Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley posted a
chilling and brilliant essay at The Huffington Post a couple of days ago. As far as I can tell, it hasn't been noticed here at dKos. I think it merits attention, so I hope it gets some.
Smiley argues that for the most part, the Bush presidency is proceeding according to plan. The goal is to dismantle American democracy, and great, deliberate strides have been made in this direction.
Here are some excerpts:
... The Bushies have a pattern and they stick to it ... it is to break down the government so completely that it can't be put back together again.
... many observers ... assume that the president does not want to destroy the army. But if the army is destroyed, then the services that the army provides at a relatively moderate expense to the taxpayer can be farmed out to companies like Halliburton. ... Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush have cast their lot not with the draft, or even the volunteer army, but with the mercenary army, which is more profitable, less subject to Congressional and public oversight, and, really, the appropriate army for a rogue state.
... Norquist and his fellow theorists understand perfectly that in a modern democracy, there are two competing modes of voting: there is "one person, one vote" and there is "one dollar, one vote". They not only prefer "one dollar, one vote", they want to entirely get rid of "one person, one vote".
... four generations of Bushes and Walkers (since 1850) have shown a willingness to do anything for money and power, but no interest of any kind in the common good ...
... We normally think of American political thought running along a single continuum, from right to left ... But American political thought runs along another continuum, too, not a continuum of ideas but a continuum of power.... What differentiates various groups on this continuum from one another is their embrace or rejection of power as a goal in itself. ... Essentially ideological thought seeks power in order to achieve certain ideas; power-oriented groups use ideas in order to achieve power. ... Bush is about enhancing the power of himself and his cronies and dismantling any countervailing entity.
... The only reason the Bushies are called "conservative" ... is that the theorists of Bushism managed to graft themselves onto the Republican Party in the 1970s and 80s, when the Republican party was the party of disgruntled racists, fundamentalists, workers, and farmers left behind by Civil Rights, feminism, the sexual revolution, the end of the manufacturing sector, and the abandonment of a rural way of life. Many of the neo-cons are former leftist student radicals because when they were student radicals, power was what they wanted. They needed to be converted from one ideology (Marxism) to another (capitalism), but the essential goal--gaining power--remained the same. ... the ruthless drive for power of Bush and his cronies is really not about ideas, and in fact views ideas as a kind of trash ... every Bush policy is designed to enhance the power of Bush and his cronies ...
... What is important is that average Americans come to comprehend how dangerous they are, and how destructive their plans are. Do they actually plan to disenfranchise everyone but their reliable base? Well, yes they do. Can they? If they have control of the electronic voting machines, they can. Do they actually plan for their associates and cronies to skim off vast quantities of the taxpayers' money? Well, yes they do. Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Ag, and the major war industries already are doing so ... Do they actually plan to let New Orleans, that blue spot in a red state, slip away? Looks like it. Do they actually plan to destroy the middle class? They are making good progress ...
... we can stop them in only a few ways, it seems--by constantly bearing witness to their crimes, and prosecuting them if and when we can, by never underestimating the ruthlessness of their motives and the enormity of their goal, by being immune to their habitual public relations tools: fear, accusations of betrayal, false patriotism, appeals to populist and religious resentments, use of political red herrings like gay marriage. Most important, we must make every effort to oversee and guarantee the credibility of our elections.
... The US has lasted this long, and survived and thrived because of power dispersal, not power consolidation. Which is not to say that the Bushies can't do a lot of damage--they have and they can. The loss of our moral compass is devastating. The scattering of bureaucratic talent is a huge hidden cost of the Bush plan, as is the destruction of the volunteer army both as a military entity and as a population of young people who have been required to be ruthless themselves and to be ruthlessly preyed upon by the Iraqi insurgency.
I spotted this article yesterday on Yahoo's most-emailed list (not there at the moment, though). I highly recommend reading the whole thing.