"What I am condemning is that
one power, with a president
who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting
to plunge the world into a holocaust."
--Nelson Mandela, 1/30/03 in South
Africa
"The reason we start a war is
to fight a war, win a war,
thereby causing no more war!" --George
W. Bush, The first Presidential debate
Cult leaders, in religion and politics,
demand fealty
If no enemy exists, one will be created to engender
loyalty
Arthur Janov
Sunday, May 27, 2007
I watched a documentary the other night on Jonestown, the cult
enclave in Guyana led by Jim Jones, who fled San Francisco 30
years ago along with more than 1,000 of his followers in order
to build a "new life" in the jungle. The documentary
struck me because my new book, "Beyond Belief," is about
cults, healers, mystics and gurus -- and why we believe in them.
It seems that nearly all cults follow a predictable program:
There is the charismatic leader, who is dynamic and promises love
and paradise for his adepts. He has a mission that he inveigles
the followers to embrace; it doesn't matter if there are casualties
because the mission is all and because he, too, is caught in the
rhetoric of paradise, of a place where all is love and, for him,
all is power.
Soon, however, the mission falters -- because there are the enemies
(you're either for us or against us) who stand in the way and
won't let the mission be accomplished. Paranoia sets in; the infidels
must be destroyed because they are out to destroy us. What exacerbates
the paranoia are the depths of suspicion that the leader becomes
mired in. He must build up defenses -- against his fears. He sees
enemies everywhere, and he imagines it is a coherent plot among
them. Even a benign move by them becomes interpreted as a threat.
There is no talking to them anymore because they are the enemy.
This ultimately leads to a confrontation and finally combat.
It is not hard to imagine the big leap to some government leaders
who run cults writ large (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il).
In these "cults," the casualties matter little and there
is hardly any emotion wasted on the suffering of the followers,
nor the enemy for that matter, nor the bystanders (collateral
damage), for they must accomplish the mission that exists in the
collective head of the "guru."
Whether the leader of a cult or the leader of a government, what
better position for that leader than to convince the followers
that they need protection? The evidence is all around them. What
better position than to order arms at will, no matter what the
cost? Cost never enters the equation. Defeating the enemy is all.
If no enemy exists, one will be created. What is amazing is how
little it takes to bring people along for the ride.
Cults appear in many guises and disguises. But the dynamics never
change. The leader wants your money and possessions, your body
(the army), and then your mind.
The military is an organization that tells you how to dress,
when to get up, when to eat and what, when you can go out on liberty.
It attracts the obedient ones, in the same way that cults attract
them. Military intelligence then becomes an oxymoron because those
uncreative, unfree types are in the saddle running the show. The
focus is always on the enemy, not on our suffering soldiers. The
mission: uber allies. Those who would wish to end the war are
accused of aiding the enemy -- except that the worst enemy is
inside, not outside.
That logic operated in Nazi Germany, where to utter the word
"defeat" was a crime and was punished by death. First
the leader must start a war, even with no evidence of a threat.
Then he castigates those who don't agree as enemies. This is particularly
true of those who find other truths; Valerie Plame comes to mind.
It doesn't matter that she was a highly secretive employee dedicated
to protecting our country. What mattered was to stifle dissent;
democracy took a backseat. Hitler managed to get tens of millions
to invade other countries and go to war on the flimsiest pretext
-- the need for more breathing space.
When we defer to external regulation of our own lives and minimize
the value of personal efforts in affecting problems, the result
is rule by the cognoscenti, rule by a knowing elite who knows
what is best for us. It applies to politics. When people feel
powerless, they prefer government by experts over government by
the people.
It is not the content of a belief system that matters, but what
draws us toward ideas and beliefs, and what makes beliefs so important
to us. The brain does not care if it is, say, the Republican Party,
est or the Branch Davidians, just as the brain does not care what
brand of whiskey the alcoholic uses.
The leader has inculcated an ideational net inside the follower,
which is the most effective possible means of control. Control
is in place, and the follower does the dictates of the ideological
net. The net is enveloped by the need. Fulfilling his own archaic
needs, the leader becomes more dictatorial, and the followers
become more and more needy for guidance. They lose all perspective
as to right and wrong, moral and immoral. They simply follow their
leader, who assures them that they are doing the right thing and
that everything is for their own good. Obey me if you want a better
life. I will bestow upon you justice, protection, caring, understanding,
love. "You have the chance to learn my salvation." We
get it.
Arthur Janov, a psychologist, is the author of 11 books, including
"The Primal Scream" and his newest, "Primal Healing."
He is the founder of the Primal Center in Venice (Los Angeles
County). Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
This shadowy process was guided by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld
- Lawrence B. Wilkerson
Sunday, October 30, 2005
In President Bush's first term, some of the most important decisions
about U.S. national security -- including vital decisions about
postwar Iraq -- were made by a secretive, little-known cabal.
It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President
Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the
New American Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant
stir because I had been chief of staff to then-Secretary of State
Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005.
But I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes
made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes
with something less. More often than not, then-national security
adviser Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal.
Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift -- not
unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship
than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly
by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making
process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to
wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists
and "guardians of the turf."
But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced
a series of disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the
agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not
execute them well.
I watched these dual decision-making processes operate for four
years at the State Department. As chief of staff for 27 months,
I had a door adjoining the secretary of state's office. I read
virtually every document he read. I read the intelligence briefings
and spoke daily with people from all across government.
I knew that what I was observing was not what Congress intended
when it passed the 1947 National Security Act. The law created
the National Security Council -- consisting of the president,
vice president and the secretaries of state and defense -- to
make sure the nation's vital national security decisions were
thoroughly vetted. The NSC has often been expanded, depending
on the president in office, to include the CIA director, the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Treasury secretary and others,
and it has accumulated a staff of sometimes more than 100 people.
But many of the most crucial decisions from 2001 to 2005 were
not made within the traditional NSC process.
Scholars and knowledgeable critics of the U.S. decision-making
process may rightly say, so what? Haven't all of our presidents
in the last half-century failed to conform to the usual process
at one time or another? Isn't it the president's prerogative to
make decisions with whomever he pleases? Moreover, can he not
ignore whomever he pleases? Why should we care that Bush gave
over much of the critical decision-making to his vice president
and his secretary of defense?
Both as a former academic and as a person who has been in the
ring with the bull, I believe that there are two reasons we should
care. First, such departures from the process have in the past
led us into a host of disasters, including the last years of the
Vietnam War, the national embarrassment of Watergate (and the
first resignation of a president in our history), the Iran-Contra
scandal and now the ruinous foreign policy of George W. Bush.
But a second and far more important reason is that the nature
of both governance and crisis has changed in the modern age.
From managing the environment to securing sufficient energy resources,
from dealing with trafficking in human beings to performing peacekeeping
missions abroad, governing is vastly more complicated than ever
before in human history.
Further, the crises the U.S. government confronts today are so
multifaceted, so complex, so fast-breaking -- and almost always
with such incredible potential for regional and global ripple
effects -- that to depart from the systematic decision-making
process laid out in the 1947 statute invites disaster.
Discounting the professional experience available within the
federal bureaucracy -- and ignoring entirely the inevitable but
often frustrating dissent that often arises therein -- makes for
quick and painless decisions. But when government agencies are
confronted with decisions in which they did not participate and
with which they frequently disagree, their implementation of those
decisions is fractured, uncoordinated and inefficient.
This is particularly the case if the bureaucracies called upon
to execute the decisions are in strong competition with one another
over scarce money, talented people, "turf" or power.
It takes firm leadership to preside over the bureaucracy. But
it also takes a willingness to listen to dissenting opinions.
It requires leaders who can analyze, synthesize, ponder and decide.
The administration's performance during its first four years
would have been even worse without Powell's damage control. At
least once a week, it seemed, Powell trooped over to the Oval
Office and cleaned all the dog poop off the carpet. He held a
youthful, inexperienced president's hand. He told him everything
would be all right because he, the secretary of state, would fix
it. And he did -- everything from a serious crisis with China
when a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was struck by a Chinese F-8
fighter jet in April 2001, to the secretary's constant reassurances
to European leaders after the bitter breach in relations over
the Iraq war. It wasn't enough, of course, but it helped.
Today, we have a president whose approval rating is 38 percent
and a vice president who speaks only to Rush Limbaugh and assembled
military forces. We have a secretary of defense presiding over
the death-by-a-thousand-cuts of our overstretched armed forces
(no surprise to ignored dissenters such as former Army Chief of
Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki or former Army Secretary Thomas White).
It's a disaster. Given the choice, I'd choose a frustrating bureaucracy
over an efficient cabal every time.
Lawrence B. Wilkerson served as chief of staff to Secretary
of State Colin L. Powell from 2002 to 2005. This article appeared
in the Los Angeles Times. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
How does Bush "Christian" agenda
relate to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount?
When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain; and after
He sat down, His disciples came to Him. He opened His mouth and
began to teach them, saying...
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for
they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of
God.
Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and
falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for
in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless,
how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything,
except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be
hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket,
but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the
house.
Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see
your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I
did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you,
until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke
shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and
teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom
of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called
great in the kingdom of heaven.
For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that
of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of
heaven.
You have heard that the ancients were told, "You shall not
commit murder" and "Whoever commits murder shall be
liable to the court."
But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall
be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, "You
good-for-nothing," shall be guilty before the supreme court;
and whoever says, "You fool," shall be guilty enough
to go into the fiery hell.
Therefore if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and
there remember that your brother has something against you, leave
your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled
to your brother, and then come and present your offering.
Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with
him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to
the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into
prison. Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until
you have paid up the last cent.
You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery."
But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust
for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it
from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of
your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If
your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from
you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your
body, than for your whole body to go into hell.
It was said, "Whoever sends his wife away, let him give her
a certificate of divorce."
But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for
the reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever
marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, "You shall
not make false vows, but shall fulfill your vows to the Lord."
But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it
is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool
of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great
king. Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot
make one hair white or black.
But let your statement be, "Yes, yes" or "No, no."
Anything beyond these is of evil.
You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye, and
a tooth for a tooth."
But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps
you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.
If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your
coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.
Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who
wants to borrow from you.
You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor
and hate your enemy."
But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute
you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven;
for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends
rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do
not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your
brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the
Gentiles do the same?
Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
On the right to die and the pandering of politicians
Jon Carroll
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
I do not in this column want to talk about the right to die. I
do understand that it's a complicated issue, and many advocates
for the rights of the disabled have serious reservations about
it. I do understand that a persistent vegetative state is different
from a coma. That's all interesting, but it's beside the point.
I want to talk about political grandstanding. I know that accusing
a politician of grandstanding is like accusing a shark of eating.
There are, nevertheless, limits of human decency. The president
and any number of GOP members of Congress have not just crossed
those limits, they have stomped on them, burned them, obliterated
them. Do we have no safe harbor from the pandering ideologues?
Apparently not.
As almost everyone knows, Terri Schiavo is a Florida woman who
has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years. Her husband,
her doctors, the courts and the man appointed by the courts to
act as her advocate have all concurred that the most humane thing
to do now would be to remove her feeding tube.
Schiavo's sad case is not unique; feeding tubes are pulled every
day in the United States. Patients are intentionally given overdoses
of morphine every day in order to relieve their suffering. Sick
people choose to die, and say so, and they do die, aided or unaided.
This is the cycle of life.
Sometimes the media gets wind of one such story, usually involving
a relatively young white person like Terri Schiavo. Press conferences
are held. Doctors are consulted. The courts get involved, which
is regrettable but necessary. And then the evidence is heard,
and a decision is made, and a life is ended. All lives end --
the idea that human life is sacred is not, alas, supported by
the evidence.
Politicians become involved in direct proportion to the amount
of media publicity. They proclaim piously that they believe in
the sanctity of life, which is code for "I'm still against
abortion." They align themselves with a socially damaging
faith-based theory that opposes even contraception, because every
sperm is sacred. (In that belief system, the stain on Monica Lewinsky's
dress is holy in the eyes of God.)
The panderers and the publicly pious created a nine-ring circus
around a private family decision, and they used a helpless young
woman as a pawn. They did so apparently without conscience and
without regret. Congress subpoenaed Terri Schiavo in an effort
to prevent her feeding tube from being removed. President Bush
flew in dramatically from Texas to sign a special emergency bill
allowing a federal court to intervene in the case.
Did any of them care about Terri Schiavo for the first 14.5 years
of her vegetative state? They did not. Did they offer to pay for
the extraordinary expense of keeping her alive? They did not.
Did they sit by her bedside, read her books, play her music, bathe
her bedsores? They did not. There's nothing to be gained from
unpublicized compassion.
There are elderly people all over this country dying every day
from simple neglect. People just forget about them. Maybe Congress
could subpoena them! That way, when they didn't show up, they'd
be in contempt of Congress and someone would have to go find them
and at least change their sheets and give them some hot broth.
There are children in this country dying every day of preventable
diseases. Would George Bush care to fully fund all family clinics,
so that a baby would not die simply because it cannot be given
antibiotics in time? Would George Bush care to spend as much money
fighting HIV-AIDS in the African American community as he does
building large bombers? Yeah, I know, it's a tired old liberal
argument, and it's been discredited because well, you're gonna
have to remind me again why it's been discredited.
Never mind. Let's just concentrate on people in persistent vegetative
states. I have no idea how many people fit into that category
-- let's say 25,000. If every life is so damn sacred, then all
these people must be allowed to live and live and live. With enough
government support, they could outlive those of us in persistent
animated states. What a triumph for the human spirit that would
be.
And let's not hear this blather about quality of life. It's quantity
of life that we're after, just more and more living humans in
various states of distress, but all of them joyously alive as
God intended, until they die, also as God intended. But never
mind the second part! Let's keep cranking out the comatose! Put
them all under the care and the protection of the Congress of the
United States, the fine fountain of loving-kindness.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Somewhere in Florida, there's a woman who has no idea she's become
a celebrity. It's such a shame that she'll never write a book
to cash in on her fame. But someone will write a book. Oh, yes.
Bitter? Do I sound bitter? Oh no, I'm just pointing out the
foibles of our endlessly amusing ... OK, I'm bitter and I'm jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.
One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that
the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the
fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in
Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology
hold a monopoly of power in Washington.
Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues
hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what
is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple,
their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind.
And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious
to the facts.
Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary
of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the
ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told
the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant
in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony
he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come
back."
Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he
was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots
out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible
is literally true -- one-third of the American electorate, if
a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several
million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in
the rapture index.
That's right -- the rapture index. Google it and you will find
that the best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes
of the "Left Behind" series written by the Christian
fundamentalist and religious-right warrior Timothy LaHaye. These
true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in
the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate
passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has
captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.
Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer
George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I
am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): Once Israel
has occupied the rest of its "biblical lands," legions
of the antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown
in the valley of Armageddon.
As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah
will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out
of their clothes and transported to Heaven, where, seated next
to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and
religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and
frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.
I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature.
I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas
to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they
tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment
of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity
with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support
with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them
was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where
four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates
will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with
Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed
-- an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last
time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 -- just one
point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow,
the son of God will return, the righteous will enter Heaven and
sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.
So what does this mean for public policy and the environment?
Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist
Glenn Scherer -- "The Road to Environmental Apocalypse."
Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists
may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded
but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming
apocalypse.
As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe
lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half
the U.S. Congress before the recent election -- 231 legislators
in total and more since the election -- are backed by the religious
right.
Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned
80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential
Christian right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,
Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon
Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Whip
Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian
coalition was Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted
from the biblical book of Amos on the Senate floor: "The
days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine
in the land." He seemed to be relishing the thought.
And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 Time-CNN poll
found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies
found in the book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly
one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive
across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600
Christian radio stations, or in the motel turn on some of the
250 Christian TV stations, and you can hear some of this end-time
gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell
of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it,
"to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth,
when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological
collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why
care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued
in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar
when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and
fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a
word?"
Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the
Lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history
book, "America's Providential History." You'll find
there these words: "The secular or socialist has a limited-resource
mentality and views the world as a pie ... that needs to be cut
up so everyone can get a piece." However, "[t]he Christian
knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is
no shortage of resources in God's earth ... while many secularists
view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has
made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to
accommodate all of the people."
No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that
militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned
out millions of the foot soldiers on Nov. 2, including many who
have made the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern American
politics.
It is hard for the journalist to report a story like this with
any credibility. So let me put it on a personal level. I myself
don't know how to be in this world without expecting a confident
future and getting up every morning to do what I can to bring
it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think
of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you
think of the market?"I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then
why do you look so worried?" And he answered: "Because
I am not sure my optimism is justified."
I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian
and the Center for Health and the Global Environment that people
will protect the natural environment when they realize its importance
to their health and to the health and lives of their children.
Now I am not so sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that
-- it's just that I read the news and connect the dots.
I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush
on the environment. This for an administration:
• That wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water
Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal
species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental
Policy Act, which requires the government to judge beforehand
whether actions might damage natural resources.
• That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate
vehicle tailpipe inspections, and ease pollution standards for
cars, sport-utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and
heavy equipment.
• That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations
to keep certain information about environmental problems secret
from the public.
• That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against
polluting, coal-fired power plants and weaken consent decrees
reached earlier with coal companies.
• That wants to open the Arctic [National] Wildlife Refuge
to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore,
the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world
and the last great coastal wild land in America.
I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental
Protection Agency had planned to spend $9 million -- $2 million
of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry
Council -- to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides
in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological
damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use,
the government and the industry were going to offer the families
$970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to
serve as guinea pigs for the study.
I read all this in the news.
I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's
friends at the International Policy Network, which is supported
by Exxon Mobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report
that climate change is "a myth, sea levels are not rising"
[and] scientists who believe catastrophe is possible are "an
embarrassment."
I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations
bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders
attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species protections
from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest
in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits
on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection
for crucial habitats in California.
I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next
to the computer -- pictures of my grandchildren. I see the future
looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father,
forgive us, for we know not what we do." And then I am stopped
short by the thought: "That's not right. We do know what
we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust.
Despoiling their world."
And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we
are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our
ability to sustain indignation at injustice?
What has happened to our moral imagination?
On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?"
And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"
I see it feelingly.
The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that
as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story.
The news can be the truth that sets us free -- not only to feel
but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is
the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer
to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my
desk. What we need is what the ancient Israelites called hochma
-- the science of the heart ... the capacity to see, to feel and
then to act as if the future depended on you.
Believe me, it does.
Bill Moyers was host until recently of the weekly public affairs
series "NOW with Bill Moyers" on PBS. This article is
adapted from AlterNet, where it first appeared. The text is taken
from Moyers' remarks upon receiving the Global Environmental Citizen
Award from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at
Harvard Medical School.
GEORGE W. BUSH
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20520
RESUME
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:
Law Enforcement:
I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under
the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had
my driver's license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record
has been "lost" and is not available.
Military:
I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused
to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use.
By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat
duty in Vietnam.
College:
I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a
cheerleader.
PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:
I ran for U.S. Congress and lost. I began my career in the oil
business in Midland, Texas, in 1975. I bought an oil company,
but couldn't find any oil in Texas. The company went bankrupt
shortly after I sold all my stock. I bought the Texas Rangers
baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer
money. With the help of my father and our friends in the oil industry
(including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS:
- - I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies,
making Texas the most polluted state in the Union. During my tenure,
Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America.
- - I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune
of billions in borrowed money.
- - I set the record for the most executions by any governor in
American history.
- - With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida, and
my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President
after losing by over 500,000 votes.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:
- - I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office
with a criminal record.
- - I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost
of over one billion dollars per week.
- - I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S.
Treasury.
- - I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S.
history.
- - I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed
in any 12-month period.
- - I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month
period.
- - I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history
of the U.S. stock market. In my first year in office, over 2 million
Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues every month.
- - I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of
any administration in U.S. history. My "poorest millionaire,"
Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.
- - I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a
U.S. President.
- - I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving
the most corporate campaign donations.
- - My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best
friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy
fraud in U.S. History, Enron.
- - My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys
to assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election
decision.
- - I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against
investigation or prosecution. More time and money was spent investigating
the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one
of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history. I presided over
the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to intervene
when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.
- - I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.
- - I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to
be awarded government contracts.
- - I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than
any President in U.S. history.
- - I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy
in the history of the United States government.
- - I've broken more international treaties than any President
in U.S. history.
- - I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United
Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.
- - I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.
- - I refused to allow inspector's access to U.S. "prisoners
of war" detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the
Geneva Convention.
- - I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations
election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).
- - I set the record for fewest numbers of press conferences of
any President since the advent of television.
- - I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any
one-year period. After taking off the entire month of August,
I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.
- - I garnered the most sympathy ever for the U.S. after the World
Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the U.S.
the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy
in world history.
- - I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to
simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people),
shattering the record for protests against any person in the history
of mankind.
- - I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked,
pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign
nation. I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority
of U.S. citizens, and the world community.
- - I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support
a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families
in wartime.
- - In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons
for attacking Iraq and then blamed the lies on our British friends.
- - I am the first President in history to have a majority of
Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world
peace and security.
- - I am supporting development of a nuclear "Tactical Bunker
Buster," a WMD.
- - I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin
Laden to justice.
RECORDS AND REFERENCES:
- - All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my
father's library, sealed and unavailable for public view.
- - All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading
and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable
for public view.
- - All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President,
attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy
and unavailable for public review.
PLEASE CONSIDER MY EXPERIENCE WHEN VOTING IN 2004!
PLEASE SEND THIS TO EVERY VOTER YOU KNOW!
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The Unfeeling President
By E.L. Doctorow
September 9, 2004
I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does
not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what
they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower
prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were
going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war,
a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost
was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.
But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the
mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under
the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to
find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt
sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and
waving, triumphal, a he-man.
He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn.
He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him
to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans
who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles
an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because
he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility
for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they
could be.
They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers
or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days
a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable
remembrance of aborted life . . . they come to his desk as a political
liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph
the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.
How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets
nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was,
as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that
his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished
a disaster. He does not regret that, rather than controlling terrorism,
his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead
and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.
He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive
the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs.
He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one
of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because
you want to but because you have to.
Yet this president knew it would be difficult for Americans not
to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much.
This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for
only one thing -- to take power, to remain in power, and to use
that power for the sake of themselves and their friends.
A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime
leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate.
And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does
not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and
children. He is the president who does not feel. He does not feel
for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the 35 million
of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the 40 percent
who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners
whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has
deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to
pay their bills - it is amazing for how many people in this country
this president does not feel.
But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he
is relieving the wealthiest 1 percent of the population of their
tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting
the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is
decreasing the quality of air in coal mines to save the coal miners'
jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a-half
benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor
them by raising them into the professional class.
And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God
and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are
doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.
But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I
remember the millions of people here and around the world who
marched against the war. It was extraordinary, this spontaneous
aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national
borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war
anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over he
world most of the time.
But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions
of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope
of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype
of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic
republic in history was turning its back on the future, using
its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal
of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal
combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct,
who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than
pre-emptive war.
The president we get is the country we get. With each president
the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our
malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the
kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses.
The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they
get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble.
Finally, the media amplify his character into our moral weather
report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail.
How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given
the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive
lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot
mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn
for ourselves.
