Monday, April 26, 2004
I GIVE UP
I named this blog "Completely Futile" because that was how I felt, at the time, about a number of things, but especially about politics. I feel that way again these days. Bush got almost-elected by posing as a "moderate," "compassionate conservative," but once in office, his actions showed this to have been a complete lie. He has consistently pursued domestic policies whose intended effects are completely different from the effects he publicly claims they would have, and which hurt most Americans. He has used terrorism as a pretext to eviscerate civil liberties, while doing nothing to make us safer. He got us into a war on fraudulent grounds (whether or not he sincerely believed that Iraq had WMDs, there is no doubt that he and his administration lied in claiming to have conclusive evidence of it). If someone like this can have a chance of re-election, let alone be leading Kerry (as the Apr. 20 Washington Post reports), how can anyone have faith in democracy? How can anyone believe that elections do anything more than demonstrate who can best con a gullible public and manipulate the media (that part of it which isn't already bought)? Don't get me wrong: I hope Kerry wins. But if he wins it won't be evidence of a civic revival; it'll just be because Bush and his administration are even more incompetent than evil. For awhile I thought that Bush had to be defeated because if he won it would demonstrate that a President can get away with doing whatever he wants and lying about it. But in fact Bush has already gotten away with it. If he does lose, it'll be because the economy takes another downturn, or because the situation in Iraq becomes too bad for even the media to paper over, not because of his lies.
I named this blog "Completely Futile" because that was how I felt, at the time, about a number of things, but especially about politics. I feel that way again these days. Bush got almost-elected by posing as a "moderate," "compassionate conservative," but once in office, his actions showed this to have been a complete lie. He has consistently pursued domestic policies whose intended effects are completely different from the effects he publicly claims they would have, and which hurt most Americans. He has used terrorism as a pretext to eviscerate civil liberties, while doing nothing to make us safer. He got us into a war on fraudulent grounds (whether or not he sincerely believed that Iraq had WMDs, there is no doubt that he and his administration lied in claiming to have conclusive evidence of it). If someone like this can have a chance of re-election, let alone be leading Kerry (as the Apr. 20 Washington Post reports), how can anyone have faith in democracy? How can anyone believe that elections do anything more than demonstrate who can best con a gullible public and manipulate the media (that part of it which isn't already bought)? Don't get me wrong: I hope Kerry wins. But if he wins it won't be evidence of a civic revival; it'll just be because Bush and his administration are even more incompetent than evil. For awhile I thought that Bush had to be defeated because if he won it would demonstrate that a President can get away with doing whatever he wants and lying about it. But in fact Bush has already gotten away with it. If he does lose, it'll be because the economy takes another downturn, or because the situation in Iraq becomes too bad for even the media to paper over, not because of his lies.
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