Connecting the Dots

Every once in a while, when I get a chance to step back from the absurd Orwellian nightmare that is the current Presidential administration, I realize that with all of the smaller atrocities that they perform on a regular basis, and all the political games that they are constantly playing, it becomes increasingly difficult to see the forest for the trees, to understand the bigger picture that is what induces (or should induce) terror in the heart of any well-meaning American citizen. When they are planning on creating an illusory $1 TRILLION DOLLARS in order to pay for unnecessary Social Security reform, when they are planning to pay for what they have no money to pay for by destroying corporate incentives to help employees get health insurance, when they are talking about their great plan for democracy in the Middle East while in fact causing our standing in the eyes of the citizens of the Middle East to plummet through the floor, it gets more and more difficult to look at the WHOLE thing and try to figure out – what in the hell are they doing anyway, and why are they doing it? Because the sum total of the Bush agenda is no less than the demolition of the federal government and the social safety net as we know it. "Ownership society" means nothing except "every man for himself" and more specifically "government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich" with no recourse for the weak and the poor, and it doesn't take much imagination to picture the outcome of a modern oligarchy run entirely on unrestrained social Darwinism. So it helps when someone comes along to simplify matters, to put them in perspective, and to give a good idea of a bigger picture.

Ed Kilgore provides a good rant about this here, and a good meditation on why good, honest Republicans, and yes they do exist, are allowing the current cynical, hypocritical bunch to run this country into the ground. This article by Molly Ivins is a good micro-macro picture, wherein she describes the Texasification of America (and she should know, good Texan that she is). And this article by Paul Krugman gives a good clear picture of the monstrosity that is the planned privatization of Social Security, and the trumped-up "Social Security crisis" that is being invented by the Bush Administration to justify it.

For the bigger picture, I think it's good to keep in mind as well the Economist article cited below (in my post called The Falling Dollar). If we think the financial picture is bleak now, largely because of the massive amount of debt we're bending under, imagine if the government just randomly decided to create a fictional additional trillion dollars - i.e. took out another trillion dollars in debt - to fix a problem THAT DOESN'T EVEN EXIST. Put this together with the fact that - as depicted in the Ivins article - our government is apparently becoming nothing more than an endless series of cover-ups for cynical bastards whose highest aspiration in life seems to be finding out just how much bilking of their fellow citizens they can get away with before getting caught. If you can find another driving motive, please, help me out...