- There has been much throwing about of brains on the subject
of George W. Bush's further lurch to the Right since he limped over the
election finish line with his tiny, 1 percent, fraud-marred majority. And
to be sure, the wholesale purges he has instituted throughout his regime
-- replacing a slew of merely cringing sycophants with cringing, drooling,
groveling sycophants -- will indeed hasten the United States' degeneration
into corpo-religious authoritarianism along the lines of Franco's Spain.
-
- But all the earnest disquisitions about Bush's Franco-U.S.
"ideology" entirely miss the point -- and increase the fog that
the Regime deliberately spreads over its true interests. For the heart
of this slouching beast is neither left-wing nor right-wing; it's strictly
Bush-wing. Anyone even slightly acquainted with the history of the Bush
dynasty knows what makes these preppy puppies run -- and it has nothing
to do with conservative principles or moral values or national security
or world freedom. It's not ideology, but investments -- the gobbling up
of unearned, risk-free lucre on the grandest scale imaginable.
-
- Naturally, the pursuit of this kind of piratical wealth
leads to certain kinds of policies that can at times be mistaken for a
political philosophy. For example, the Bush Regime's devotion to Big Oil,
the military, tax cuts, corporate deregulation and unbridled executive
power could be seen as the expression of a coherent, if repellent, worldview:
Social Darwinism -- survival of the fittest, might makes right, winner
takes all. Likewise, the Regime's embrace of religious and cultural fundamentalism
resembles an ideological stance of unbending zeal and moral certitude,
encompassing the whole of reality.
-
-
- Taken together, these traits present a formidable picture
of a thoroughgoing ideological juggernaut, well-plated with philosophical,
academic, legal and theological armor. But underneath all this bristling
array there is nothing but a tiny white maggot of greed, wriggling and
gorging on scraps of rotting meat. No deep beliefs or high ideals inform
the Bushist ethos, which can be boiled down to one sentence: Grab your
pile and screw anybody who gets in the way. War, energy and corporate finance
just happen to be where the money is at. And raw, secretive political power
-- unfettered by courts, laws, legislators or public scrutiny -- is the
most effective way to safeguard and augment these investments.
-
- That is not to say that the Bushist credo lacks all nuance.
There is in fact a very important refinement to their wormy greed: Loot
should always be obtained without the slightest risk to your own financial
position. The "free market" must be shunned at all costs -- and
manipulated by string-pulling, deceit and intimidation when competition
is unavoidable. Thus the Bush model is to cozy up to governments -- preferably
strongman regimes free to ladle out public money to their favorites with
no questions asked.
-
- That's why Bush patriarch Prescott, pa and grandpa to
presidents, invested heavily in Nazi war industries throughout the 1930s
-- and kept on investing even after the German war machine was grinding
through Europe. That's why George I made his mogul bones by pumping oil
with repressive royals in Kuwait. Later, when he had a government of his
own to play with, George sent U.S. troops to bail out his Kuwaiti partners
after another of his business clients, Saddam Hussein, got too frisky in
a border dispute. George I would end his career as a corporate bagman,
roaming the Earth in search of insider deals and choice "privatizations"
from Saudi princes, Asian dictators, African tyrants, South American sleaze
merchants and Europork peddlers.
-
- George II's murky road to fortune was likewise paved
with insider trading, no-risk loans and mysterious infusions of foreign
cash, including a bailout from a firm embedded in the octopus of BCCI --
the renegade banking cartel that the U.S. Senate called the "largest
criminal organization in world history," which cloaked drug deals,
gun-running, nuke trafficking and "black ops" by the CIA and
other intelligence services behind a protective wall of bribes that reached
into nearly every government on Earth.
-
- Of course, the best of all possible worlds is controlling
the government yourself -- and Dubya has certainly raised crony capitalism
to dizzy heights, tearing down whole countries just so his investor pals
(and his family) can reap the profits of "reconstruction." But
again, it is the maggoty hankering for easy money that truly drives Bushist
militarism, not any kind of ideological or religious vision. For such crude
minds, the surest way to guarantee that floods of public boodle keep pouring
into your private pocket is to scare the hell out of people and keep them
scared with war and rumors of war.
-
- The decidedly un-butch Bushes are not really bloodthirsty.
They don't sit in dark corners and cackle over the idea of children being
chewed to pieces by American bombs. Nor do their nostrils flare with righteous
rage at the thought of homosexuality or abortion or nipples on national
television. It's just that war profiteering, corporate rapine and cynical
pandering to the public's worst instincts are the easiest way to get the
unearned riches they crave -- and the perks and power they feel are their
birthright as an ancient branch of the American aristocracy.
-
- Perhaps if they could obtain these same privileges as
easily by other, less horrific means, they would. As it is, they take the
world as they find it, and go about their business without fretting over
the consequences -- the dead, the ruined, the spreading hate, the poisoned
planet. Why should they care? As the maggot cannot see beyond the meat,
so too these men of greed-stunted understanding can see nothing of worth
outside their own bottomless appetites.
-
- Annotations
-
- http://www.publicintegrity.org./pns/printer-friendly.aspx?aid=424
---
-
- Investing in War: Carlyle Group Profits from Government
and Conflict
- The Center for Public Integrity, Nov. 18, 2004
-
- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/
11/19/BUGVD9TQA71.DTL&type=printable ---
-
- New Army Chief is Carlyle Man
- San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 19, 2004
-
- http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1018-01.htm ---
-
- Bush's Ancestor's Bank Seized by Government
- Associated Press, Oct. 18, 2003
-
- http://www.takebackthemedia.com/com-buchanan.html ---
-
- Bush-Nazi Link Confirmed
- New Hampshire Gazette, Oct. 10, 2003
-
- http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=
detail&catalogno=NN_Bush_Nazi_2 ---
-
- Bush-Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951: Federal Documents
- New Hampshire Gazette, Nov. 7, 2003
-
- http://www.clamormagazine.org/features/issue14.3_feature.html
---
-
- Heir to the Holocaust: Prescott Bush, $1.5 Million and
Auschwitz
- Clamor Magazine, May/June 2002
-
- http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/01exec.htm
---
-
- The BCCI Affair
- Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate,
Dec. 1992
-
- http://www.sfbg.com/gulfwar/090992.html ---
-
- Liberated Kuwait: Rape, Reprisal and Repression
- San Francisco Bay Guardian, Sept. 9, 1992
-
- http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/saudiara/layne.htm
---
-
- Why the Gulf War was not in the National Interest
- The Atlantic Monthly, July 1991,
-
- http://salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/11/17/regime/print.html
---
-
- Bush's Night of the Long Knives
- The Guardian/Salon.com, Nov. 17, 2004
-
- http://www.greens.org/s-r/30/30-03.html ---
-
- The Hidden History of America's War on Iraq
- Synthesis/Regeneration, Winter 2003
-
- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5503.htm
---
-
- The Barreling Bushes
- Los Angeles Times, Jan. 11, 2004
-
- http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/01/int04001.html
---
-
- The Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush
- Kevin Phillips interview, Buzzflash.com, Jan. 4, 2004
-
- http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=9231 ---
-
- Bush's Brother Has Contract to Help Chinese Chip Maker
- Los Angeles Times, Nov. 27, 200
-
- http://www.rense.com/general45/more.htm ---
-
- Consultant On Iraq Contracts Employed President's Brother
- Financial Times, Nov. 27, 2003
-
- http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0223-08.htm ---
-
- All in the Profiteering First Family
- Prince George's Journal, Feb. 23, 2004
-
- American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics
of Deceit in the House of Bush,
-
- http://mediafilter.org/caq/BushFamilyPreys.html ---
-
- The Family That Preys Together
- Covert Action Quarterly, Summer 1992
-
- http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/Book4Ch.1.html ---
-
- Father and Grandfather Bush
- The Art of Deception, 2004
-
- http://www.observer.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,738196,00.html
---
-
- Bush's Texas: Dark Heart of the American Dream
- The Observer, June 16, 2002
-
- http://www.linkoregon.com/skeletons.htm ---
-
- The Bush Family Saga
- The Oregon Coast News-Signal, Nov. 6, 2002
-
- http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/08/21/conason_four/print.html
---
-
- Bush, Inc.
- Salon.com, Aug. 21, 2003
-
- http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/bushboys.html ---
-
- Bush Family Values
- Mother Jones, Sept/Oct 1992
-
- http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2000/msg00776.html ---
-
- Bush Secret Effort Helped Iraq Build Its War Machine
- Los Angeles Times, March 23, 1992
-
- http://www.fair.org/extra/9505/iraqgate.html ---
-
- Iraqgate: Confession and Coverup
- Consortiumnews.com, May/June 1995
-
- http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=731
---
-
- The Candidate ---
-
- From Brown and Root
- The Texas Observer, Oct. 6, 2000
-
- http://burningbush.netfirms.com/Vidal.html ---
-
- The Enemy Within
- The Observer, Oct. 27, 2002
-
- http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue108/947.html ---
-
- Carlyle's Way
- Red Herring, Dec. 11, 2001
-
- http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,919897,00.html
---
-
- [Carlyle Group] Gets Fat on War
- The Guardian, March 23, 2003
-
- http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020401&s=shorrock
---
-
- Crony Capitalism Goes Global
- The Nation, April 1, 2002
-
- http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=3999 ---
-
- Gitmo Trials Continue Despite Court Ruling
- The New Standard, Nov. 18, 2004
-
- http://salon.com/books/feature/2004/01/27/phillips/index.html
---
-
- The Bush Dynasty's Dark Magic
- Salon.com, Jan. 27, 2004
-
- http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/25/feature3.shtml
---
-
- Bin Laden Money Flow Leads to Midland, Texas
- In These Times, October 2001
-
- http://www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,877668,00.html
---
-
- Spies Hide as Bank of England Faces BCCI Charges
- Observer, Jan. 19, 2003
-
- http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/27/04/news1.shtml ---
-
- Funding Terror: The Role of Saudi Banks
- In These Times, Dec. 20, 2002
-
- http://www.bostonherald.com/news/americas_new_war/akin1112001.htm
---
-
- White House Connection: Saudi 'Agents' Close Bush Friends
- Boston Herald, Dec. 11, 2001
-
- http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/americas_new_war/saud12102001.htm
---
-
- US Ties to Saudi Elite May be Hurting War on Terrorism
- Boston Herald, Dec. 10, 2001
-
- http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/americas_new_war/saud12112001.htm
---
-
- Bush Advisers Cashed in on Saudi Gravy Train
- Boston Herald, Dec. 11, 2001
-
- http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/633212.asp ---
-
- Terrorists, Dollars and a Tangled Web
- MSNBC.com, Sept. 24, 2001
-
- http://newyorker.com/talk/content/?030505ta_talk_mayer
---
-
- The Contractors: Bechtel and Bin Laden
- The New Yorker, May 5, 2003
-
- http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0420-05.htm ---
-
- Ex-U.S. Official Says CIA Aided Baathists
- Reuters, April 20, 2003
-
- http://slate.msn.com/id/2089674/ ---
-
- Rumsfeld's $9 Billion Slush Fund
- Slate.com, Oct. 10, 2003
-
- http://slate.msn.com/id/2090725/ ---
-
- The CIA Goes Corporate
- Slate.com, Nov. 4, 2003
-
- http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=1070
---
-
- Assassins R Us
- TomDispatch, the Nation Institute, Nov. 16, 2003
-
- http://www.cjr.org/year/93/2/iraqgate.asp ---
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