935 lies of George W. Butthole
My daddy in California sent this to me.
The 935 lies of George W. Bush/Yes, you already knew. But now they're actually quantifiable. Like, say, stab wounds
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Oh sweet Jesus, someone actually counted.
Two independent nonprofit journalism groups apparently took enough
laudanum and beat down whatever healthy sense of human decency they had in
order to plunge straight into that quivering mountain of incompetence that
is the official record of the Bush administration, all the false quotes
and all the lie-strewn press conferences and all the squinty-eyed
fabrications from Dubya, Colin Powell, Condi and Cheney and Rummy et al,
that took place in the two years after September 11, 2001, and added them
all up.
Is it helpful to know the exact number? Does it make a difference? After
all, presidential lying isn't exactly a revelation. Pretty much a national
pastime, really. Hell, Bill Clinton lied in a harmless civil lawsuit, and
was even impeached for it. Of course, his little oral fixation didn't lead
us into an unwinnable trillion-dollar war that will scar the nation for
multiple generations and which has wasted 4,000 American lives and
resulted in tens of thousands of wounded, crippled and brain-damaged U.S.
soldiers. But that's just splitting hairs, really.
After all, it's common knowledge that, say, George Bush Sr. lied about
Iran-Contra and "read my lips," Ronald Reagan lied like a nasty old rug
about Iran and aiding the Contras, Lyndon Johnson lied about the Gulf of
Tonkin to gain support for the Vietnam war, Harry Truman probably lied
about Hiroshima and John F. Kennedy probably lied about the Bay of Pigs
and, well, all presidents lie, really, to some degree or another and with
varying degrees of success and historic consequence. Is it not sort of
pointless to whine about it?
Fair enough. But there is something truly special about Bush 43. Something
so unique, so poisonous and strange that historians are busy right this
minute rewriting not only their books, but their entire way of thinking
about how we measure and interpret political malfeasance.
It has to do with matters of scale. It has to do with audacity, with sheer
recklessness, with BushCo's stunning contempt for all national and
international law and historic precedent and human decency. It is the
sense that, at bare minimum, the most significant lies told by previous
administrations were, by and large, not massive, calculated stabs to the
very heart and infrastructure of the entire nation. They were not
designed, as Bush's clearly were, specifically to pervert the entire
American experiment, to violently shift us from peace-promoting and
defense-oriented protector to an arrogant, insular, pre-emptive attacker,
widely loathed and mistrusted worldwide.
See, BushCo rewrote the formulas. From WMD to tax cuts, AmeriCorp to Iraq,
this administration has officially reset the bar to an all-time low as to
what's possible for a truly dreadful, inept president to get away with
without some sort of significant repercussion, impeachment, numerous
lightning bolts raining down on his soft little monkey skull. Sure, it
took leveraging America's most brutal and heartbreaking tragedy in a
generation to pull it off, but does the fact the administration exploited
9/11 like a pedophile exploits a child take anything away from the
astonishing depth of the abuse?
But maybe you still argue that, even at a whopping 935 calculated lies
told specifically to lead us into a bogus war, it makes no difference.
Maybe you argue that a lie is a lie and Bush is no better or worse than
Clinton or Reagan and here is a giant cocktail of jaded, raging apathy.
Let's all chug it together, shall we?
Fine. If it's a fact that all presidents lie anyway, if there's little we
can do to stop them, then let us put forth a new hope. Let us now wish for
the next president to lie just as passionately, as powerfully, as
strategically as BushCo, and get away with it just as extraordinarily.
But let's make one significant change. Let's urge the new president to
lie, well, in the other direction, to lie not in the service of horrific
war or in the name of powermongering or so as to line the pockets of
corporate cronies, or even to cover up stupid personal behavior, but
rather in the name of sliding through an agenda of — oh my God can
you believe I'm going to say it? Peace, nonviolence, international
respect, humanitarianism, sex positivism, religious tolerance, progressive
education. I know. Crazy.
Yes. Give us now a president who lies, calculatedly and strategically,
straight in the face of the hard right neocons and the evangelicals and
the corporate cretins. Let his or her army of lies lull these groups into
a false sense of complacency and/or utter soul-deadening fear so they will
keep their mouths shut while the rest of us get some real work done.
"As an angry, well-armed God is my witness, I will never push through a
national handgun ban," would be a good lie for this new president, thus
shutting up the NRA and assuaging the bogus American cowboy mythology, as
his army of crazy hippies do the exact opposite and quietly work to make
the nation safer and more humane. The horror! The outcry! Whatever.
Or how about this: "All foreign religions clearly hate and wish harm upon
America, and therefore it shall be the policy of this administration to
never, under any circumstances, attempt to understand other beliefs, to
open our schools and textbooks to include honest religious information, or
generally reeducate the absolutist, Christian-drunk American populace."
And then begin a quiet, subversive national program to revolutionize the
spiritual IQ of upcoming generations. The terrible lie!
"America must remain aggressive and antagonistic to all questionable
nations who do not cower properly to our demands. We shall close our
borders and police the Internet and maintain nasty vigilance on all
citizens at all times. This is the only way to true national security."
What's the direct opposite of such a promise? Do it, prez!
"And finally, I shall never abolish the death penalty, legalize marijuana,
approve gay marriage, promote honest sex education for teens, honor habeas
corpus and the Geneva Convention, or eliminate the insidious farm subsidy
program. We shall never stop lying about ethanol or offer solar subsidies
for every household in America. Our direct ties to horribly misogynistic,
terrorist-supporting Saudi Arabian power regimes shall remain deeply
corruptive and powerful forevermore."
Go ahead, Mr. or Mrs. Next President. Lie your tail off if you must. But
this time, let's try to make it a real party.
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