John Dean: Public Apathy Aids Bush + Friday Open Thread
By Leslie on September 29, 2007 at 12:58 AM in Current Affairs
The Kansas City Star’s Lewis Diuguid writes:
Blame it on this city and country sagging now with a political and civic fatigue that’s more dangerous than the infrastructure neglect that led to the breach of the levees in New Orleans two years ago. Blame it on the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the billions of dollars in costs, the mounting corruption and the growing casualty count.The early start to the 2008 presidential campaign also contributes to people’s exhaustion. The biggest beneficiary of the public malaise is Bush.
With people disgusted and disconnected, he and Cheney continue to advance their agenda. Tax dollars can repair damage to bridges and levees, but it will take a lot more to rebuild Americans’ political and civic will.
But our fate depends on it.
If the election were held today, the Republican frontrunner, Rudy Giuliani, would be in a tight race against the Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, according to polls. But if Giuliani succeeds Bush to the White House, then John Dean tells The Nation, Giuliani “would go even farther than Cheney and Bush in their worst moments.”
The Nation asked, and what if Bush is replaced by a Democrat, presumably Hillary, will we be able to say “our long national nightmare is over”? Dean replied with one word: “Yes.”
In a three-part series of columns, John Dean writes about the impact authoritarian conservativism has had on America in the hope that voters will reject authoritarianism in 2008. I highly recommend reading this.
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
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By Sarah Palin (Release date: November 17. 2009)
“what if Bush is replaced by a Democrat, presumably Hillary, will we be able to say “our long national nightmare is over”?”
Dean is as delusional as all the rest of you who think merely replacing Bush with a Democrat is going to end the nightmare.
It sure as hell will not end the nightmare for Iraqis either since they all insist that it is just oh, so TERRIBLY difficult to stop occupying that country that it is bound to take oh, another five to fifty years at least.
Well, if Israel can make a decision to end an eighteen year occupation and be out of there a week later, then the U.S. does not need to keep combat troops in Iraq for another five years, unless they have a self-serving reason to stay.
PS I also think Dean is wrong if he really thinks it is exhaustion at the root of the American people’s apathy. Only a tiny handful have any reason to be exhausted. The overwhelming majority of Americans have done nothing whatsoever to cause exhaustion. For them it has been and still is business as usual, and it will continue to be business as usual as long as they don’t see and feel the cost of what is going on.
I think it was Brett Butler who said the she thought we needed a revolution, but that she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to get any good Moisturizer if we did.
Nothing has changed. The American public is a split as ever on Presidential elections. Besides the American voter is as educated as a horses tail end when it comes to Presidential elections.
My bet is that when the 08 election comes down to the wire it will be another very close race between the parties.
We can blame who ever for what ever, but when it comes down to it. We are the ones actually responsible for these disasters, because we are stupid enough to fall for the political BS and put these morons in office. And then to kick ourselves harder, we re-elect them time and time again.
Funny I was talking with a couple from England the other day. It was noted that you can actually interchange the American Congress for the British Parliament and still come out with the same screwed up mess with almost the same screwed up issues. Nop one would know the difference.
It was also noted that both citizenry are equally naive when it come to politics….
Must be why we get along so well with the Brits….
Sad…..
[...] If you don’t read anything else today, read John Dean [hat tip to No Quarter]… [...]
It IS exhaustion…it’s scandal fatigue. And it’s deliberate.
And just when you think that the right wing and the GOP can’t sink any lower, they throw another juggernaut at ‘cha.
The reason I do not find the “exhaustion” argument persuasive is that even though I live in quite a liberal, politically-aware bubble, the majority of the people I see every day give little more than a passing glance as they go more or less blithely about their daily business. Their lives are simply not sufficiently affected for them to care enough to get exhausted. The people who are exhausted by all this are generally the ones who care enough to keep fighting no matter how exhausted they are.
Shirin,
I can tell you haven’t read the first article I linked to. Because you’re focusing your argument on a single word, exhaustion. The Kansas City reporter, not Dean, used that word to explain why hardly anyone showed up to hear Dean speak. Dean would probably use the word apathy. But, whichever word you use, the point is that many Americans never bother to vote. So instead of focusing on what word someone uses, maybe you should read the article before criticizing it.
Voter apathy is 100% understandable at this juncture. Both parties have totalistically failed to provide any form of sane, effective leadership to the nation, and, furthermore, have totalistically failed to represent the great majority of voters on issues ranging from the war(s) through the environment through health insurance through issues of economic inequity.
Both parties are wholly owned by plutocrats, big-dollar corporate special interests, and nefarious ideological agendas stemming from people who don’t have to work for a living, never did, and seem to have a lot of time on their hands to come up with hair-brained plots for domination of entire regions in the world.
George Walker Bush will be the most unpopular president in the modern history of poll-monitored presidencies.
And the Democratic Congress? It’s approval rating by polls (11%, the last I saw) is about 1/3 that of the most unpopular president in the history of poll-monitored presidencies, and for good reason. The insipid pseudo-leadership of Pelosi and Reid, along with the agenda-driven, regressive real leadership of Steny Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel, has produced an absolute ZERO of positive change from the terrible status quo of the last few years.
Both parties have, further, insulted the public by producing “frontrunner” candidates running the same old big dollar, vapid campaigns, taking the same old insipid non-positions on “issues” that are twisted and distorted from their reality, placed the interests of their sponsors first and foremost, and who have spit upon even the idea of representative democracy by creating a regime in the election system in which very few people have any chance of actually being represented at all.
It’s the status quo, and its a train wreck, and it keeps on going.
Public apathy is understood, and well-earned, by the parties managing an election system and federal government system which normally holds in profound contempt the interests and beliefs of the people allegedly being represented.
Giuliani wants to be another Bush. Fine. Hillary wants to start a war with Iran, after helping start a war with Iraq, and her precious husband Bill is too busy singing the praises of Wal-Mart, Inc., to help pay back the Walton Family’s big campaign contributions to Hillary, to offer any sort of leadership himself.
Once again, we are witnessing the total collapse of the credibility of our election system and supposed “representative” democracy. Faced with ever more dire problems, the system as managed by the plutocracy and their two parties produces ever more vacuous representatives of the steadily worsening status quo.
I can respect anyone who just turns it out. Old reruns of “The Simpsons” offer more meaning than watching the “debates” amongst the POTUS candidates.
Really, its no joke. A few average reruns of the “The Simpsons”, in the form of the occasional sly joke, will offer you more political truth and insight than all of the Democratic and Republican presidential “debates” viewed back to back, if anyone could endure such torture without drawing a pistol, putting it to his head, and blowing out his own brains out of cynicism, despair, and ennui.
Well, those are the people you associate with, Shirin.
No, they are not the people I “associate with”. They are the people I encounter during my work day, and as I go about my daily routine. The people I “associate with” are quite, quite different, but they are a select group, just as the people who congregate here are a select group.
May I say? This is THE BEST BLOG!!! Topics are always relevant and informative.
Once again, I thank you all. I always learn something here.
There are ways to win “hearts and minds.” Then there are ways to drive people away.
__________
It is heartening that Dean is warning people about Guiliani who, besides being scary, is also just plain weird, not to mention really quite ignorant. (I very much like MoveOn’s latest TV ad going after Guiliani.)
(I find Thompson just as scary because he’s so out of it that he’d let the neo-cons run the show. Then there’s that he looks so damn old, and really not very well. He’d probably die in office.)
And I’m heartened that Dean sees a Democratic president as a major step away from this madness. I do too. I have no fear that any of the Democratic presidential candidates will lead us into new wars or ever allow themselves to be influenced by the neo-cons.
OMG. Just read this at TPM:
Then TPM writer Steve Benen adds several more thoughts about Guiliani’s bizarro behavior and thinking.
If you were sick and tired of Nancy Reagan, imagine how tough it would be to endure Princess (soon to be queen) Judith.
Susan,
Steve Benen has his own blog The Carperbagger Report. He does some amazing work and his regular commenters are highly intelligent, well-versed people. http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/
He posts at TPM on weekends, and C&L during the week as well. He’s probably my favorite lesser known blogger. Please check him out. It’s well worth your time.
I think Dean’s wrong about it being apathy. I mean there is much apathy. But it’s much more pervasive than that I think.
In 2000 we saw a stolen presidential election, a so called yuppy protest that intimidated and halted vote counting, a presidential candidate who assumed the best and got the worst, and by his own inaction caused the election to be stolen.And then we saw our Supreme Court, the final last word law of the land, deliver a decree that halted any and all vote counts and declared and annointed Bush, in a one time only judgment, to be King, I mean President.
The Dems in the House and the Senate did not dispute this and allowed the electoral college to deliver it’s fraudulently arrived at votes. And most of us sat by, thinking it couldn’t be sooooo bad, so we tolerated their decision. And we had a national press who laid down and refused to question anything about the Governor from Texas and his checkered past. Nor did they question the ways in which he was elected, Years later we hear about voter caging and denial of votes to minorities in the very state that “delivered” the electoral college to Bush, a state governed by his own brother. And yet still most of the mainstream press ignores it.
We saw in 2002 how real war heros like Max Cleland were tarred and papered as weak and pro-enemy. Accused by chickenhawks of their own worst failings and shortcomings. And still we sat idly by. Shopping and re-financing our homes, buying Hummers, cheap Chinese made goods from WalMart and oil from Saudi Arabia.
We saw again in 2004, how another true war hero could be slandered and hatred drummed up against him and his wife. And he sat idly by without fighting against those who so slandered him. And we saw again, even more voter caging. And yet another stolen election.
People who care deeply about politics, about who is our President and who controls our houses of congress have become disenheartened. We realize our vote very often is not even counted.
But what did this disenheartened people do? We arose en mass to take back the People’s house and to wrest the Senate from the plutocrats and oligarcs in 2006. We overcame all the default fake vote counts supplied by Diebold et al. And we knew from the reporting of Greg Palast and others that the default was 3%. And we overcame that. Our anger and our fear drove many, many more of us to the polls. For a non-presidential election, it was a huge turnout, which is why they couldn’t steal it.
And what did we get for that? Yes, control of both houses of Congress. And they’ve passed some good bills most sentient beings appreciate. And they’ve had some great inspective hearings.
But have they halted or scaled back the war? Have they stopped some of the more egregious power grabs by the executive branch? Have they condemned any of the traitors within? Hell have they condemned anyone other than MoveOn or the Iranians? Have they actively worked to stop a new war with Iran?
The answer is no. Impeachment is off the table, and so must ending the occupation be too. The theft of America’s youth and her purse are well and truly acceeded to by both parties.
The fact that the Dems will not stand up for the people of this country is why Congress’s approval rating is fixin’ to enter the single digits. We’ve known from the past 6 years that no Republican will ever listen to their constituents or frankly “give a flying fuck”(YAY Kurt Vonnegut quote!) about them. We’ve had it shoved in our faces these last 9 months that neither will the Dems.
I fear that the voter apathy will only increase. We voted Dems and for what? More of the same.
The Dems are now in full ownership society role. They refuse to end the war, “it’s too hard”; they refuse to impeach, “it’s off the table, too hard, takes too much time and we can’t multi-task and do that and get bills passed so Dubs can veto.”
I fear the people are so sick and disgusted with the entire electoral process that they may actually sit out the ‘08 election.
The birth of apathy has many mothers. A disengaged electorate is sired by many fathers. The rape of your one voice is mere sleight of hand and leaves very little CSI: VotingBooth evidence. But knowing from empirical facts that your voice may not be counted, that your opinion does not matter, that your thoughts and hopes and dreams are for naught surely weighs most heavy. If they don’t count my vote, why should I take the time and effort to go and actually vote?
Wow, some stunning news. Italy has arrested an Iraqi Pizza and Kebab vendor who has been living in Padua for 25 years. The charge is that he was connected to AlQaeda in Iraq. But the US version of the story says, of course, that he was connected to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and AlQaeda in Iraq. Sorry, “Sheik”, but you never had much status in Italy — dead OR alive.
Also in the news, Ahmadinejad has labeled the CIA a terrorist organization! Way to go, Moodi! You really know how to make my day. I even bought a new Persian carpet this afternoon in your honor.
Moodi?!
Let’s see Jack Bauer break out of this jail!
Antonin Scalia will be verklempt if Sutherland’s jail time kills his favorite teevee show (which he thinks is just like real life).
Antonin Scalia will be verklempt if Sutherland’s jail time kills his favorite teevee show (which he thinks is just like real life).
Yeah, well maybe Fox will appeal Bauer’s sentence and the Supremes will reverse it. It’ll be a 5-4 decision, of course.
If it kills that show, traffic in my neighborhood would improve, because their trucks would be off the streets. (So would the pickup-driving wanna-be cowboys who work for them.)
And, I just read this about the “mistake” made w/ those NUCLEAR bombs:
September 29, 2007 http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=11687
Stranger Than Strangelove
by Gordon Prather
According to a seemingly authoritative report in the Washington Post, it came to pass that, on or about 2045 hours, August 30th 2007, as the cruise missiles that had been mounted on one pylon of an Air Force B-52 – flown from Minot AFB and parked, unattended, for more than eight hours on a ramp at Barksdale AFB – were being transported to a storage area, an “airman,” a member of the transport crew, “noticed something unusual” about the missiles.
It turned out these six AGM-129 cruise missiles were the real thing, armed with the W80-1 “dial-a-yield” (5KT-120KT) nuke warhead!
The Military Times first revealed the discovery of August 30th by a lowly transport crewman on September 5th. And as Barksdale AFB has been widely reported to be the staging base for Air Force operations in the Middle-East, and when word got out that the Israelis had staged on September 6th some sort of attack on a facility on the far side of Syria that was alleged by Bonkers Bolton to be some sort of Syrian-North Korean processing plant for nuclear materials destined for Iran, conspiracy theories blossomed.
Can it be that we have just witnessed Red Alert – the serious book on which the farcical movie Dr. Strangelove was based — in reverse?
In the book-movie a paranoid Air Force General – believing himself near death – decides to leave the world a better place by ordering his nuke-armed B-52 bombers who are approaching the point where they would ordinarily turn back, to go ahead and bomb their assigned targets. The White House frantically tries to stop them, even ordering Air Force fighters to intercept the bonkers general’s bombers and shoot them down.
Can it be that a lowly “airman” has thwarted one or more paranoids in the White House?….” (clip)
Awesome find, Sandy. I hope Larry sees this.
Great work Sandy!
people understand that our government has become so powerful and so isolated that there is no point in expressing themselves. Nothing we do matters. You could have a march of a million people. two million. they’d just say there were 298 million who didn’t march
That’s not true Lester.
One brave man exposed the truth at Abu Ghraib. Another brave man exposed the Niger uranium lies. Millions voted in 2004 and together their votes changed the makeup of Congress. Even one person can make a difference, and together we can do a lot. We just have to keep trying.
“Millions voted in 2004 and together their votes changed the makeup of Congress.”
Which has, so far, turned out to be a nearly pointless exercise.
Furthermore, if there is a march the media
a - ignores it
b - underreports it
c - focuses on the craziest participants, no matter how small a minority and spends all the time filming them in order to marginalize and diminish the importance of the whole event.
leslie- exposoing abu graib didn’t end the war. we can , at best, embarass various politicians.
while the beltway is isolated and powerful, the executive branch is even more isolated and even more powerful. they would bomb iran as soon as order pizza.
Nothing good can come out of washington, I don’t care if you elect Gandhi and the legistalture is run by …really smart people. BULLDOZE THE BELTWAY
Reasons to Vote For Ron Paul!!
Do we really need a FAA?
If I wanna get shitfaced and drive a car, isn’t that my business? I mean as long as I don’t hurt anyone, right?
Why do we have mining regulations? They know what they’re getting into.
States and local municipalities should decide if they want public education.
Why should I have to be insured if I drive?
If a 12 year old kid can put in 60 hours a week at a steel mill, why shouldn’t a company be able to hire him or her? We need to stop killing the spirit of entrepeneurship in this country.
It should be legal to get a Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle off the internet, w/armor piercing capabilities, without a background check or proof of ID. We have too many laws on the books as is. And if terrorists and the military have rocket launchers - well shouldn’t I be able me to get one?
WHY SHOULDN’T FIRST COUSINS BE ABLE TO MARRY? Where in the constitution does it say anything about that? I challenge you.
If you, like me, want government off your back - vote Ron Paul!
Oh LOL and ROTFLMAO at Taters. Dammit quit making sense and being funny. Just.Stop.It.Now.
DEMOCRACY was a GOOD IDEA —— WHILE IT LASTED !!
THANX for that —- RED STATES !!
First cousins are allowed to marry.
taters cut and pasted that. wow, your a real rebel, coming out in favor of our 3 trillion dollar a year warmonger government. edgy stuff
Hey, I’ve been lurking here for a few months, and decided to create an account today. Just figured I’d drop in and say hi
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