Ed Firmage Jr.Bush Isn’t the Problem
In an earlier post, Confessions of Another Guilty Bystander, I suggested that the root of our environmental and social problems today is the way we duck responsibility for what we do by externalizing the costs. We have an endless appetite for cheap consumer goods, for example, and let Wal Mart pass on the real cost of that cheapness to the Mexicans and the Chinese. We’re addicted to fossil fuels, and pass on the costs of their long-term damage to our kids and grandkids. But, despite our best effort to avoid them, the consequences of our unsupportable lifestyle are catching up with us. The three wars we’ve fought in the Middle East are an example. The first one we fought for oil; the second two we’re fighting because we fought the first.
Tempting as it always is to point the finger, especially the middle one, at George Bush, the point of the previous blog was not to highlight his manifold shortcomings but ours. We of course put him in office. More importantly, it’s our lifestyle, not Bush’s foreign policy, that is the real reason we’re in the Middle East. Our addiction to fossil fuels not 9/11 is what makes the Middle East, a region that progress abandoned 500 years ago, relevant. Unfortunately, responses to this little meditation devolved into political finger pointing and posturing. In the hope of perhaps steering discussion back to first person pronouns instead of third, I’d like to start out by saying to my responders, who seemed preoccupied with talking about George W. Bush, that he is not the problem. Despite the fact that George Bush IS the worst president in our country’s history, he is not the problem. Despite the venality of the administrators he has put in charge of protecting our health, our air and water, and our other natural resources, George Bush is not the problem. Nor are his flunkies. Despite the corruption and shortsightedness of our national Congress and our state legislatures, they too are not the problem. This isn’t to say that it wouldn’t be nice to be rid of them all, or that efforts to do so are a waste of time. But if that is the primary focus of our attention, it IS a waste of time. It’s a waste of time because our political leaders are simply a symptom of the problem, which lies in us.
In fact, America’s most important problems are not political in nature. The Right is right on this point. But it’s not homosexuals who are the threat, nor is it abortion, TV violence, gun control, flag-burning, left-wing journalism, or any of the other issues used by the Right as whipping boys. Ignoring the many other arguments against Republican demagoguery on these points and considering them just from a statistical point of view, it makes no sense to get hung up on homosexuality, which, AT MOST affects 10% of the population, or on abortion, which affects a fraction of one percent, or on the liberal Hollywood fringe, which doesn’t even measure statistically. And, it isn’t just the numbers that don’t compute. The influence of these groups on the average American is also vastly overrated. Brokeback Mountain notwithstanding, I don’t see American men flocking to hot tubs or bars to court other men. Nor do I see American women heading in droves to abortionists because Roe v. Wade allowed them to. And it isnâ’t at all clear to me that school shootings have anything to do with Hollywood or its supposed glorification of violence. The fact of the matter is that for most Americans these are all sideshows. I don’t minimize the importance of these issues for those personally affected, but most Americans AREN’T directly affected and never will be. Most Americans aren’t gay and never will be, aren’t needing or wanting abortions and never will, aren’t and won’t be victims of violent crime, aren’t and won’t be perpetrators of violent crime, aren’t and won’t be threatened by crazed flag-burners or people devoted to making Quentin Tarentino’s films a blueprint for real-world problem solving. What we do struggle with is spiritual hollowness, which we attempt to fill with alternating and excessive doses of shopping mall and Sunday School. A rich and religious nation, ours is arguably the most spiritually destitute. The chief feature of our hollowness is a catastrophic failure of the imagination. It is a literalism and smallness of soul that is satisfied by the Cliffs Notes version of God and the Disney version of His creation.
To think imaginatively is to find inspiration in the spirit not just the letter of the law, to recognize that the bottom line can hide as much as it reveals, to understand that all ideas and images ultimately betray reality. To think imaginatively is to think inclusively, for it is a reaching out of the mind. To think imaginatively is therefore to feel empathy, not only for other people but for all living things. The failure of imagination is to mistake symbol for reality (flag burning amendment), possessions for being (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), self for God (George Bush at war). I’s neurosis, which we see in abundance in America today, on the Right and the Left. The present degree of polarization between Right and Left is itself a symptom of advanced neurosis, as is the split between religious and secular, religious and religious. Given what we know we are capable of (think Basho, Bach, Da Vinci, Einstein, Gandhi), our present state of cultural, political, and spiritual impasse is a scandal. America hasn’t had a good idea in forty years. We’re constipated with the status quo, and it’s killing us.
This brings me to a recent news item of great interest to Utah democrats, the pronouncement by the LDS Church that all of the major political parties teach principles that are consistent with LDS doctrine. Democrats responded enthusiastically to this statement, validating as it does their long-standing assertion that one can be a Democrat and a Mormon in good standing.
My own reaction to this non-announcement–it doesn’t say anything that the Church hasn’t already affirmed–is less enthusiastic. First of all, it SAYS nothing. It’s a vanilla statement from a now vanilla church about long-since vanilla political parties. Everything’s vanilla. That’ll get your taste buds screaming! Second, it CHANGES nothing. For Democrats, it’s too little too late. But more importantly, the Church, in spite of this gesture, remains solidly aligned in its political intention with the Right. LDS church members will correctly divine this Right-leaning tendency and cast their votes accordingly. Since, for example, the Church has taken a VERY public stance against gay rights, and equally public actions against countless gays who dare to live as gays rather than stunted heterosexuals, and since it is the political Right that is taking the lead in quashing gay rights, what is a good Mormon to do but vote Right? The same is true pretty much down the line of hot-button conservative issues.
Of no less interest to me, however, is what the Church is NOT saying and doing. It is not, for example, doing ANYTHING to protect its own backyard from becoming a nuclear waste dump for the entire world. It is NOT telling its own money-hungry developers and real estate agents such as Al Mansell that we need open space and wilderness and environmental protections. It is NOT saying that keeping mercury out of the air our children breath is a moral issue.
What, then, are Democrats so excited about? Nothing has changed, and nothing will change. I, for one, would have been much more encouraged to hear the First Presidency declare that none of the political parties are headed in the right direction, that they’re all morally bankrupt, that Zion has nothing to do with any of them. That, at least, would have suggested that a spirit of prophetic outrage still burns somewhere in the bowels of the Church Office Building. There is, however, no outrage, just more of the acceptance of the status quo that characterizes Republicans and Democrats alike. So much for the spirit of Hosea, Amos, and Jeremiah, not to mention Jesus in his time-to-clean-the-temple mode.
What the Church could, and should, have said, is that the only party platform that God cares about is the one that gets YOU to care for the fatherless (aka single mothers). It’s the one that gets YOU to care for the earth, for which we are stewards in God’s stead. It’s the one that commits YOU to nonviolence, especially when it’s a matter of life and death.
Instead of relishing our supposed newfound respectability, Utah Democrats should embrace our utter insignificance as a political force. Let us instead embrace a nonpolitical agenda. Let’s boycott all state and local offices, and thereby expose the political machine in Utah for the sham that it is. By participating in it we merely give it a credibility that it doesn’t deserve. Freed from the pretense of being a political force, we can turn our attention and our resources to the real agenda, which is to make a difference for the better among the disenfranchised and in the battle to save what’s left of our land from ruination by the likes of Al Mansell and Howard Stephenson. In this struggle, we cease to be Democrats; we’re just people trying to do the right thing by other people and by the planet. Maybe if enough of us do this, we can convince some Republicans that they no longer need to be Republicans, just people trying to do the right thing.
Politicos will answer that that’s not how the real world works. My response to them is, “Explain to me exactly how being a Democrat worked in the last session of the Utah Legislature, which proposed 1) to reverse the 17th Amendment and put the selection of senators in the hands of the infinitely wise state legislature, 2) to make it impossible for the governor to veto bills written by lobbyists for the nuclear industry that would put the state’s policy on nuclear waste in the hands of Envirocare aka Energy Solutions, 3) to make it effectively impossible for any person or group to take legal action on behalf of the environment without risking financial ruin, 4) to make it illegal for high-school kids to form gay-straight clubs, 5) to allow developers to ignore the will of city councils and public opinion, 6) to keep the minimum wage unchanged, 7) to authorize initial work on unnecessary and environmentally disastrous water projects that will end up costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars, 8) to give schools a pittance of an increase even when the state enjoys a record-breaking $1 billion surplus, 9) to tell our students that evolution isn’t true, and 10) to give a father who has committed incest with his daughter prior warning of her intent to have an abortion.”
And all this in just six weeks! Imagine what they could do if they could sit all year-round like their buddies in Congress. Democratic participation in this farrago of lunacy is more than an embarrassment; it’s a scandal. The sooner we stop giving it credibility, the better. Let’s make it stand out for what it is by focusing on what really needs doing but never gets done because our attention is focused on the political sideshow.
Ed Firmage, Jr.
P.S. On the subject of sideshows, it occurs to me that while Utah Democrats were all proudly displaying their new temple recommends and lining up for tickets on the Celestial Express following the LDS First Presidency Statement, the Church’s eye, that great all-seeing Masonic eye, was directed elsewhere. My own take on the odd timing of this message, disconnected as it is with any local Democratic fiasco, is that it is designed to help Mitt Romney, presidential wannabe now in beta testing. By portraying itself as even-handed, the Church supposes that it is helping Mitt look less like the favorite son of the John Birch Society.
Unfortunately for the Church and for Mitt, actions speak louder than words. To say that all are welcome and then proceed merrily with your gay auto da fes is to engage in an Orwellesque abuse of language as well as people. Better just say that God is a Republican and take your lumps.
March 18th, 2006 at 9:10 am
I am not a SLC county resident but have lived in Utah. You describe your positions as progressives rather well. I have whole heartedly agreed with the precept that to participate in the process empowers the growing Fascism. The most important aspect is your money, your taxes will provide the very digestive political juices that will liquify progressives to a digestable form to be utilized by the theocratic state you live in.
Utah has been on its knees since General Johnston wheeled into the valley and more or less declared that any concept of Utah not being subservient to Federal control would lead to its destruction. Given the overall political climate in the Country and Utahs’ regressive history it is no surpirse that their cultural agenda flourishs at the expense of people who would promote progressivism.
As I have said, You all an Island, in a Weirdo Sea. Once you venture from that Island you are adrift in a ocean of sharks that have no other interest but to eat you. You better know where your boat is sailing before you go on the journey. In Utah the edge of the Earth isn’t very far from your Island shores.
March 18th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
Worst President
Judgements of best and worst are subjective, of course, but many historians would agree on James Buchanan. He took absolutely no action when the Southern states started seceeding from the Union after the election of 1860 instead of at least trying to prevent the Civil War.
Some would argue for Herbert Hoover, blaming him for the great depression.
You could also make argument for Grant and Harding because of the corruption of their administrations.
Here is more input:
It is fashionable to say George W. Bush, but only people motivated by simple hatred of a man they can not defeat say that he is the worst president ever. The vast majority of them don’t really believe it, they just say it because it makes them feel good. Those who do believe it are woefully ignorant of history.
Bill Clinton is a popular choice among some. Here are some his records:
The President who had the most members of his administration charged and convicted of felonies was Bill Clinton.
The only President ever impeached on grounds of personal malfeasance
Most number of convictions and guilty pleas by friends and associates*
Most number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation
Most number of witnesses to flee country or refuse to testify.
Most number of witnesses to die suddenly.
First President sued for sexual harassment.
First President accused of rape.
First first lady to come under criminal investigation.
Largest criminal plea agreement in an illegal campaign contribution case.
First President to establish a legal defense fund.
First President to be held in contempt of court.
Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions.
Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions from abroad.
For those of us that actual read Moore’s book Stupid White Men, a whole section on Clinton and his short comings as President.
March 18th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Regarding worst president ever–
My husband and I had a debate about this a few months ago. It really depends on how you’d define worst president.
His opinion was that whoever unleashed the most death and destruction on the planet, which I have to agree is pretty compelling. As an anti-nuke activist for several years, his opinion is Harry Truman for dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
I’m still going to go with Bush. I’m not sure if any president has been as successful as Bush when it comes to the undermining of checks and balances of the branches of government, the undermining of the constitution, or blatently breaking countless laws — and that doesn’t even touch on the human lives and limbs lost in W’s war, and the fact that the US is becoming comfortable comfortable with using torture and indefinite imprisonment, just to name a few of his accomplishments.
March 18th, 2006 at 11:55 pm
TKL - Firstly, your little Guiness list is the result of a vicious republican congress. Most investigations? First lady to be investigated? Are you proud of the fact that we taxpayers spend 40 millions dollars to chase down a non-case motivated by politics? You aware that Whitewater had no legs from the get go, and the Clintons were exonerated?
But more importantly, why are we talking about the past? You got a major problem on your hands because there are few to NO respectable Americans that continue to support this administration anymore. That puts you somewhere between exceptionally loyal or unbelievably loyal..
Either way, you are clearly not familiar with the etiquette of quality blogging. On progressive blogs, we don’t cut and past propaganda as if throwing a blind punch. We’ve seen the emails. You are verging on troll status.
I Invite you to engage in a more focused fashion such that you can actually defend statements like, “It is fashionable to say George W. Bush, but only people motivated by simple hatred of a man they can not defeat say that he is the worst president ever. The vast majority of them don’t really believe it, they just say it because it makes them feel good. Those who do believe it are woefully ignorant of history.â€
Not only do you not support your statements, but you appear to manifest the similar qualities. Just change “people†and “they†to “meâ€, and you get the weak reasons YOU support Bush. ie. “woefully ignorant of historyâ€, “It is fashionableâ€, yea to like Bush in your family/ward. “people motivated by simple hatredâ€. The percentage of Americans who hate Muslims as grown by 1600% since 9-11, and the word “hate†has been used by President Bush 1387 times so far in public speeches. (Nixon is in second place with 27)
What do you mean by “The vast majority of them don’t really believe it,� I know I believe it, and the smartest people I know believe it. Maybe its you who can’t believe it, because your would rather die than admit you were wrong about Bush the whole time. That he really hates you, and is calling you bad names behind you back as he steals the very foundation of our democracy out from under us, and the American dream along with it while you sit around singing his praises.
Let me ask you a simple question, and try to focus. What does the constitution say about a president who misleads congress in matters of foreign policy and intelligence and wages a war of aggression as a result. That’s right, impeachment. Now given that you support the invasion and occupation of Iraq because if we don’t fight’em there, we’ll have to fight’m here, and they harbored bin Laden, and used chemical weapons against his own people. What do you think the consequences should be if Bush deliberately mislead congress who provides the authority to wage war?
I’ll make it even easier for ya. A hypothetical…Lets say Bush did deliberately deceive congress, and it were proven in a non-partisan fair judicial process and a unanimous supreme court decision upholds it including Alito and Jackson and all nine. What do you think should happen?
I respectfully ask you to provide an honest answer to the hypothetical question and await your earliest reply.
Thanks
Paula
March 19th, 2006 at 1:19 am
I am familiar with the etiquette of quality blogging. On progressive blogs, first rule, use DNC talking points, 2nd call people names who disagree, and label them Republican ’cause they don’t agree. 3rd Stick your finger in your ears and ignore all logic. Yup pretty familar with etiquette for Progressive (Liberal blogs). No thanks, I’ll stick to being the troll that gets you all worked up. Anyways, I guess in November 2004 Bush didn’t get enough votes from the american public to win reelection. So I guess if the majority of people don’t like him, he would back in Texas collecting his unemployment checks.
You know, I don’t like bush at all I think about as much of him as I do of Clinton. However, Bush was a hell of a lot better choice than Kerry or Edwards or anyone else the DNC through at the election in 2004. Which is sad for Keryy, he wasn’t better than Bush, in fact I see him being the same, just too far to the left.
Kerry ran with the anti war message and the economy is failing and well it bit him in the end. 2 million jobs were created last year. As far as crying about see no WMD’s well we all know that Sadam had them and had used them. So now we can’t find them, where are they? Why couldn’t a leader stand up in Congress and ask that question. Instead of sticking to this game that is played. Anyone on this site care to know what happened to them? Did he sell them? To who?
Questioning talking about the past. We are refering to Bush as the worst President in History. So in order to justify that we would have to look at the past. Unless you choose to wear blinders.
March 19th, 2006 at 8:41 am
Let’s just call him the least talented president so far.
Chemical and biological weapons have a shelf life TK, they likely went past useful life and were dumped, or disposed of. The chemical weapons used on the Kurds,(not his own people by any stretch)were used a pretty long time ago. Why be caught with evidence of weapons that are no longer useful?
March 19th, 2006 at 10:41 am
Ted Kennedy’s Liver apparently thinks with the clarity that is the hallmark of that abused organ. George Bush is President of the United States, for God’s sake. Let him defend himself. Why should mice like TK’s Liver defend the cat, and such a mangy, graceless cat? Once again, the responses here focus not on my blog but on the merits of George Bush. Excuse me now, I’m starting to nod off………….
March 19th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
I have struggled through TKL’s posts on several occasions now, and continually come away from the exercise shaking my head in bewilderment; indeed, I wonder at times whether TKL and our old friend Natural Glenn are one in the same. Regardless, TKL is obviously bright and committed to engaging the current political drama, but his arguments might take on a modicum of persuasion or validity if he would simply channel his large-net conclusory rhetoric on a single relevant point or two.
The laundry-list of minutia from the Clinton-era is a case in point – even assuming, arguendo, that each item raised by TKL is defensible (a doubtful proposition), what does the list have to do with Bush’s record? Why is it that defenders of Bush seem always to shift the argument to Clinton and the tit-for-tat minutia that conservative strategists were able to throw at the guy? The discussion today concerns Bush, not Clinton. Progressives today are concerned with topics such as the environment, prosecution of an ill-advised war in Iraq, and our standing in the world (which, following the invasion of Iraq, has sunk in the toilet). Move on to what currently matters TKL, and let history be the judge of Bill Clinton.
At the risk of crossing the line into ad hominem attack, which is not intended, I invite TKL to provide us with a focused response to at least one post for this blog. His gobbledygook rants and laundry-lists of irrelevant crap do nothing to further substantive debate concerning matters of extreme importance to citizens of the world.
March 19th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
Ah, the Church and its proclamations. I like to think that the Church has truly come to realize that the values of mainstream Democrats are not that different from the values of their Republican counterparts and, therefore, a vote for either party can be a vote based on good moral consience; notwithstanding, however, apparent (or contrived) philosphical differences concerning abortion, the environment, medical marijuana, tax refunds to the wealthy, and so on and so forth.
I suspect, however, that the “Church” - i.e., Hinkley, Faust and Monson - has come to realize, like so many of its Republican bretheren, that the Bush administration is so far afield that it makes good sense now to distance itself, rather then wait until even the most backwater of rural Utahns come to realize that their boy in Washington is a complete and utter screwup imbecile moron jerk of a clueless leader. Indeed, I suspect that the Church is doing nothing other than what so many of the current congressional leaders are doing - strategically distancing themselves from the Big Idiot in the Oval Office.
Either way, the Church finds itself doing the correct thing!
March 20th, 2006 at 10:33 am
VBD
your theory of distancing makes a lot of sense . . .
March 20th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
The Bush administration was inevitible. If not this group of idiots, then another. Ed’s points are well taken - the more we focus on consumerism, the farther we get from nature’s forces, the less spiritual guidance we have in our basic thoughts and actions. In a world of frenzied, short term decisions it is easy to accept the marketing spin of consumerism that WalMart bargains really do improve your quality of life. It’s also easy to swallow the political sound bytes that we’re in post 9/11 world and we should buy more stuff, or that global warming is inconclusive, or that we need to sacrifice our civil liberties to be safer. I’ve certainly bought into bits and pieces of the hype over the years. Now they’ve built to such a roar that we ask, “How stupid does this guy think we are that we don’t see what he’s doing behind the curtain?” He assumes we’re as stupid as we were when he first ran for office.
So, in the short term it’s incumbant upon us all to derail this damaging political agenda. It’s not damaging in the sense that a pork project goes to North Carolina instead of to my district. It’s damaging in the sense that we’re destroying the planet, we’re destroying the constitution and we’re fueling hatred and fear around the world.
In the longer term we need to address our own fears of losing our “quality of life”. Ed took his family from a fast paced lifestyle in Silicon Valley into the wilderness to take pictures of furry animals and trees. More power to them. I think they should be applauded for having the guts to unhook from the adrenaline rush of stopping at Starbucks before church and swinging by Costco on their way home. We should all take inventory of our lives and determine what we do that is unnecessary, what could be done with less detrimental impact on the world around us and what could be done in a more natural rhythm given a little extra planning. I’m sure lots of Americans do this better and more often than I. I just know I’m more relaxed after a long afternoon of working in the garden, hiking with my daughter or making my own chicken stock than I am after catching a sale at REI.
It sounds a little “new age” but I think we all have a internal moral compass that guides us to right and wrong decisions if we quiet down long enough to listen. The simpler I make my daily life the more likely I am to slow down and listen. Consumer product marketing, organized religion and political spin most commonly pull me away from that compass. No wonder, they all have financial motivations to affect my behavior. Our generation has the knowledge, awareness and resources to make good sustaining lifestyle decisions without relying on external doctrines for exclusive guidance. If we don’t exercise our responsibility to live sustaining lives then we deserve the next Bush administration — and worse.
March 20th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
Where do you get your trolls, they always like this over here?
Thanks for answering alot of the Questions here up post.
Great job all.
May 5th, 2006 at 6:20 am
I, as a Republican, often tune out during the legislative session. Unfortunately, I live near people like Chris Buttars, Paul Mero, and Howard Stephenson. I actually support many of their politics, but I hate their methods and rhetoric. Just one person among them–old Howie– has sought to take away the right of the people to elect their senators, introduce welfare payments in education and spread government into private schools, did the bill for in-state-tuition for illegal aliens, supported HB 170 taking away the rights of and local control for cities and people in determining what goes in a city, presided at a coronation for the Rev. Moon as the Messiah, defended rampant lobbyist giving–even saying legislators deserved it, threw a babyish temper tantrum at a formal meeting against the media, and so on and so on and so on and so on. I have to wonder when Howie will ever be a conservative.