, it’s likely the rest will go along like strung ducks.

* This refers to Social Security. They all believe it is insurance, a sort of annuity, to which they contributed and should therefore reap the rewards of their insurance investment. Wrong as a screen door in a submarine. Americans pay F.I.C.A., but what they pay doesn’t go into a fund with their name on it. It goes into a general fund. Perhaps they failed to note all the pundits warning that the Social Security fund would run out. How could it run out if it was individuals’ earmarked funds? It couldn’t. Someone could abscond with it, a sort of governmental Bernie Madoff. But run out? No.  Americans pay F.I.C.A. because, with the force of both law and arms, the United States government says they must. It does not say they must get anything back. It is at the whim of Congress that people get Social Security, a whim-based program that also determines what they get and when they get it. Did the Baggers work hard for their Social Security? No. They worked reasonably for their parents’ Social Security, since each generation is contributing to the payouts of the generation already receiving the handout. Who’s paying for the Baggers? Their children and grandchildren, and the Baggers really don’t give a rat’s ass whether it requires half their salary just as long as the Baggers never miss a meal on their next trip to Florida.

Self-explanatory (Wikimedia Commons)

Fair Game: Valerie Plame's outing on the big screen. Where's Bush?

Plame's book, Fair Game, has been made into a movie, out soon. Perhaps it will yield enough profit for her to protect herself and her family since the government she served has declined. (Wiki commons photo)

I'm tired of talking about George W. Bush. I used to think he was simply the puppet of Dick Cheney; then someone convinced me that he did have a brain and was not Dick's puppet. I don't know and don't, any longer, care who ran the mechanism of whom. The fact is, the two of them brought such ignominy to the White House and its environs that it would seem that Washington, DC., is no more than salted earth today, unable to support life or nourish those who depend on it.

I often -- for example, day in and day out -- try not to think of the disaster those two miscreants left behind. I am beginning to learn something about British politics, which is only sensible since I live in the UK now. But yesterday morning, BBC4 radio broadcast an interview with Valerie Plame Wilson, former CIA clandestine agent outed in a fit of pique by Deadeye Dick's well-exercised right hand, "Scooter" (perfect name for Dick's right hand, no?) Libby.

Amazingly, Libby served time for his unconscionable engagement in payback. Payback? For what?

Bush administration kicks truth in the teeth

For truth. In the Bush administration, any breath of truth allowed to exit the compound would have to be dealt with severely, rendered a body blow until it was no longer recognizable as truth, so that their lies could supplant it.

Just so, Bush and Cheney and Libby and countless others mantracized the lie of the hour. One of those lies, according to Valerie Plame Wilson, was that Iraq had WMDs and that Niger had supplied the essential “yellow cake.” Not. Her husband, a retired ambassador with first-hand knowledge, said it did not. So the Bush-Cheney cabal paid him back for his disloyalty (or to the rest of us, his honesty) by ruining his wife's career. (This, of course, leads to certain assumptions about the regard of the Bush-Cheney administration for the female gender.)

Outed undercover agent in danger

A subsequent lie tossed into the murky air of Foggy Bottom was that the Wilson family was not in any mortal danger after Libby outed Valerie Plame Wilson, or at least, Bush-Cheney used that excuse when their CIA (recall, it had once been Daddy Bush’s CIA, literally) denied her request for protection.

Unbelievable. Is this, then, the same government that believed the entire nation was in mortal danger because some Muslims had wreaked havoc and taken 3000 lives in New  York City just a couple of years before? Is this the administration that was throwing money, ordnance and lives of young military personnel against countries that might be harbouring that sort of terrorist? The entire nation was supposed to be at risk from deadly forces from overseas, but there was no reason to think anyone might want to harm Valerie Plame Wilson or her family after it had been made clear that her job was collecting information about national enemies for years: Is that right? No, it's clearly wrong.

It would be natural to ask, how stupid were Bush and Cheney, and how stupid did they think Americans are?

Dumb like foxes

Bush and Cheney weren't stupid at all; they knew exactly what they were doing in engineering precisely what has come to pass―a nation deeply divided along ideological lines. More succinctly, they created a nation divided between those who drank the Bush Kool-Aid and chose to be frightened and therefore manageable by those who would force them into ignorant servitude, and those who were not afraid because they knew:

• The world was always thus, fraught with dangers

• It is not impossible that 9/11 was either and inside job or done with inside foreknowledge

• It is tantamount to becoming a serf to trade personal and civic freedom for putative protection, especially from shadowy forces.

Bush-Cheney were smart enough to know that they could force most Americans into the Kool-Aid parlor; they thought Americans were pretty stupid, and by and large, they were right. It's unfortunate that their single instance of correct assessment was that one.

Considering the hubris and self-referential activities of the Bush-Cheney cabal, it is easy to believe that there never was a real threat from Middle Eastern terrorists, even if one accepts the Twin Towers as a bona fide case of two towers, built to withstand almost anything, collapsing although the fire did not engulf them and was still localized on the upper floors when the buildings fell like a house of cards with the LOWER decks kicked out by an unseen hand.

Home-grown terrorists on Christian agenda

But let's leave that possibility. In the past ten years or so, most of the horrific acts in the US were carried out by US citizens and not even Muslim ones at that. I cite, most recently, the shooting of Rep. Gabriele Gifford, the killing of a judge and a little girl, and the wounding of many others. Where were the Muslims then? Living on the inhospitable alien landscape of Afghanistan, a nation that has been no more than rocks and camels and donkeys and men who would make other men and all women into chattel for centuries, and whose land--despite having been fought for by superpowers from Alexander the Great to the USSR to America--is virtually a pile of rocks and dust offering little more than vicious subsistence to the inhabitants. This factor, unfortunately, makes the place almost ungovernable and certainly unbconquerable; those with little to lose care little to live and will thus sacrifice yours and theirs with equal abandon.

It was a dingbat looney with Christian zeal who wreaked havoc most recently, an apparent home-grown psycho who had slipped through the cracks as he wound down into fundamentalist uber-angst and reckless behavior.

***

Valerie Plame Wilson got no protection. She left government, although she claims she still encourages students to enter government service. The woman must be an eternal optimist, thinking that there will never be another government as unethical in its conduct and inimical in its intent toward the American people as was the execrable government of George W. Bush. Or else, advising college students to go into government service is one way she can protect her hide from those inside who would do her harm. It is certain that the government that dumped her out of the boat is not going to wet its slimy hands helping her get to shore. And make no mistake; it’s still the same government, with just enough window dressing to keep the credulous confused.

It was an interesting interview. The interviewer asked Plame Wilson if she might have been over-reacting to threats against her and against her family. Her answer was clear, succinct and unemotional, precisely as one would expect from someone who had worked within the stress of clandestine ops for years. Valerie Plame Wilson, I have concluded, is good indeed at what she does, not least of which is surviving a several-pronged attack by the government she was proud to serve, and emerging with her mind intact.

Will brainy college graduates save America?

Bush and Cheney have so much to answer for, I and an army of bloggers could point out their misdeeds daily for the next decade and barely scratch the surface. Plame Wilson said she tells college students to study hard and graduate with the best education they can get because the nation will need brainy people who are well educated to solve the problems created in the past decade.

That’s true. But will they be treated as traitors for voicing concerns, even if they also offer solutions? Will truth ever regain a foothold in American life? Hearing truth requires a willingness to grapple with it, something in short supply in America since Bush could reach no higher than holding a book upside down when pretending to read it to children.* Grappling with truth often requires at least a modicum of education and courage, both of which Bush-Cheney badly damaged nationally.

Bush-Cheney virtually destroyed primary and secondary education in the United States via No Child Left Behind. They systematically dismantled the US economic system via a wealth shift of major proportions away from the middle class and to the top 400, and the concurrent rendering of a great deal of America's population homeless or jobless, or both. They rendered the population helpless to help themselves by a steady diet of panic alerts, color-coded so that an uneducated and biddable population might be driven to excesses of both fear and pseudo-patriotic zeal. Remember "freedom fries"? The puerile hallmark of a deluded and gullible population looking for a scapegoat for their own fear and their leaders' failures.

***

I wonder if that interview with the thoughtful and well-spoken Valerie Plame Wilson would ever have happened on a US radio station. I think not. I think a Limbaugh or Hannity would have been employed to assault her verbally in an attempt to prove to the baggers of the nation that this patriotic woman is in fact a traitor despite her years of service, and because she shouldered her betrayal by her superiors better than almost any soldier might.

I would like to think that the absence of an American demand for accountability by Bush-Cheney is also a mass shouldering of betrayal in the upright manner of Valerie Plame Wilson. But I think it is not. I think it is the craven simpering of a nation of peasants convinced by their masters that, if they speak out, they will be denied even the small scraps of dignity shown to them, as well as all means to live. Lord knows, there is little dignity in an America where educated people scrape by on jobs the less-educated would have once been glad to have as a means to start up the ladder. There is little means to live, when threats are made daily by Congress to scrap the meager program (compared to Europe’s) that is Social Security, to dam up unemployment benefits in a nation where the major industry is, at the moment, unemployment.

America no longer needs to fear becoming like the USSR. It already is. As in the USSR, America’s peasants refuse to revolt, or perhaps are already officially terrorized far beyond the capacity to take meaningful political action, concerted action, not actions cynically orchestrated by platoons of emperor wannabes like the Koch brothers and Rush Limbaugh. The population doesn't realize that, sooner or later, there’s going to be a gulag like Guantanamo, and not only for those identified as enemy combatants (rightly or wrongly doesn’t matter in a police state), but for those patriots labeled as traitors by the actual traitors in a democracy-killing real-life version of Mad magazine's prescient Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy.

* Bush was photographed holding the kindergarten book upside down. What did that signify? Did he think, like a mirror, the camera would reverse things? Or could he have been pre-occupied with other thoughts?