Flying Shoes, Bursting Bubbles

The most remarkable thing about the gesture was the fact that it was an act of defiant contempt, rather than one of criminal violence.



Bush's reaction was remarkable only in the sense that he displayed, for perhaps the last time before he becomes deservedly inconsequential, the depth of his ignorance and the utter impregnability of his unearned self-regard.



Immediately after a Iraqi reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi disrupted a Baghdad press conference by hurling both shoes at Bush, calling him a "dog" and denouncing him in the name of "the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq," Bush sat down with ABC reporter Martha Raddatz to decant some of his unique wisdom about matters of diplomacy and cultural understanding.



Raddatz pointed out that Zaidi's gesture -- attempting to strike Bush in the face with the sole of a shoe -- is "considered a huge insult in this [part of the] world."



Bush's reply defies parody: "Look, they were humiliated. The press corps, the rest of the Iraqi press corps was humiliated.... But I'm not insulted."



So -- this carefully calibrated gesture, this surgical strike of an insult, which was directed specifically at the individual most responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans, managed somehow to humiliate everybody else in the room, while sparing the invincible ego of the one who was targeted.



This is not a sign of a character healthy and stable enough to slough off petty insults. It is a manifestation of a sociopath's indifference to the legitimate concerns of other people -- in this case, a young Iraqi journalist who has been subjected to violence by both American occupation forces (which had previously arrested him twice without cause) and the criminal mobs set free to prey upon the country by the U.S.-led invasion of his homeland.



"The guy wanted to get on TV and he did," opined Bush in his interview with Raddatz. "I don't know what his beef is. But whatever it is I'm sure somebody will hear it."




Mr. Zaidi's inexplicable "beef," of course, is his entirely understandable rage and resentment over the foreign occupation of his country, and the needless death of innocent people.



Unlike Bush, who has made four lightning-quick visits to Baghdad -- fleeting appearances under the cover of impenetrable security, during which he was spared any exposure to the gratitude of the pitiful people he "liberated" -- Zaidi lives in Iraq. He has to live with the consequences of Bush's whimsical little venture in mass murder and social destruction.



It was quite understandable that Zaidi found himself unable to abide the spectacle of Bush stewing in self-congratulation while Nouri al-Maliki and the assembled reporters dutifully played along with the charade, passively ratifying the lies that continue to sustain the world-historic crime that is the Iraq war.



Those who don't believe in a Creator find it difficult to explain how matter attained self-awareness. The existence of George W. Bush presents us with exactly the opposite conundrum: How can someone blessed with the capacity for thought be at once utterly self-preoccupied and entirely devoid of self-awareness?



Consider how Bush deflected the matter of Zaidi's insult -- which has understandably resonated throughout the Arab world -- by comparing it with what he considers to be a similar incident during the visit of another ruler to Washington:



"I've seen a lot of weird things during my presidency and this may rank up there as one of the weirdest. On the other hand, I do remember when the president of China came to the South Lawn, and a member of the press corps started yelling --I think it was Falun Gong slogans at the Chinese president. So this happens and it's a sign of a free society."



I'm not sure which part of this double-barrelled absurdity to deal with first.



Did Mr. Bush have a measurable understanding of the comparison he was drawing? The Falun Gong movement seems to share a phylum with Scientology and the Unification Church, but there are credible reports that its adherents are on the receiving end of severe official persecution, ranging from imprisonment to (allegedly) summary execution followed by harvesting of their organs for commercial use. Given that fact, is Mr. Bush really comfortable with his comparison?


Furthermore, after Dr. Wenyi Wang, a correspondent for the Falun Gong-founded newspaper Epoch Times, interrupted the press conference by shouting to Bush that he should "ask Hu Jintao to stop persecuting the Falun Gong," she was arrested and charged with "willfully intimidating, coercing, threatening and harassing a foreign official," a misdemeanor carrying penalties up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.



This wasn't done in China by Hu's government; it was done here by the regime over which Bush presides.



Yes, those charges were dropped in April 2007 -- as part of an agreement in which she was required not to commit any other crime, including the supposed offense of "confronting" any foreign leader about his government's human rights record.



All of this, one assumes, constitutes what Bush is pleased to call the workings of "a free society."
Perhaps he means a society in which the ruling elite is generally kept free of vexing exposure to the unfiltered opinions of those they rule.



It was the sudden, unaccustomed exposure to a contrary opinion that may have precipitated
Attorney General Michael Mukasey's sudden fainting spell during a recent address to the Federalist Society in Washington.



Generally described as "conservative," the Federalist Society has been an incubator for many of the Bush Regime's signature policies in the war on terror -- institutionalizing the practice of torture, undermining habeas corpus, indefinite detention of terrorist suspects, the use of drumhead military tribunals with Soviet standards of evidence, exalting the president to the status of Grand and Glorious Decider, and so forth.



Mukasey used his address at the Federalist Society function for the same reason Bush made a final stop in Baghdad: Both of them were seeking to secure the Bush Junta's "legacy" by making grand summary statements of its supposed accomplishments before docile audiences.


In both cases, there was at least one ram among the sheep. For Bush, it was Muntazer al-Zaidi. For Mukasey it was Richard Sanders -- no, not the actor who played Les Nessman on WKRP in Cincinnati, but rather a State Supreme Court Justice from Washington.



Sanders is often described as a libertarian-leaning judge; he says that "protection of our constitutionally guaranteed liberties as the first duty of our highest court." He managed to sit in silence for 17 minutes as Mukasey, basking in the fawning glow of his sycophantic audience, extolled the virtues of the Bush Regime's assault on the rule of law. But Sanders, as sickened by the audience as he was by the speaker, could abide no more.



"Tyrant! You are a tyrant!" Sanders stood and exclaimed, causing Mukasey to pause momentarily. He left just moments later. A few minutes later, Mukasey suddenly started stumbling over his words as he read his prepared text; to the horror of his audience, the Attorney General suddenly slumped foward over the lectern, bringing FBI agents scrambling to the podium to catch him before he fell.



Sanders had left by the time Mukasey's collapse took place, and was understandably concerned for the official's health. But as someone who cherishes liberty and respects the Constitution, Sanders simply couldn't suppress his reaction.



"Frankly, everybody in the room was applauding or sometimes laughing, and I thought, 'I've got to stand up and say something.' And I did," Sanders told his hometown press. "I stood up and said, 'Tyrant,' then I sat down again, then I left."



In a statement issued to the press, Sanders described how his outburst was the product of insuperable revulsion over both the Regime's behavior and that of its willing accomplices in the audience at that Federalist Society event:


"In his speech, Attorney General Mukasey justified the Bush administration's policies in the War on Terror, which included deying meaningful hearings for prisoners in Guantanamo, and other questionable tactics.... [T]he government must never set aside the Constitution; domestic and international law forbids torture; and access to the writ of habeas corpus shoud not be denied.



The program provided no opportunity for questions or response, and I felt compelled to speak out. I stood up, and said, `tyrant,' and then left the meeting. No one else said anything. I believe we must speak our conscience in moments that demand it, even if we are but one voice."



Or, for that matter, if we have only one set of shoes to hurl at the Emperor.



Policymakers, from the Dear Leader on down, are hermetically sealed off from dissent of any kind. On those rare occasions when frustration and moral outrage find a fissure in that bubble and the serenity of a political celebrity is disturbed, the result is usually a prominent display of some kind of corrective violence directed at the dissident.



Because he's a sitting judge, Sanders won't be punished in any way for his eruption. A private citizen almost certainly would face some kind of reprisal: That, after all, is what Tasers are for.



On sale now!












Dum spiro, pugno!

Our Ripening Reich

George W. Bush's chief delinquency as Chief Executive, according to Philip Atkinson, is leniency. He has been too indulgent of the masses and their delicate moral sensibilities, which would be offended by the spectacle of blood and horror that is necessary to pacify Mesopotamia and terrify the Islamic world into acquiescence.

At the outset of the 2003 assault on Iraq, wrote British expat Atkinson in an August 3 essay for Family Security Matters (a project of the Center for Security Policy), Bush should have used "his" nuclear weapons "to slaughter Iraqis until they compiled with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed."

"The simple truth," continues Atkinson, is that "modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide." But Bush's options are limited by "his cowardly electorate," and outright nuclear genocide simply isn't a viable option ... for now.

Thus Bush should emulate the actions of Julius Caesar in the conquest of Gaul, which he "pacified by mass slaughter," thereby building a rapport with an army he later used to crush domestic opposition in Rome.

"If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (thereby turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege [sic] while terrifying American enemies."

"He could then follow Caesar's example and use his newfound popularity with the military ... to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court," concludes Atkinson. "President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, but becoming `ex-president' Bush or he can become `President-for-Life' Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons."

Mr. Atkinson, as the quality of his prose suggests, is not a well-educated man (although some of his errors may reflect the difficulty of typing only with his left hand, his right being kept rigidly flat at the end of an outstretched arm in a perpetual fascist salute). Judging by his autobiographical essay, Atkinson's unbuttoned embrace of authoritarian politics and genocide as foreign policy are part of his personal psychodrama. Whatever.

Of critical importance here is the fact that this paean to genocidal dictatorship was published by a front group for a Washington think-tank that is intimately connected to the Bush Regime: The CSP's board members and advisers have included such people as Dick Cheney and Douglas Feith. This isn't a case in which a pseudonym-shielded degenerate posts something off-color in a reply thread on Daily Kos -- the kind of non-issue on which Bill O'Reilly can feast for a week or more.

While it is easy to exaggerate the significance of Philip Atkinson and his musings, it is nonetheless worth pointing out that the CSP, which is near the top of the Right Blogosphere's food chain, attracted the services of an undisguised fascist as a "contributing editor" for one of its front groups. (Thanks, once again, to Radley Balko for bringing Atkinson's post to my attention.)

















Atkinson's post was removed by the website's administrator. As Lew Rockwell pointed out, this was most likely done not out of substantive disapproval of the post, but because the author had revealed the "esoteric" neo-conservative agenda -- implementation of which would require mass slaughter and military dictatorship under a quasi-divine Dear Leader -- to the profane masses.

Although he was more candid in describing the human cost of that vision, Atkinson is hardly the first to depict Bush as a potential world-savior clothed in divine destiny. In late 2005 I took notice of an anonymously written acrostic poem entitled "The Leader," which was found in an English-language textbook used by 16-year-old Pakistani students. The poem -- which is perhaps half a step above doggerel -- is set out in rhyming couplets that spell out "President George W. Bush," the purported embodiment of the virtues described.


Before reproducing that poem, decency dictates that I warn readers who have eaten that reading it may have unfortunate consequences -- such as decorating their monitor screens and immediate environment with the partially-digested remnants of their most recent repast.

With that caveat in place, here is the hymn to the Divine Emperor Bush:























The author of this nauseating little composition was most likely someone employed by the Rendon Group, the Lincoln Group, or some other propaganda mill subcontracted by the White House. While earnest in his intention to praise the would-be world emperor, it's obvious this guy was no Virgil.

Heck, he's not even in the same league as the Brownshirted bard who churned out this official prayer to (not on behalf of) Adolf Hitler:

"Fuhrer, my Fuhrer, sent to me from God, protect and maintain me throughout my life. Thou who hast saved Germany from deepest need, I thank thee today for my daily bread. Remain at my side and never leave me, Fuhrer, my Fuhrer, my faith, my light. Heil my Fuhrer!"

Our descent into outright tyranny hasn't yet reached the point where we are instructed to pray to the Dear Leader. However, in the event that we're clobbered by a terrorist attack -- in fulfillment of the fondest wishes of some exceptionally depraved Bu'ushists -- the Department of Homeland Security is prepared to deploy "Clergy Response Teams" to preach the gospel of unconditional submission to the State, as Shreveport, Louisiana's KSLA-TV reports:

"Could martial law ever become a reality in America? Some fear any nuclear, biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil might trigger just that. KSLA News 12 has discovered that the clergy would help the government with potentially their biggest problem: Us.... If martial law were enacted here at home, like depicted in the movie `The Siege,' easing public fears and quelling dissent would be critical. And that's exactly what the 'Clergy Response Team' helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina. Dr. Durell Tuberville serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff's Office. Tuberville said of the clergy team's mission, `the primary thing that we say to anybody is, "let's cooperate and get this thing over with and then we'll settle the differences once the crisis is over."'" (Emphasis added.)




"For the clergy team," continues the report, "one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the Bible itself, specifically Romans 13." As paraphrased by Dr. Tuberville, the message of that chapter is that "government's established by the Lord"; what he misses is that the text teaches that the sole legitimate function of government, which is subordinate to God's law, is to protect the innocent against lawless violence.

The Quislings in clerical garb employed by the DHS would preach to Americans a version of the same murderous idolatry taught by their forebears under the Third Reich: The role of religion is to sustain the State. The Nazis called this doctrine "Positive Christianity." I don't know what it would be called were our country to succumb to martial law, but I'm sure that the DHS is, even now, doing the appropriate market research.


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