2 posts tagged “american politics”
If I were president, I would do exactly what I wanted because I am the decider. I decide for the country and the world. My first act would be to start a war that would bankrupt the country. I'd follow up with refusals to provide medical care and benefits to soldiers who fought in the war, award contracts for war-making to my friends, reduce taxes for the rich, make the poor and middle class pay for the war, violate the constitution, act as if I were above the law, and put political opponents in prison. I would also start another war with another country just to make sure that the world is safe for democracy.
But wait. That’s not all. I would fire government employees who do not carry out my will. I would neglect roads and bridges, leave millions of people without medical care, degrade the public education system, and devalue the dollar so that we pay more for oil and gas so the people who we are fighting in the war have more money to fight us. I would put my mighty effort into destroying social security so that even more old people will live in poverty.
From my bully pulpit, I would declare that I am doing all of this for the good of the American people. And the world, I would add.
But wait, someone beat me to it. We’ve been there, done that. I guess I would have to something else. I’ve got it. For the first six months of my presidency, I would meet in small groups two times a day with local, national, and international leaders and people most of us have never heard of. I would listen to what they have to say about what is going wrong and what is going right in the world. I’d ask them to tell me what they think could be done.
I would have two other people with me at all times. These would be people who could identify the core ideas in what people from all over the country and the world tell me. After each meeting, I would process what we learn in these meetings with these two people for one hour.
One time a day for those six months, I would meet for two hours with advisers hand-picked for their far-sightedness and humanitarians. We would hammer out policies for dealing the issues that people everywhere have identified.
Imagine that.
How do some people get to be so clever at covering up their own misdeeds by denouncing other people? So many of the rest of us are utter and complete failures at this. Where does their genius come from?
The latest foray into the game of covering up unkind deeds is the denunciation that Republicans roared at MoveOn.Org, an internet-based liberal political group, for making a pun out of General David Petraeus’s name. In a full-page ad in the New York Times, MoveOn wrote: Petraeus=Betray Us after the general reported that the invasion and recent surge in Iraq are successes and that opponents of the invasion are radical thugs with rings in their noses.
The Republican roar shifted attention away from the epic tragedy of Iraq and Petraeus’s contestable claims. They scapegoated MoveOn without taking one second to reflect upon any truth that is contained in their objections.
Win at any costs, say these denouncers. The costs are the truth, American and Iraqi lives, the economic disaster that the invasion is causing in the US and internationally, and the loss of American world leadership, to name a few. Do these Republicans care? No.
The good news for MoveOn is their own surge in fund-raising. In one day, they received a half a million in donations, the largest single donation in the few years of their existence.
This upside doesn’t really matter, though. What matters is the mindless fury of a few who do not have the executive skills to see that the consequences of their actions threaten the foundations of the US democracy. They do not see the terrible things they do in the name of winning.
Why can’t those who understand democracy and have good executive skills be as good at getting their own way as these denouncers who lie to themselves and to others?
The answer is in the question. Reasonable people understand democracy and think about the consequences of their actions. They have good executive skills. They have have consciences.
How are we ever going to defuse the influences of denouncers? They are mindless roarers.
