December 2001

Is the Bush Administration Evil?

So, this week I've realized I'm a paranoid liberal. Why? Well, look around you. Look at the state of our union. Don't you think this is cause for alarm?

You say sure. It's alarming that terrorists are attacking our way of life and that we are at war in Afghanistan. Yeah sure, that's troubling, but that's not really what I'm talking about. I'm freaking out because of the actions being taken by our leaders in response to the terrorist attacks. I'm freaking out more about the actions being taken against Americans by our own government than any insane Wahabist-trained fundamentalist Jihad Joe.

So, now you see what I mean by a paranoid liberal. This is the kind of reaction that our more conservative countrymen are just waiting to mock. The same jerks who reacted by calling Al Gore a crybaby for complaining about the 2000 election being corrupt. These are the same people who say, "if you don't have anything to hide, then you have nothing to worry about," when it comes to questionable searches and invasions of privacy like police cameras everywhere. Mind you, these are also generally the same folks who want the federal government to stay out of their business and away from their guns. I'm not at all amused by the irony.

Right, so it would seem that I'm thinking like some paranoid drug addled hippie, wouldn't it? No, not really. I'm just thinking in terms of our current legal standards. The standards set by the constitution that guarantee us due process and protection from unreasonable search and seizure and all that good stuff.

For whatever reason, the Bush Administration doesn't want us to have these rights any more. I just don't get it. I sat and thought. Why would they do this? Why would our own government want to effectively repeal our rights by strong-arming the media into censoring themselves, asking that we watch what we say, detaining people without a trial (even if these people are not citizens, this is contrary to the sixth amendment, and this should be clear to anybody that can read), and setting up military tribunals which have been previously ruled as unconstitutional. In this case, there is no question about it. These tribunals would go against everything that our legal system, and probably our nation, stands for. We through out equal protection under the law. That is a fundamental precept of this great nation. This is a society of laws. We live by the rule of law, not the will of a ruler. So it would seem to me that the Bush Administration is behaving extremely un-American.

But then I thought about it some more and realized something. The Bush Administration, clearly, must be evil. I thought about how the Administration has handled this current treacherous crisis which we are in, and there is only one explanation for it's actions: the Bush Administration is evil.

You think I'm over-reacting. You think that maybe I'm not a patriot. Maybe that I hate this great nation. I say no, you're' high, and you're' not thinking about what we have to put up with from our leadership. First or all, the Administration did handle itself with some dignity during the first few days of this crisis. Most everyone did. We can be proud of ourselves for that.

But then in the following weeks we began seeing the Administration use this crisis as a justification for all of their previous pet projects, like drilling for oil on public land. Nevermind that this oil wouldn't make it to the pumps for probably a decade, and that maybe oil conservation might be a good immediate strategy. But we saw this kind of convenient reasoning earlier, as a result of economic slowdowns.

Then, after that nonsense, we got the airline bail out. Let me tell you how angry this one made me. It makes sense that the federal government should offer some kind of security to the airline industry, since it is actually fairly important to our national economy. Some kind of operating subsidy to make up for short-term passenger losses would make sense. Instead, the federal government, led by the Bush Administration, just forked over tens of billions of dollars to the airlines. So the airlines added that to their bottom line and laid off a bunch of employees. Hooray for executive bonuses! Don't you think that maybe somebody should have said, "OK, we'll help bail you out, but in return you have to promise to not lay anyone off." Nope, nobody said this. And as a result of preventable lay-offs, the economy worsened.

Then we hear of the proposed "economic stimulus package". This will help our economy get back on it's feet. Good idea. But where was this economic stimulus directed? It came in the form of huge corporate tax breaks and refunds, to the tune of hundreds of millions, and in one case over a billion, dollars to large corporations like IBM and GM, and a handful of small energy companies from Texas. Whoa, that sounds suspicious.

And then we find out that all the "stimulus" money is going to be given to corporations, and virtually none of it will go to any of the people that these corporations are laying off these days.

FUCK THAT SHIT!

See, this is very confusing behavior from the leaders of a democracy. Then when the Bush Administration starts laying in with the gradual suspension of our civil liberties, it becomes clear to me that these aren't just the greedy people that we all knew them to be, but they are downright evil. I am wondering how much longer this nation will put up with this. I hope it's not long, because I treasure my rights. I don't really want to see my rights revoked just to make the FBI's job easier and my job cut in order to fatten corporate wallets.