Bush and Dick
If, when I was but a wee lad, you'd asked me if I'd live to see the day when fascists would take over the US government in its entirety, rendering the Constitution utterly meaningless and turning the clock back a few hundred years to pre-Age Of Enlightenment serfdom, I would have said two words: "Nixon. Duh."
But alas, though I was merely a youngster during his ill-conceived, paranoia-driven reign, I'm starting to miss ol' Tricky Dick. Sure, he was one of the main architects of the McCarthy Era, practically coining the oxymoronic concept of 'Unamerican Activities' himself. Sure, he barely skirted responsibility for his corrupt-to-the-bone behavior by the skin of his teeth on several occasions before Johnson's big cop-out and Bobby K getting bulleted gave him his unlikely entree into the White House in '68 (thus ushering in a new era of psycho-fascism that started the clock ticking toward what we are, regrettably, experiencing now). Yeah, he campaigned almost entirely on ending the Vietnam War "with honor" and then proceeded to escalate it by attacking the sovereign nation of Cambodia from the air* and thus dragging the war on for another five long years. Sure, he created the whole useless and expensive 'War On Drugs' when the nation was finally leaning toward more progressive and effective drug policies, and yes he was in fact the "crook" he so adamantly claimed not to be, as he resigned in disgrace from the office he'd coveted for so long that he'd forgotten why.
But Nixon had his good points. He opened up relations with China and improved relations with the USSR; that's the achievement everybody usually talks about. That was no mean feat, and the irony is that he was able to do it precisely because the autocratic Chinese and Russian leadership at the time saw in him the ruthless paranoid tyrannical tendencies they themselves possessed -- in other words, he was their type of guy. After all, none of the Chinese or Russian leaders in those days were really 'Communists' -- they were all dictators, which was exactly what Dick Nixon wanted to be.
Dick was a power-hungry, borderline megalomaniac; with Bush I wouldn't use the word 'borderline.' Dick didn't give a rat's ass about religion, which is how it should be, according to the Constitution and the spirit of its founders; we all know that Bush is either a real or opportunistic rabid fundamentalist, using religious biases and narrow-minded Dark Ages superstition to further his agenda. Dick made lists of friends and enemies; Bush makes lists of friends and considers everyone NOT on the lists to be his enemy by default.
But the bottom line is that Nixon was only despised here at home. That's what I miss about him. He didn't make everybody else hate our guts. He didn't make the terms 'American' and 'ignorant Asshole' interchangeable. And believe me, it took a lot to make me miss Nixon. Reagan didn't do it. Bush Senior didn't pull it off. No, I didn't like those guys much, but they were a cut above Nixon. But Junior? All I can say is, he makes me pine away longingly for Richard M Nixon. Doesn't that say it all?
* * *
(*Yeah, just in case you thought, as a friend of mine did before I straightened his ass out, that Bush Junior was the first US Prez to start a war with a trumped-up, largely false pretense, the reality is more complex. That's precisely how the Spanish-American War started under President McKinley, and the Vietnam 'Conflict' itself became semi-official with LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin resolution, based on bullshit reports of attacks on US warships that never happened. Then Nixon came along and carpet-bombed Cambodia, Vietnam's neighbor, because Viet Cong troops were hiding in the jungles there. Never mind that this was completely against international law; such a concept has never meant anything to fascists. I DO believe that Dubya is the first US Prez, however, to carry out a full-scale land invasion of another country without anything more than a few nebulous accusations as provocation. Thus the point of my posting).
* * *
But alas, though I was merely a youngster during his ill-conceived, paranoia-driven reign, I'm starting to miss ol' Tricky Dick. Sure, he was one of the main architects of the McCarthy Era, practically coining the oxymoronic concept of 'Unamerican Activities' himself. Sure, he barely skirted responsibility for his corrupt-to-the-bone behavior by the skin of his teeth on several occasions before Johnson's big cop-out and Bobby K getting bulleted gave him his unlikely entree into the White House in '68 (thus ushering in a new era of psycho-fascism that started the clock ticking toward what we are, regrettably, experiencing now). Yeah, he campaigned almost entirely on ending the Vietnam War "with honor" and then proceeded to escalate it by attacking the sovereign nation of Cambodia from the air* and thus dragging the war on for another five long years. Sure, he created the whole useless and expensive 'War On Drugs' when the nation was finally leaning toward more progressive and effective drug policies, and yes he was in fact the "crook" he so adamantly claimed not to be, as he resigned in disgrace from the office he'd coveted for so long that he'd forgotten why.
But Nixon had his good points. He opened up relations with China and improved relations with the USSR; that's the achievement everybody usually talks about. That was no mean feat, and the irony is that he was able to do it precisely because the autocratic Chinese and Russian leadership at the time saw in him the ruthless paranoid tyrannical tendencies they themselves possessed -- in other words, he was their type of guy. After all, none of the Chinese or Russian leaders in those days were really 'Communists' -- they were all dictators, which was exactly what Dick Nixon wanted to be.
Dick was a power-hungry, borderline megalomaniac; with Bush I wouldn't use the word 'borderline.' Dick didn't give a rat's ass about religion, which is how it should be, according to the Constitution and the spirit of its founders; we all know that Bush is either a real or opportunistic rabid fundamentalist, using religious biases and narrow-minded Dark Ages superstition to further his agenda. Dick made lists of friends and enemies; Bush makes lists of friends and considers everyone NOT on the lists to be his enemy by default.
But the bottom line is that Nixon was only despised here at home. That's what I miss about him. He didn't make everybody else hate our guts. He didn't make the terms 'American' and 'ignorant Asshole' interchangeable. And believe me, it took a lot to make me miss Nixon. Reagan didn't do it. Bush Senior didn't pull it off. No, I didn't like those guys much, but they were a cut above Nixon. But Junior? All I can say is, he makes me pine away longingly for Richard M Nixon. Doesn't that say it all?
* * *
(*Yeah, just in case you thought, as a friend of mine did before I straightened his ass out, that Bush Junior was the first US Prez to start a war with a trumped-up, largely false pretense, the reality is more complex. That's precisely how the Spanish-American War started under President McKinley, and the Vietnam 'Conflict' itself became semi-official with LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin resolution, based on bullshit reports of attacks on US warships that never happened. Then Nixon came along and carpet-bombed Cambodia, Vietnam's neighbor, because Viet Cong troops were hiding in the jungles there. Never mind that this was completely against international law; such a concept has never meant anything to fascists. I DO believe that Dubya is the first US Prez, however, to carry out a full-scale land invasion of another country without anything more than a few nebulous accusations as provocation. Thus the point of my posting).
* * *
posted by brioSphere at 6:52 PM
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