THE CARBON COPY PRESIDENT

THE CARBON-COPY PRESIDENT

By Peter Fredson

February 5, 2006

Remember when George W. Bush was a promising Governor of Texas? Like many politicians before him he was glib in making a host of promises concerning most of the issues affecting voters. And like many politicians before him he was adept at wriggling out of his promises. He still continues this dual approach: Promise and wriggle out.

He is certainly consistent, still using some of the very same promises he made in those days for the voting public of today.

Remember when we used carbon paper and typewriters, and how the black, or purplish coating could stain fingers, clothing and equipment? Making copies of articles was easy. Today the task is even easier with computers and spell-checkers, although the boast of having paperless offices was challenged by printers which could churn out neat copies by the score. Cut-and-Paste operations no longer depended on scissors and library paste. Sections of manuscripts could be switched easily, erased, transposed and rearranged quickly.

This feature made speech-writers able to take a sentence or phrase from one edition and flick it to another. “Originality” was achieved by a thesaurus or dictionary feature, making each speech distinct but actually copied from previous speeches.

Bush and his “speech-writers” have “created” essentially the same speech for years, yet each sounds slightly different for the barely educated and non-analytical audience of True Believers. The speeches are full of emotive and religious references, with specific code-words for indoctrinated people.

The rhetoric is often turgid, sometimes full of clichés and Biblical references. Certainly as we read the transcript of the 2006 SOTU speech we saw the evolution from carbon-paper to cut-and-paste to substitution of entire paragraphs.

Sycophants disposed to adulation saw originality to the point of standing up on their hind legs and applauding unoriginal material until their hands turned red.

Administration followers used phrases like “novel”, “brilliant solutions”, and other wording to indicate that Bush was genial, far-thinking, visionary, very intelligent, and a true leader with great vision.

More analytical readers said “same old, same old”, “warmed over hash”, “unoriginal”, “trite”, and “retrying failed rhetoric.”

The audience, absolutely partisan by design, was divided into claques and opponents. The claque bunch genuflected, rising and falling, clapping and expressing vast approval, (appropriate for the Second Coming of their Lord) with each sentence, which was marked by a slight drop in pitch.

The opponents were barely civil, sometimes clapping for a previously successful idea and sometimes expressing discontent, as for instance when Bush brought up the issue of Social Security.

The aftermath of SOTU was even more dramatic when civility gave way to either forms of rapture and praise, or toward criticism, sarcasm, or insulting remarks. Certainly the nation is divided.

The laudatory claim of Bush in his first year in the Presidency that he would be a “Uniter, not a Divider”, soon vanished into partisan bickering as Bush decided he would bully and railroad the democrats into whatever his whim dictated would occur.

He decided not to consult with opponents, to use executive action to get his way in legislation, policy, appointments, religious pronouncements, and to assuage his paranoid fear of “terrists” whom he had single-handed created by arrogant preemption, shock-and-awe, cruise missiles, heavy weapons, and the constant use of lies, stealth, misinformation, twisting logic, and a thick coating of secrecy.

Bush and his cabinet created a war out of whole cloth. Bush, as a religious zealot, backed by millions of fundamentalist true believers, decided to show oil-rich Muslims that they were inferior to his armaments. And, although he is too embarrassed to acknowledge it, he lusted for the oil of Iraq and was determined to steal it to accomplish his Neocon mission toward world domination.

He still wants huge bases in many countries, specifically Iraq today, from which to threaten and bully the entire Middle East region.

To that end he sent the Black Angel of Death, Condi Rice, to threaten other nations, provoke them into some action whereby Bush can send his Cruise missiles screaming into populated areas, thus entitling him to strut and swagger like a true military hero. They talked of weapons of mass destruction, mushroom clouds, EVIL, and a lot more, avoiding any mention of oil, bases, regional domination, or illegalities.

This plan was hatched before he was selected as President by a partisan Supreme Court as part of the New World Order strategy and he has stuck to it ever since. Iran, Syria and other countries are in tremendous danger of vile Bush action, but his unwarranted invasion of Iraq and the occupation of 160,000 US troops make a direct military assault with tanks and Humvees prone to criticism

Missiles and gun-ships were, for Bush, viable options which might give him resources and glory. with several prominent Republicans, also issuing threats of their own for public consumption and voter appeal. If any one was fomenting terror, it was Bush and his chicken-hawks.

His slogan of “Winning Hearts and Minds” I regarded as a form of sarcasm intended for the consumption of a gullible, ignorant, and indoctrinated audience which made up his base, much like “Faith”, “Compassion”, “Democracy,” and “Sovereignty.”

Thus today we have a carbon-copy of the 2002-3 threats, war mongering, and saber rattling. Condi Rice is daily threatening Iran and Syria. She talks of mushroom clouds. Bush talks about bringing Democracy and while avoiding any talk of sovereignty or oil or domination of the region.

The entire cabinet, with Dick Cheney in the forefront, is rattling sabers and dancing the war dance. Several prominent politicians have started their own threats of “retaliation.”

The Military are again drawing up war plans, just waiting until the time is ripe to send cruise missiles screaming into Iranian space because the Iranian President is EVIL.

As I said, Bush is consistent. He will stick with a course, even though it is a failed course, in the hope that the next time it will succeed, or the next time, or the next time. His speeches like his actions. are like the old-time carbon-copies which will stain his honor, courage, wisdom, compassion and dreams of a united legacy.

He disdains any limitation on his imperial will, continues to defy Constitutional provisions, and repeats the same old lies, over and over and over. He struts, swaggers, smirks, has the same old photo-ops intended to win hearts and mind while giving the public his upraised finger in his well-known salute to fascist theocracy.

His supporters have never wavered. All of his actions, words, gestures are familiar. He will always resort to lies, misinformation, deceit, stealth and midnight executive action as hallmarks of his legacy.

His clichés, Bible quotations, aphorisms, blithe references to Laura, talk of “our brave boys”, forbidding photos of caskets or maimed troops, smiles, blinks, smirks, struts, staring into the TV lens, waving his hands in stereotyped gestures, references to the Old Testament God, suggestions that prayer will solve anything but condoms are sinful, subtle hate of gays, and a hundred other actions are standard carbon-copies which he will use over and over again.

Of course, he will probably also mention 9/11 another thousand times in the 3 years he has left to push America down the drain.

And his True Believer followers will call him brilliant, genial, honest, trustworthy, compassionate, Uniter, Peacemaker, while some may continue to believe he is a species of Messiah whose every word and action is approved by the Supreme Creator of the Universe. They too are carbon-copies of True Believers of the 1500’s ever ready to smite the infidel.