People Who Love The Job They Hate
Even in the face of all the current ongoing scandals in this Administration, I think that we've lost sight of the biggest of all: the hurricane Katrina response, and its ongoing aftermath. And I think that what we saw during those dark days following the flooding provides a great insight into the mentality of the people currently in charge of our government.
We've now seen time and time again that this callously evil excuse for an Administration puts party over country at every opportunity--including, unbelievably, in the face of the ongoing disaster that is New Orleans.
We saw it in their calls to block investigations. We saw it in their blocking of the media from entering the city. We saw it in the appalling use of emergency personnel and vehicles as photo-op props during the ongoing disaster.
But the question nobody is asking is about root causes of this phenomenon. Why these guys? Why now? Clinton was a politician. So was George H. W. Bush (Senior). But neither of these men would have stooped to these depths.
Is it just because they're evil fuckers in this Administration (yes, they are) or is there something more fundamental and ideological at work here? I think there is.
It's pretty clear to me that everything BushCo does stems, originally, from their views about what Government's job is (or isn't).
When Grover Norquist, in keeping with the whole trickle-down Reaganite theme and in keeping with most of his BushCo conspirators, talks about drowning government in a bathtub, that doesn't only affect their actual response to the New Orleans disaster, which it does. That ideology also fundamentally influences their reaction to the fiasco they created as well.
These people fundamentally believe that Government is Evil. Some of them believe it out of blind faith and brazen, Ayn Randian libertarian ideology. Most of them believe it out of cynicism, because less government control will fatten their pocketbooks at the expense of those they exploit.
And yet, interestingly, we have a bunch of people who believe fervently that Government is bad vying for and winning government positions. That's quite a contradiction, isn't it? If you hated war and the military, would you enlist? If you hated public education, would you become a schoolteacher? I don't think so. There's no reward for doing that.
But there are heavy rewards for those who hate the government to join its ranks. It's pretty obvious what they are, and it's a win-win situation: lots of money for them from the federal teat while they're in office, and less restriction on their exploitative practices after they gut the very pig they suckle.
No, it's clear that these Government is Bad ideologues join the government ranks for two reasons: 1) to enrich themselves and their friends at taxpayer expense, and 2) to destroy the government from the Inside.
So, what does all this have to do with the insane amounts of spin we have been seeing in the wake of the myriad scandals we have seen post-Katrina?
Everything. There's a very good reason that the feds, and this President especially, did next to nothing before, during, and after the levee breaks. They believe in a dog-eat-dog world where everyone is left to fend for themselves. In their ideology, it simply isn't the government's job to come save your ass, because the federal government really shouldn't exist except to fight wars.
Some of them are evil and cold-hearted enough to believe that the poor who could not get out deserve to die; some are so silver-spooned that they cannot possibly understand what it would mean not to be able to get out. But it doesn't really matter.
The only reason, in fact, that BushCo got around to sending in the Feds when they did was because of the negative press they were receiving about the disaster. Only when it looked like their slow response might endanger their agendas/re-elections did they begin to make any movements at all toward rescue efforts.
And this is where the crux of the matter lies. These Reaganites KNOW that the majority of the public does not agree with their "Government is Evil" worldview.
They KNOW that if the TRUTH ever got out that they really don't GIVE A SHIT about rescue efforts--that they DON'T THINK NOLA SHOULD EVEN BE REBUILT--that people would tar and feather them and run them out of town.
So they spin. And spin. And spin.
But you can see they don't really even mean what they say, or even care about what they say.
They don't care because this is all a game to them. A role-playing game where they pretend to govern just enough not to get tarred-and-feathered, and behind the scenes work as fast as they can to dismantle the very agencies and protections Americans have grown to depend on.
You can see it in Bush's eyes when he gives a press conference. He's annoyed to even be there. He's annoyed the same way a person who gets a telemarketing call during dinner looks annoyed.
Because actual governance is a distraction to them--a necessary but evil part of the game called micromanagement, which they take care of as quickly as possible so that they can return to the real fun of gutting the government and eating all the spoils while it lasts.
It's not so much that the Elephant flies above the Stars and Stripes. It's that Elephants, Donkeys, Stars and Stripes are all three mirages, quite irrelevant to reasons these people are in power in the first place.
The realities of governance are irrelevant.
Even the realities of politics are largely irrelevant.
So they give lip service to governance in the language of politics, and have no qualms about playing whatever sort of politics is necessary to get them through the day. Whatever soundbites will allow the Media to continue holding down the American Taxpayer, and get them through just even one day of raping and pillaging that Taxpayer, is exactly what they'll use.
And that's something we have never seen before in our history--not even during its periods of worst corruption.
And it stands to reason. Would you hand Fido to a dog-sitter who despises and wants to kill dogs? And when you came back to a dead dog, would you expect that dog-sitter to say anything beyond whatever it took to get through the conversation and get paid? Would you let your kid be taught by a teacher with a pathological aversion to learning? And what would you expect to hear from that teacher at a PTA meeting, besides bullshit?
So what, exactly, can we expect from a government filled with officials who despise government?
And why should we expect to hear anything, in the face of the intentional negligence of the Worst Administration Ever, but spin, spin and more spin?
We've now seen time and time again that this callously evil excuse for an Administration puts party over country at every opportunity--including, unbelievably, in the face of the ongoing disaster that is New Orleans.
We saw it in their calls to block investigations. We saw it in their blocking of the media from entering the city. We saw it in the appalling use of emergency personnel and vehicles as photo-op props during the ongoing disaster.
But the question nobody is asking is about root causes of this phenomenon. Why these guys? Why now? Clinton was a politician. So was George H. W. Bush (Senior). But neither of these men would have stooped to these depths.
Is it just because they're evil fuckers in this Administration (yes, they are) or is there something more fundamental and ideological at work here? I think there is.
It's pretty clear to me that everything BushCo does stems, originally, from their views about what Government's job is (or isn't).
When Grover Norquist, in keeping with the whole trickle-down Reaganite theme and in keeping with most of his BushCo conspirators, talks about drowning government in a bathtub, that doesn't only affect their actual response to the New Orleans disaster, which it does. That ideology also fundamentally influences their reaction to the fiasco they created as well.
These people fundamentally believe that Government is Evil. Some of them believe it out of blind faith and brazen, Ayn Randian libertarian ideology. Most of them believe it out of cynicism, because less government control will fatten their pocketbooks at the expense of those they exploit.
And yet, interestingly, we have a bunch of people who believe fervently that Government is bad vying for and winning government positions. That's quite a contradiction, isn't it? If you hated war and the military, would you enlist? If you hated public education, would you become a schoolteacher? I don't think so. There's no reward for doing that.
But there are heavy rewards for those who hate the government to join its ranks. It's pretty obvious what they are, and it's a win-win situation: lots of money for them from the federal teat while they're in office, and less restriction on their exploitative practices after they gut the very pig they suckle.
No, it's clear that these Government is Bad ideologues join the government ranks for two reasons: 1) to enrich themselves and their friends at taxpayer expense, and 2) to destroy the government from the Inside.
So, what does all this have to do with the insane amounts of spin we have been seeing in the wake of the myriad scandals we have seen post-Katrina?
Everything. There's a very good reason that the feds, and this President especially, did next to nothing before, during, and after the levee breaks. They believe in a dog-eat-dog world where everyone is left to fend for themselves. In their ideology, it simply isn't the government's job to come save your ass, because the federal government really shouldn't exist except to fight wars.
Some of them are evil and cold-hearted enough to believe that the poor who could not get out deserve to die; some are so silver-spooned that they cannot possibly understand what it would mean not to be able to get out. But it doesn't really matter.
The only reason, in fact, that BushCo got around to sending in the Feds when they did was because of the negative press they were receiving about the disaster. Only when it looked like their slow response might endanger their agendas/re-elections did they begin to make any movements at all toward rescue efforts.
And this is where the crux of the matter lies. These Reaganites KNOW that the majority of the public does not agree with their "Government is Evil" worldview.
They KNOW that if the TRUTH ever got out that they really don't GIVE A SHIT about rescue efforts--that they DON'T THINK NOLA SHOULD EVEN BE REBUILT--that people would tar and feather them and run them out of town.
So they spin. And spin. And spin.
But you can see they don't really even mean what they say, or even care about what they say.
They don't care because this is all a game to them. A role-playing game where they pretend to govern just enough not to get tarred-and-feathered, and behind the scenes work as fast as they can to dismantle the very agencies and protections Americans have grown to depend on.
You can see it in Bush's eyes when he gives a press conference. He's annoyed to even be there. He's annoyed the same way a person who gets a telemarketing call during dinner looks annoyed.
Because actual governance is a distraction to them--a necessary but evil part of the game called micromanagement, which they take care of as quickly as possible so that they can return to the real fun of gutting the government and eating all the spoils while it lasts.
It's not so much that the Elephant flies above the Stars and Stripes. It's that Elephants, Donkeys, Stars and Stripes are all three mirages, quite irrelevant to reasons these people are in power in the first place.
The realities of governance are irrelevant.
Even the realities of politics are largely irrelevant.
So they give lip service to governance in the language of politics, and have no qualms about playing whatever sort of politics is necessary to get them through the day. Whatever soundbites will allow the Media to continue holding down the American Taxpayer, and get them through just even one day of raping and pillaging that Taxpayer, is exactly what they'll use.
And that's something we have never seen before in our history--not even during its periods of worst corruption.
And it stands to reason. Would you hand Fido to a dog-sitter who despises and wants to kill dogs? And when you came back to a dead dog, would you expect that dog-sitter to say anything beyond whatever it took to get through the conversation and get paid? Would you let your kid be taught by a teacher with a pathological aversion to learning? And what would you expect to hear from that teacher at a PTA meeting, besides bullshit?
So what, exactly, can we expect from a government filled with officials who despise government?
And why should we expect to hear anything, in the face of the intentional negligence of the Worst Administration Ever, but spin, spin and more spin?
posted by thereisnospoon at 3:15 PM
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