DEMOCRACY:
Government & Politics | November 24, 2005
GEORGE
PLAYS
DUMB
AS
DICK
PLAYS
DIRTY.
WELCOME
BACK,
KARL!
By
Douglas Drenkow, Editor of "Progressive
Thinking" As
Posted in
"OpEdNews"
& "Comments
From Left Field"
I
was beginning to get worried. For a while there it seemed like our
political arch nemesis was permanently out of touch.
I
mean, how could we fully appreciate what is right and proper in
public discourse if our reference point for all that is sick and
twisted and just plain evil in the world of politics suddenly
disappeared?
But
apparently, breathing a sigh of relief after dodging (at least for
now) an indictment years in the making, Karl Rove is back. With a
vengeance (as if it could be any other way).
The
days of Karl having to constantly worry that special prosecutor
Fitzgerald had wiped enough sand out of his eyes to see what
had actually gone on in the outing of Plame seem to be over (at
least for now).
The
president's political opponents can expect no more free rides, of
P.R. disasters in the wake of natural disasters, of Supreme Court
nominees taken out by friendly fire from the Right, of
presidential poll numbers in utter free fall.
No,
Karl Rove is apparently back in the saddle again, and in fine
form, although operating, true to form, behind the scenes (Think
"The Wizard Oz" in reverse: the face to the world that
of an avuncular soul; the man behind the curtain crazed with the
power to crush any and all who dare to oppose the Great Rove).
Just
consider the rapid response the White House mounted to the recent
spate of criticisms from the Democrats, complaints that resonate
so well with the public that they had -- and still do have -- the
potential to bring down this administration; and tell me you do
not see the fingerprints of Karl, the master of deceit, all over
the well-orchestrated, quickly evolving (intelligently designed?)
counter-offensive.
The
central attack on Bush came on the issue of his honesty and
trustworthiness. Polls showed that most Americans now believe he
intentionally lied about the claims that led us into war. Putting
aside for the moment the mounting evidence that that was indeed
the case -- for although "facts may be stubborn things,"
they are ultimately simply "bothersome things" for the
hypocritical megalomaniacs that captain our ship of state, this
ship of fools -- the fundamental political problem for any leader
is that if no one believes him, no one will follow him ... into
either heaven or hell.
And
we know in which direction the Right is leading us now (Does it
feel warm to you, or is it just me?).
So
what's a tinhorn dictator from West Texas to do? Why, turn to his
trusty ol' sidekick, of course (Does it smell like turdblossom to
you, or is it just me?).
After
WMDs turned out to be as AWOL as a congressman's son bangin' coeds
in Alabama, after memos from Downing Street made Watergate look
like child's play, after Curveball
was exposed to be as unreliable as a Scottie McClellan denial
du jour, the issue became a stark choice.
The
president was either a liar or a fool.
Oh,
sure, you could attack the messenger. But there comes a point
where the consequences of all your lies become so offensive that
you need to Swift
Boat those who were once your own defenders. And true hawks
eat chickenhawks for breakfast.
Which
brings Karl back to the unpleasant duty, as presidential image-maker
in chief, of having to define his old pal George as either the
world's biggest liar or the world's biggest fool (My money's on
both, but that's beside the point).
Well,
after being conspicuously absent from the limelight for quite some
time, Dick "19% of the public still loves me" Cheney has
embarked upon a tour of "truth," in which he takes every
opportunity (in front of friendly audiences of course) to condemn
exposing the truth about what the president knew and when he knew
it as "revisionism
of the most corrupt and shameless variety," even as the
administration continually attempts to rewrite the history of why
we went to war in the first place.
George
Orwell only wished he was as creative a writer as Karl Rove (or
whoever is writing this stuff for the GOP, including John "It
is a lie to say that the president lied to the American
people" McCain).
So
... if George was not a liar, then the only way that he could have
misled us into war despite all the warnings from the intelligence
community that he was receiving from Washington to Berlin was if
he was a ...
Because
my momma taught me long ago never to call an idiot a fool, I will
simply refer you to the perhaps most publicized image of the
president's recent junket to China: You know, the
picture where poor ol' George picks the wrong door to get out of
the room, away from those naughty ol' reporters hounding him
with questions, way off in that foreign land.
Oh,
the face that he makes! I haven't laughed so hard since good ol'
Inspector Clouseau made the same mistake ("the
old closet ploy")! He might have been hapless, but he was
harmless. And he always got his man.
Now,
I'm not saying that Karl Rove wrote a script a la Blake Edwards
(Sometimes a gaffe is just a gaffe); but against the background of
the vice president's remarks (repeating what Bush himself had said
before he left), it does ironically work to the president's
advantage: After the spin cycle (My favorite was David Letterman
joking that Bush had no "exit strategy" in China
either!), we are left with the impression of a president who is
not a liar but just a fool -- not exactly a flattering portrait
but the lesser of the two political evils with which he has been
most recently and devastatingly tarred.
Likewise,
the president's policy in Iraq -- if you can call murder and
mayhem intermingled with chaos and corruption, costing tens of
thousands of lives and limbs and hundreds of billions of dollars,
with no end in sight, a "policy" -- has come to be seen
by many not as some sort of Machiavellian intrigue but as a rather
Shakespearean tragedy:
"A
tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing."
--
Macbeth, Act V, Scene V
Although
to be more metaphorically precise, in Iraq we have "a tiger
by the tail" -- we're damned if we hold on, fomenting
insurgency, and we're damned if we let go, having created another
Afghanistan, a breeding ground for terrorists, where none existed
beforehand ... in truth.
You
remember truth, don't you? The first casualty of war. And the last
refuge of peace.
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