Monday, May 15, 2006
Reading Brilliant at Breakfast over the past week, Jill seems just as bummed out as I am, at least over political events. We seem to share a sense that this adminstration - the forces propping it up - will do anything, however outrageous, to hang on to the power they have now. & the odds favor their success. Of course, the folks currently running the nation have been the dominant players since World War II created the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower warned against. But they had only the largest slice of the pie. Now, with the addition of the theocratic religious right to the coalition, they see an opportunity to grab the whole pie, the plate, & the table it sits on, not just for a presidential term but permanently. The religious right is the "morality police" the coalition lost when oppressive small town provincialism - the culture of Lewis Sinclair's "Babbitt" - broke beyond repair in the '50s & '60s. Our society developed too much mobility to maintain it.
No surprise that Jeb Bush's name has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. But that balloon ain't gonna float. We're not dealing with a Bush Dynasty. The Bush Family isn't running this show, & nobody knows it better than Jeb Bush & his father the former president. When George W. is out of office, he'll finally know it, too. Better an incompetent front man who enriches all his friends than one with the saavy to become emperor & keep all the loot for himself. Watch out for the Republican who's confident he can control the machinery that's already in place & starting to figure out how to make it happen.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
No surprise that Jeb Bush's name has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. But that balloon ain't gonna float. We're not dealing with a Bush Dynasty. The Bush Family isn't running this show, & nobody knows it better than Jeb Bush & his father the former president. When George W. is out of office, he'll finally know it, too. Better an incompetent front man who enriches all his friends than one with the saavy to become emperor & keep all the loot for himself. Watch out for the Republican who's confident he can control the machinery that's already in place & starting to figure out how to make it happen.
