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So Bushithead went to Africa. And, apparently said some incredible statements that pretty much fulfilled my weekly quota of the kind of input that makes me feel like I am living in The Onion.
"God called us," he said. "America has decided to act."
I feel like there should be some sort of mathematical formula, like post "end-of-history" (up yours, Fukuyama) late-globalization "noblesse oblige" + (neofundamentalism - any sort of metaphorical level in using the Lord's name and His close connection to the Shrub, the extended Shrubbery and his neocon Greenhouse) + hubris X hamartia (although that's hard, like, how do you answer the question of what constitutes Dubya's "tragic flaw"?) = Bush's old in-and-out of Africa (and yes, I am importing the expression from The Clockwork Orange consciously, because, let's face it, any time Bush somehow engages with a foreign country, some form of international rape commences). let's just hope it all ends House-of-Atreus style for Bush, being pursued by The Furies. Even an Oedipus Rex recreation would hold some satisfaction for me. Perhaps he can go blind himself and then, once he has perished, Jenna Bush can risk ostricism and, eventually her life, to bury him? Or, alternately, I also think it would be very cool if he ended up in the kind of behavioral modification treatment program that the protagonist of The Clockwork Orange undergoes. Imagine The Shrub affixed to a chair, unable to turn his head or lower his eyelids, while he is bombarded with image upon image of military violence--from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Viet Kong villages doused with Napalm to The Killing Fields in Kampuchia (yes, I buy the argument that the illegal bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War devastated and destabilized the country enough to propel the Khmere Rouge into power) to Iraqi children dying from wounds, cholera and malnutrition, the footage that sometimes airs very very late on our Time Warner Cable's "Syrian" (as in, for an hour a day, between 3 and 4 AM) channel, and that we used to catch glimpses of on BBC until about a week into the war, Time Warner took our BBC away. Anyway, I can't even say anything about the next excerpt from the article, because, well, here it is:
"Meanwhile, US First Lady Laura Bush gave a few dozen Uganda school kids a taste of Americana when she read them a classic American children's book.
She took about a half-hour out of her four-hour visit to Uganda to read from "Clifford the Big Red Dog" to children - some HIV-positive.
"This is a very popular book in the United States, boys and girls love Clifford," she told the few dozen kids who gathered at the Imperial Botanical Beach Hotel for the reading. "
And again, this reminds me of my childhood stories about Lenin's great kindness (see the entry about cognitive dissonance from a few weeks ago), and the whole genre of jokes that they spawned. The one I am going to share today is one of the "anecdots"/parodies of the appalling little parables that reified how Lenin was the paragon of Loki-like acumen and unwavering committment to the Revolution, full of love for all Soviet Children. So the joke/parody goes like this:
"Once upon a time, Lenin was trimming his beard with a razor, and a little girl came up to him and asked to sing him a song, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin listened to the girl singing a song to him, holding his razor in his hand the entire time, and you know what? He did not slash her. And he could have!"
And on the domestic front, Route Orwell, Exit 1984, The CIA has taken the fall for the Uranium fiasco. Yes, that will resolve the issue for everyone WHO DOES NOT REMEMBER ALL THE ARTICLES ABOUT CIA BEING PRESSURED TO DELIVER A CERTAIN KIND OF INFO BY RUMSFIELD AND FURTHERMORE LETTING THE WHITE HOUSE KNOW THE DAY BEFORE THE NIGER/URANIUM CASE WAS PRESENTED THAT THE INFORMATION WAS FALSIFIED. yeah, the CIA really fucked up here. But hey, Dubya has the utmost confidence in Tenet. and I am sure Tenet has the utmost confidence in Bushco's total disregard of every single warning that had surfaced about 9/11 in the YEARS prior, not to mention months. Because without 9/11 we would not be where we are today. It can all be broken down very easily:
2 airplanes: $ 4 million
The Twin Towers: $ 5 billion
3,000 lives lost: collateral damage
The amount paid out to Bin Ladin while he was on CIA's payroll during the war in Afghanistan: classified
Aid package to NYC post WTC attacks: BIG FAT ZERO, in pratice
Being able to turn the country into an authoritarian, fascist theocracy, obliterating habeas corpus, procedure, privacy and civil liberties: priceless.
"God called us," he said. "America has decided to act."
I feel like there should be some sort of mathematical formula, like post "end-of-history" (up yours, Fukuyama) late-globalization "noblesse oblige" + (neofundamentalism - any sort of metaphorical level in using the Lord's name and His close connection to the Shrub, the extended Shrubbery and his neocon Greenhouse) + hubris X hamartia (although that's hard, like, how do you answer the question of what constitutes Dubya's "tragic flaw"?) = Bush's old in-and-out of Africa (and yes, I am importing the expression from The Clockwork Orange consciously, because, let's face it, any time Bush somehow engages with a foreign country, some form of international rape commences). let's just hope it all ends House-of-Atreus style for Bush, being pursued by The Furies. Even an Oedipus Rex recreation would hold some satisfaction for me. Perhaps he can go blind himself and then, once he has perished, Jenna Bush can risk ostricism and, eventually her life, to bury him? Or, alternately, I also think it would be very cool if he ended up in the kind of behavioral modification treatment program that the protagonist of The Clockwork Orange undergoes. Imagine The Shrub affixed to a chair, unable to turn his head or lower his eyelids, while he is bombarded with image upon image of military violence--from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Viet Kong villages doused with Napalm to The Killing Fields in Kampuchia (yes, I buy the argument that the illegal bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War devastated and destabilized the country enough to propel the Khmere Rouge into power) to Iraqi children dying from wounds, cholera and malnutrition, the footage that sometimes airs very very late on our Time Warner Cable's "Syrian" (as in, for an hour a day, between 3 and 4 AM) channel, and that we used to catch glimpses of on BBC until about a week into the war, Time Warner took our BBC away. Anyway, I can't even say anything about the next excerpt from the article, because, well, here it is:
"Meanwhile, US First Lady Laura Bush gave a few dozen Uganda school kids a taste of Americana when she read them a classic American children's book.
She took about a half-hour out of her four-hour visit to Uganda to read from "Clifford the Big Red Dog" to children - some HIV-positive.
"This is a very popular book in the United States, boys and girls love Clifford," she told the few dozen kids who gathered at the Imperial Botanical Beach Hotel for the reading. "
And again, this reminds me of my childhood stories about Lenin's great kindness (see the entry about cognitive dissonance from a few weeks ago), and the whole genre of jokes that they spawned. The one I am going to share today is one of the "anecdots"/parodies of the appalling little parables that reified how Lenin was the paragon of Loki-like acumen and unwavering committment to the Revolution, full of love for all Soviet Children. So the joke/parody goes like this:
"Once upon a time, Lenin was trimming his beard with a razor, and a little girl came up to him and asked to sing him a song, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin listened to the girl singing a song to him, holding his razor in his hand the entire time, and you know what? He did not slash her. And he could have!"
And on the domestic front, Route Orwell, Exit 1984, The CIA has taken the fall for the Uranium fiasco. Yes, that will resolve the issue for everyone WHO DOES NOT REMEMBER ALL THE ARTICLES ABOUT CIA BEING PRESSURED TO DELIVER A CERTAIN KIND OF INFO BY RUMSFIELD AND FURTHERMORE LETTING THE WHITE HOUSE KNOW THE DAY BEFORE THE NIGER/URANIUM CASE WAS PRESENTED THAT THE INFORMATION WAS FALSIFIED. yeah, the CIA really fucked up here. But hey, Dubya has the utmost confidence in Tenet. and I am sure Tenet has the utmost confidence in Bushco's total disregard of every single warning that had surfaced about 9/11 in the YEARS prior, not to mention months. Because without 9/11 we would not be where we are today. It can all be broken down very easily:
2 airplanes: $ 4 million
The Twin Towers: $ 5 billion
3,000 lives lost: collateral damage
The amount paid out to Bin Ladin while he was on CIA's payroll during the war in Afghanistan: classified
Aid package to NYC post WTC attacks: BIG FAT ZERO, in pratice
Being able to turn the country into an authoritarian, fascist theocracy, obliterating habeas corpus, procedure, privacy and civil liberties: priceless.
