But back to people like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, each of whom have said in their own way how we could behave more humanely and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favourite humans is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana.

Get a load of this. Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was not yet four, ran five times as the Socialist party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, almost 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:

"As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.

"As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it.

"As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?

When you get out of bed each morning, with the roosters crowing, wouldn't you like to say. "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly George W Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

It so happens that idealism enough for anyone is not made of perfumed pink clouds. It is the law! It is the US Constitution.

But I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened instead is that it was taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'état imaginable.

I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale".

George W Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr Hervey Cleckley, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia, published in 1941. Read it!

Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These were people born without consciences, and suddenly they are taking charge of everything.

PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And they are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankroll George Bush, and not because he's against gay marriage.

So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation.

They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilise the reserves! Privatise the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.

The title of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury's great science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. Four hundred and fifty-one degrees Fahrenheit is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury's novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.

While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

And still on the subject of books: our daily news sources, newspapers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books do we learn what's really going on.

I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published in early 2004, that humiliating, shameful, blood-soaked year.

In case you haven't noticed, as the result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African-Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war-lovers with appallingly powerful weaponry - who stand unopposed.

In case you haven't noticed, we are now as feared and hated all over the world as Nazis once were.

And with good reason.

In case you haven't noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanised millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound 'em and kill 'em and torture 'em and imprison 'em all we want.

Piece of cake.

In case you haven't noticed, we also dehumanised our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.

Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything.

Piece of cake.

The O'Reilly Factor.

So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and a Chicago paper called In These Times.

Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed there were weapons of mass destruction there.

Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn't even seen the first world war. War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the first world war so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun.

Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?

Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now give up on people, too. I am a veteran of the second world war and I have to say this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.

My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."

Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler. What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations, and made it all their own?

© 2005 Kurt Vonnegut Extracted from A Man Without a Country: A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America, to be published by Bloomsbury on February 6, price £14.99

In the five years since George W. Bush was anointed to the presidency a pestilence of decrepit efficiency has overtaken the nation, accelerating and magnifying what was already an empire in rapid decline. Since early 2001, very little has gone right in the America of working and middle class citizens, both of progressive and conservative beliefs, young and old, hundreds of millions strong, divided by differing opinion yet bonded by economic and social interests. At the same time, however, the reign of George Bush the Lesser has become a bonanza to the corporate and elite world as the nation is plundered of treasure and altered from deep within the halls of Washington, its wealth and resources reallocated to and misappropriated by the Establishment, thereby transforming a government once of, by and for the People into one strictly and efficiently receptive only to the interests of corporations.

The America born in 2001, first with the ascension of Bush and later with the psychological war on Americans begun on 9/11, has degenerated according to plan, methodically and perniciously engineered by entities intent on corporatist control, molded into an immovable ship on a collision course with a giant iceberg. In order for America to sink its people had to be molded to one day accept the fate awaiting us. Our brains had to be programmed and altered, our minds controlled and conditioned, our beliefs brainwashed and engineered. For years this has been achieved by the systematic evisceration of education, gutting knowledge and reason and learning in schools, transforming young sponge-like brains into rotting grey matter devoid of free thought.

Millions upon millions of citizens never stood a chance as the decrepit state of American education gutted all semblance of knowledge, our innate ability to learn manipulated instead to follow, obey and never question, with schools slowly but surely creating a nation of soldier ants and worker bees, teaching us historical propaganda and patriotic drivel, programming us to place unyielding devotion to flag and country, instructing us about the vast consortium of lies and fictions that comprise American history. We were brainwashed into always placing blind faith and trust in government and leaders, told to never question or dissent or protest the actions rising out of Washington.

Over years of anemic education, lacking the tools that makes the human mind free, devoid of reason, logic and analytical thought, with parental roles having become extinct, indoctrinated, taught and reared by the warm glow of television and the corporate world that controls it, our brain waves reprogrammed to the fictions and fantasy radiating from our monitors, with the brainwashing and controlling manipulations of our church, and with our minds becoming the receptive antennas to the voices and opinion of paid talking heads and media hacks tens of millions of us became, naturally, the very essence of the automatons our upbringing had systemically sculpted.

With schools under funded, subsisting in financial abandonment and teeming with reckless indifference, the state and the corporate world were free to educate us and our children through the monitor at home and propaganda laced schoolbooks, teaching only what was necessary to mold and create an army of unthinking drones through the purposeful evisceration of enlightened classes and curriculum. Over decades of discarded education, parenting and rearing, millions of children became the conduits and tools to power, enabling, through their large numbers, the continued decimation of the nation and giving rise, after years of patient lurking, to the debasement, corruption and corporatism that was resurrected with the appointment to power of the ultimate instrument of corporatist control, George W. Bush.

We became, over a series of subsequent decades, what we had allowed ourselves to become, following the blueprints of corporatist control, from birth mesmerized by the familiar warmth of television, absorbing the sounds and images carefully concocted by the corporate world which, as always, worked its magic, molding, caressing and reprogramming brainwaves along with the eventual destinies of millions of people. Over the years we allowed ourselves to be programmed and conditioned, engineered to become a society more and more willing to serve the interests of the powerful, in the process unknowingly sacrificing our own interests and becoming, by early 2001, a readied army standing silent, prepared, at the sound of corporatist trumpets, to march lockstep towards blind compliance, corporatist control and an ominous future.

Those trumpets calling Americans to arms would sound the last throes of the America of yesterday with the horrific implosion and subsequent destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Like a giant hypnotizing pendulum, 9/11 became the psychological instrument that brought life to an army molded over years of careful manipulation and conditioning. Falling towers and psychological operations thus acted in unison to enthrall millions who instinctively and blindly followed the emotions and behaviors that naturally arise from years of programmed conditioning.

Suddenly sprung to life after years waiting in the wings, millions of engineered Americans began doing what they had been taught to do for decades, becoming the rabidly patriotic and xenophobic citizenry unable to see forward because of myopic views and cloud covered thoughts, becoming the bed-wetting and fright-smeared beings gravitating to the only entity they had been taught was capable of protecting them from the evil bogeymen: the president.

Thus came to pass that George W. Bush, weak in character and in mind, failure in life and born to privilege, unlearned, unwise and incurious, corrupt and incompetent beyond repair, was thrust upon a paradigm shift of time, where differing dimensions crashed into each other, creating parallel universes and alternate realities, transforming America into a nation whose past would never again be allowed to thrive. In the engineered Americans he would find absolute power, along with the ingredients necessary to manipulate the fear and terror that have invariably become the oxygen-rich air feeding his oil thirsty veins. Thus, into the dawn of corporatist America George W. Bush stepped in, assuring the world that nothing would ever be the same again.


BushÂ’s Past, AmericaÂ’s Present


Upon the trail of tears following in the footsteps of democracy lost, a curse was birthed from Atlantic to Pacific, its dark fog covering the light of enlightenment and reality, replaced instead with the blackness of ignorance and blind faith. Into our lives has risen a most contemptuous figure, a man whose immorality knows no bounds, whose ability to lie in perpetuity is as great as his inability to competently lead a nation.

A man who was destined to become but a small herpes pimple appearing but once on historyÂ’s ass was granted a gift that has only kept on giving, becoming, since 9/11, the sustenance springing forth an oasis of political power to Republicans and to George W. Bush in particular. Without the horrific events that transpired on that fateful day, Bush would have been a certain one-term president, remembered more for his stolen election and both his subversion and contempt for democracy than for anything he could have ever done in the Oval Office.

Even before 9/11 his incompetence and lack of intelligence were readily apparent; yet his corruption was growing and evolving; his hunger to appease the corporatist world was evident. Hugely unpopular in his first few months in office, his administration was sinking even before sailing, for tens of millions of informed Americans had quickly realized the criminality of a man willing to selfishly place his stolen election over the interests and will of the People.

Yet his appointment to office was never designed to benefit the People, for inside political theater of compassionate conservatism chicanery festered and deception thrived. His was to be a presidency of, by and for the corporate world, an ascension to absolute power by the elite in control of corporations. He was to become the puppet of corporatism, doing the bidding for the powerful, his last name used as a marketing ploy to manipulate the minds of millions of voters. With a dynastic last name, an ignorant mind and an ever-weakening character, he became the perfect tool for the corporate world to clandestinely insert their powerful tentacles inside the highest office in the land.

Born to wealth and aristocracy, with a silver spoon in his mouth and a dark-skinned maid to acquiesce to his every demand, Bush never learned what life was like to the vast majority of Americans. Protected from the reality of the “real world,” the world of you and me, he never learned the lessons or the harshness of life difficult and unexpected, never suffering hunger, thirst, cold or the uncertainty of living paycheck to paycheck. He never experienced difficulty paying bills or sacrificing happiness for health.

Sequestered in the life of royalty, hidden from reality by his attending elitist prep schools, he was unable to empathize with anything other than the society he was born into. Needing the affirmative action of influence and legacy in order to attend Ivy League universities, he became a complacent and spoiled fraternity boy, growing from male cheerleader to partier extraordinaire, as always looking down upon the rest of AmericaÂ’s social classes with contempt, feeling himself superior by birth, failing to understand our ways of living life and our struggles, our needs and wants, forever devoid of a humanity and an understanding of life at the opposite end of the tracks.

Preferring to dwell in the spirits of the bottle instead of the philosophies of books, yet possessing all the resources needed by which to pursue a truly enlightened age of reason and age of discovery, he instead subsisted trailing behind his much more intelligent fatherÂ’s footsteps, living off the laurels of his parents, in time branching off on his own, though as always using the vast resources of the family, not to mention the powerful influence of his last name that instantly opens doors and transcends the inertia of business, that would be the envy of any seemingly competent entrepreneur trying to succeed in life.

Yet even with the incredible opportunities granted him throughout his life, Bush could never succeed on his own. Time after time he needed the salvation and money of his father to bail him out of the trouble that usually followed him around. With the powerful influence of Bush the Wiser, Bush the Lesser, in spite of all his shortcomings, inevitably always found partners and business opportunities. It can safely be assumed that these individuals took in the son as a favor or to gain favor with the father, always knowing how incompetent the son was yet wanting to secure friendship with a man whose influence in Washington only grew.

In time, exploiting his last name, his familyÂ’s wealth, his fatherÂ’s influence and the corruption and lack of integrity by which he has become well known today, he amassed a small fortune. Meanwhile, sinister demons lurked about, and over time, a fondness for alcohol developed, haunting him for years until he became a born again Christian, a natural result befalling truly lost souls possessing weak and vulnerable minds. It was in Scripture that he found meaning, it was in the Church structure that he found comfort, needing, like all lost souls, to find meaning to life both through control of his impulses and by placing blind faith in an unseen and unknown god.

His born again belief in the Almighty was in part a consequence of his psychologically fragile mind that had resulted after years of being unable to duplicate the success of his father, knowing that he would never surpass a legacy set in wisdom and intelligence, in better genes and talent. The deep psychological manifestation between an overachieving father and an underachieving son, so full of insecurities, an inferiority complex and internal conflict, resulted for Bush in a contempt for life only drowned either by filling the mind with alcoholic spirits and the high of drugs, or from kneeling down in subservient obedience to a metaphysical god demanding complete control and power over the individual.

One can suspect that it is this deep psychological vacuum – of a desire to be greater than his always competent father – that has driven Bush the Lesser during his presidency, trying desperately in every way possible to become a better president than his father. This quest, however, has been fruitless, resulting in even greater incompetence and in a further fogging of logic, reason, decision making and analytical thought, becoming a growing threat to the Republic, as can be clearly seen over the last five years, for Bush the Lesser is fighting a lost cause, demons that cannot be exorcised, his mental faculty never being able to reach or surpass that of Bush the Wiser.

It was this utterly weak-minded individual, bereft of inner strength and strong will, haunted by the deep insecurities of never being able to surpass the talents and abilities of his father, that would go on to become governor of Texas and later, President of the United States, once again using and exploiting his last name, not to mention the reputation of George Bush the Wiser, to carry him into power. For Bush the Lesser knew that his assets were not his mind or his talent, but something much more superficial, the legacy and reputation established by his father, the human infrastructure loyal to his father, the family wealth and the ever important Bush family name.

Even though he could not carry the weight of his father on his shoulders, Bush nonetheless exploited every mechanism established and left over by his father, knowing that if he could not surpass him, he could at least use his legacy to reach otherwise unattainable heights. Using all these weapons at his disposal, even a complete incompetent and buffoon such as Bush could achieve success. It was this infrastructure of assets established by his father that would eventually condemn America to a Pestilent Presidency and the world to an increased sense of threat and insecurity.


BushÂ’s Base


Nobody has benefited more from the tragedy of 9/11 than George W. Bush. He has exploited its emotions, its deep scars and its echoing voices from the grave. Without it he would be nothing, an insignificant one term has-been troubled by the psychological fragility his limitations engender. Yet because of his incompetence, and some would say willful negligence, AmericaÂ’s new Pearl Harbor was allowed to occur, as ever under his watch, as ever under his disastrous leadership, or lack thereof, that has followed him since birth. Because of 9/11 tens of millions have become addicted to his existence, to his smirk and his strut, mesmerized at the charade created by marketing geniuses, of a Napoleon-like being leading the herd through the forest of ghosts and goblins, with sword in hand slaying evildoer Arabs trying to destroy the sacred lands of America.

He is perceived by his base, tens of millions of individuals sharing many characteristics, composed of Christian fundamentalists, the conservative, the unenlightened, the selfish, the apathetic, the easily led, the weak-minded, the unthinking, the ignorant, those blinded by flag and cross, those more likely to hate based on race, gender and sexual preference, the xenophobic, the extreme patriotic, the war mongers, the greed addicts, the super wealthy, the corporatists, the neocons and the elite, as the father figure destiny has chosen to protect and defend them and their rights in these most “hideous times of trouble.” It is these individuals who blindly swear allegiance to a man of embarrassing ineptitude for various reasons, voting for him in droves, not wanting to listen to reason or logic even as their nation crumbles from underneath their legs and as their cherished freedoms and liberties vanish right in front of their eyes.

Even as he appeals to this collection of self-destruction and self-exploitation his interests lie in protecting, defending and expanding the powers of those like himself, namely, the elite and corporatists among his base. While courting the rest of his followers, he promises heaven and delivers hell, forever weaving and dealing and conniving in a clear pattern of deception. In Orwellian fashion, Bush uses terms for policies that signify the exact opposite of what he intends to do. He makes the unthinking in his base come to the conclusion that he has their best interests at heart.

Yet the blind and the deaf and those that cannot think for themselves fail to understand that they are but pawns in the game of power, used only for their vote, contribution and political power, never to see the benefits of what the Dear Leader preaches. In time he grants them the morsels and crumbs and bones of what is left over, enough to appease their illogical minds. These bits and pieces keep the base at ease, happy enough to chew on their given bones, content that a small sliver of what they asked for has been given them.

For years they are kept servile to the interests of BushÂ’s real base, yet they think themselves the true recipients of power. Deluded and easily manipulated, they feverishly support the myriad of policies that will, in the end, be of great detriment to their lives, wallets and future of their children. Blinded by the incapacity to understand or to read policy, knowledgeable only in the ten second sound bites shouted out, thirty second advertisements saturated with lies and the slogans written in cardboard propaganda, and possessing the attention span of a gnat, the majority of those that support Bush will invariably shoot themselves, and their children, in the foot, their lives made worse thanks to the ardent following of a man that undoubtedly sneers behind their backs, pillages their wages, robs them of jobs, increases their many expenses and sends them or their children to war. Even as they blindly follow, even as they sign loyalty pledges, Bush is working to eviscerate their country and their lives.

In reality he cares not an ounce for their plight or their lives, seeing in them only the exploited energy to be used by his corporate allies. The average American is alien to people like George W. Bush, enigmas that never encompassed the elitist lifestyle of families like the Bushes. George W. Bush only saw the masses through a looking glass, in small timeframes where by happenstance two differing social classes would meet. We were the hired help, the fish beyond the six inch compressed glass, the beings represented by television, far removed from the mansions and estates of northeastern aristocracy. To Bush the common man might be seen and touched for periods of time, but we are never understood and never seen as equals. We are the peasants to the ruling class, our lives made better if only someone like Bush would look our way.

The façade of Bush as a Texan cowboy, wearing his hat and his boots, strutting around with his cowboy demeanor, is but a clever public relations campaign designed to give Bush the appearance of normalcy. His Crawford ranch is but a hollow illusion created to make out of this pampered east coast elite a common folk that appeals to the masses. Yet most of his years were spent in Connecticut, living the life of luxury, attending institutions of prestige and landed gentry. It is this group of people that Bush represents, for they have been present throughout his bubble existence. He is them just as much as they are him. The rest of Bush’s followers lie far, far behind, walking where footprints disappear to an approaching wave, to be used and abused, like they have throughout American history, by the upper echelons of America’s hierarchy.

It is the corporate world, and the corporatists that control it, that are BushÂ’s true constituents. To this group he has been a raving success, one of the greatest presidents to ever take office. Through him they have hijacked the White House and the entire nation, transforming government into a prostitute for the corporate world. He has appointed a multitude of corporate executives, hacks, lackeys and talking heads to the middle and highest levels of governance, creating, inside Washington, a nest of corporatists gorging on a once-proud government of the People from the inside, mutating it into a breadbasket containing the tasty and succulent pastries making obese the bank accounts of both corporations and the elite. The halls of governance are littered with cronies and criminals, inept and talentless individuals whose only abilities are incompetence, donating money and smearing their noses with the fecal matter of power.

Since his anointment, Washington has become a bordello of cheap prostitutes, a red light district where government officials eagerly wait in street corners, ready to exchange money flows, anticipating unbuckling belts, bending over, spreading cheeks and selling their souls to corporate demons. The Beltway has become a city of corruption and debauchery, of greed and love of the Almighty Dollar, a perfect place for corporate interests to prevail. Laws, rules, regulations and appropriations have been written and rewritten, altered or created, amended or clandestinely introduced, the vast majority of which favor in some way, shape or form the corporate world. Science, education, reality and truth are being suppressed in order to grant favor to corporations whose profits rely on truth not being made public.

The nationÂ’s treasure has been pillaged in one of the worldÂ’s greatest heists, a highway robbery that has left the nation and its economy close to imminent collapse. Untold billions of dollars have disappeared, given to cronies or to corporatist buddies, their companies made vastly wealthy thanks to the misappropriation of a treasure earned by the blood, sweat and tears of hard working Americans. Meanwhile, Bush has orchestrated, along with the Republican Party, one of the largest tax cuts to the wealthy in our history, at the expense of the middle class, making the rich richer and the poor poorer, leaving the nation without adequate funding and severely compromising the future economic prospects of the nation.

George W. Bush has declared that he is a ‘war president’ and indeed he has become one. The only problem is that he has declared a war against the American people, along with his ill-conceived war in Iraq, in the process inflicting severe damage to both working and middle class citizens, in a preemptive strike against the very foundations of America. This war has been planned for years, becoming a platform for Republican success. By robbing the nation of its treasure, by indebting America so severely, there will come a time when we will be forced, in order to maintain economic stability, to eviscerate the many social programs that are the hallmark of American principles of justice and equality.

With a war that will cost a trillion dollars, with tax cuts for the wealthy and for the corporate world, with almost $500 billion going to the military-industrial complex yearly, the corporatists in power will declare that in order to maintain a reasonable budget, social programs such as education, healthcare, welfare assistance, work assistance and any policy to help the poor will have to be gutted. We are seeing this already. For years social services have been hated by a Republican Party that has no empathy or understanding for the plight of the less fortunate. A party ideology that believes in social Darwinism and in the power of unfettered capitalism has wanted to do away with social safety nets for decades, as usual ignorant or unconcerned to the ramifications to their actions. Bush, ever the Jesus lover and conduit of the Almighty that he is, is helping to destroy these very foundations.

Almost every law and regulation enacted benefits corporations at the expense of average Americans. Today, corporations are free to run unobstructed as they race to make as much profit as possible, caring nothing for the people they harm in the process. Corporate profits today, along with CEO salaries, have become a ridiculous display of arrogance, with some companies earning profits of $10 billion per quarter. Thanks to Bush, war has been declared against average Americans, as corporations do as they wish, lowering wages, raising prices, cutting thousands of jobs, outsourcing their employees to bottom dwelling nations, using cost cutting mechanisms to further exploit workers or compromise customers. Pensions are being cut, healthcare is ever-more expensive, prescription pills are not affordable, gasoline is as expensive as ever and all around, laws are being enacted to further the interests of the corporate world at the expense of hundreds of millions of Americans.

Is it any wonder why companies in the oil/energy, pharmaceutical and defense industries have had some of the highest profits ever recorded? When your representative lives inside the White House, when his job is to empower and enlarge corporate control over America, all the while destroying the middle class and its freedoms and liberties, making hundreds of millions of citizens slaves subservient to the corporate world, you can declare mission accomplished. This, to all who can see clearly, is the reason for BushÂ’s ascension to the highest office in the land. The most powerful man in the world has as his objective the rise to total control of the corporate world, altering the balance of power away from We the People and towards the direction of corporatist control. This is BushÂ’s true base and to them, he has been a rousing success, a truly great President.


Rise of the Dictator


Since Bush took the reigns of power, corruption has become endemic in Washington. With the love of the Almighty Dollar running rampant throughout the corridors of governance, with politics becoming more important than policy, with public relations given more precedence than truth and with charlatans, criminals and callous destroyers of human life prevalent and in control, the ingredients exist to make of Washington a putrid cocktail of immorality representing everything that is wrong with America and the rise of unfettered capitalism.

The secrecy of government has never been as noticeable as it is today. With an arrogant contempt for the PeopleÂ’s right to know that has seldom been seen in our history, the Bush administration has sequestered, hidden, whitewashed, trashed, covered up and made to disappear what it does not want known. Whistleblowers are ruined, investigations are squashed, investigators are promoted away from their investigations, reports are quieted, science is trashed and true patriots are prevented from speaking truth. Transparency and accountability have become things of the past, as the activities of the executive have vanished from the public record. They do whatever they want, trash the Constitution when they so feel, creating rules and laws beneficial to their interests, hiding their criminality behind layers of newly concocted opinions and Constitutional interpretations by their hired cronies and lackeys.

Since 9/11 Bush has eroded many civil liberties, freedoms and rights, enveloping the nation into the grip of corporatism, more commonly called fascism. Wherever Bush travels, to give a speech or a fundraiser, is turned into a police state, with so-called “free speech zones,” with mandatory “loyalty oaths” to those attending Bush’s propaganda-laced speech and with a small army of police and secret service bullying and frightening. As opposition to the Iraq war has grown, suppressions of dissent and protest has increased, with police forces becoming the brownshirts and blackshirts of the Administration, intimidating and threatening peaceful protesters. Free speech is a dying right, and inside Bush’s gatherings, where he sits comfortably in his infallible bubble, only those who agree with his policies or support him are allowed inside.

With the arrival of Bush into office thanks to his illegal anointment, the erosion of democracy since 2000 has only accelerated, with questionable election results in 2002 and once again with the presidential election of 2004, where millions of votes, it is now known, were manipulated in favor of Bush. With two stolen presidential elections, easily provable and apparent to anyone with half a brain, American democracy has ceased to exist, becoming an archaic antique in the minds of those still able to remember the last clean election. The use of electronic voting, using Republican controlled machines such as Diebold, has cast an enormous cloud over the continued vitality of American democracy. For now, with electronic voting machines becoming the rule rather than the exception, their numbers growing throughout the nation, what we once knew as democracy has died, buried six feet under the crumbling foundations of what was once America. The question, then, becomes: Why does Bush hate us for our democracy? Why does he fear the principle of one person, one vote?

He has done more damage to America in this so-called war on terror than Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, destroying our freedoms and rights, severely compromising habeas corpus and due process, allowing for arrests without probable cause, surveillance of peaceful anti-war groups and unlawful wiretapping of American citizens. He has granted the right to spy on us as well as the right to enter our homes without warrants or permission or knowledge. Our computers can be hacked, our libraries can be asked to provide private information and private companies, it is now known, are cooperating with the government, providing private information regarding the accounts of Americans. Yet he has failed to adequately protect our ports and borders, our nuclear and chemical plants. The question should now be asked: Why does Bush hate us for our rights and freedoms? Does he want to destroy our way of life?

More importantly, Bush has introduced a reign of terror and fear upon the American people. Like a darkness that does not dissipate he has imported perpetual fear, perpetual war and perpetual terror to our shores. He has become the ultimate terrorist, greater than any Arab bogeyman, greater than any ghoul or goblin lurking in our closets, much more dangerous than any Muslim. Injecting fear into our consciousness, making millions feel insecure and unprotected, making them dependent on him and on government for psychological comfort enables Bush to expand his powers and his dominion over the citizens of the nation. It is the only way he can govern, and the only way he can maintain power. Both he and 9/11 were born on the same day, creatures of symbiotic affection, one unable to survive without the other. September 11, 2001, with its memories, engendered emotions and massive exploitation, is his twin sister.

Thus he, his handlers and his marketers terrorize the American public, manipulating fears and emotions and psychological fragility, eroding our inner strength and confidence, making us willingly sacrifice our remaining freedoms and rights. Through our fear his power grows, through our trust in him our nation is destroyed more each day. Little do they care about our health, our stress and our worries, preferring to continue haunting minds rather than alleviating them. To them, 9/11 remains manna from heaven, the essence of their power, the darkness enveloping and hiding every one of their lies, deceptions and manipulations.

Fear and terror must be maintained in the national spotlight, creating a nation of bed-wetters, underwear-soilers and cry babies asking Father Bush for protection. The Dear Leader belief must be kept alive. It is this fear that sustains and feeds George W. Bush, becoming his opiate, his new drug of choice. Without it he would be finished, his popularity eviscerated, his lies exposed, his ego trampled, his purple robe burned. With it he rules like an emperor, a dictator whose arrogance to ignore checks and balances becomes ever more dangerous the longer absolute power corrupts. The fear of tens of millions of Americans allows him to lie and deceive and manipulate and whitewash and escape all accountability, granting him powers never granted an executive, making him, to millions of rabid and blind supporters, a living god.

It is the terror he exposes and markets that makes submissive to his grip millions of Americans, robbing them of free thought or reason. It is the terror that he manufacturers and exaggerates that suppresses our freedoms and rights. It is the power we cede him that grants him the ability and desire to torture, kidnap, imprison and bomb, killing over 150,000 thousand innocent Iraqis and over 2,200 American soldiers. Our fears and insecurities have allowed him to build a network of gulags around the world, beginning with the concentration camp in Guantanamo. How many people have disappeared in these prisons, never to see daylight again? How many people in Iraq have been tortured, raped and sodomized, with BushÂ’s silent consent?

It is the terror he unleashes on the Arab world that is making our lives more dangerous, increasing our insecurity and the risk of further attacks. He has contributed in mass murder and devastating destruction, maiming, injuring and causing incredible amounts of suffering. He has completely and utterly destroyed the nation of Iraq. Under international definitions of terrorism, George W. Bush is the greatest terrorist alive today.

The Jesus he claims to follow is not the Jesus that guides him as a politician. Claiming to converse with the Almighty, claiming to be a conduit of the AlmightyÂ’s path for humanity, Bush as President has acted more like the God of the Old Testament than the one of the New, unleashing death, destruction and untold suffering on hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom are the descendents of those that first concocted the myth of BushÂ’s god. He has shown no remorse, no pity, no forgiveness and no love as he has unleashed the instruments and weapons of war upon millions of innocent civilians, waging his own personal jihad against Arabs and Muslims. And people by the millions think him a Christian?

He is an amateur dictator enraptured and corrupted by absolute power, depending on the army of conditioned Americans to continue his devastation, both in the Middle East and in the United States. Nothing he has ever done has been a success, and now he is sending one more business venture, the nation called America, down the precipice of failure. Never succeeding, always failing, forever bailed out by Bush the Wiser, he has never learned what it is like to suffer hardship and pain, never experiencing hunger and struggle. He is a callous and cold-hearted individual with deep psychological problems, weak-minded in character and a bully in spirit. His arrogance and hubris will be the demise of us all. Unfortunately, his father cannot save him, or the nation, any longer. He will fail on his own, becoming a curse upon our land, a pestilence infecting our principles and our virtues, our rivers and lands, our children and future.

Nothing has gone right since the curse called Bush entered office. His is a Pestilent Presidency, a rotting manifestation of corruption and immorality, a fraud and conniver, a most unethical human being incapable of honor or integrity. When we should be running away from scum such as this we instead allow him to steal two elections and remain the pestilence that he is, creating a diseased society devoid of the freedom it once possessed and the civil rights it fought so hard to attain.

George W. Bush is a corporatist without intelligence, an unknowing, incurious, detached and ignorant human being, a puppet to much brighter individuals, a tool for the corporate world. He does not care for the unenlightened souls that see him as Dear Leader, nor the soldiers he sends to either die or sacrifice mental health. In reality, he does not care about America, at least the America of you, me and everyone else. He is changing our lands, our society, giving our government to corporations and the corporatists that run them. In time, and with reflection, after the hypnosis of this most devastating of Presidents has passed, he will be seen for what he presently is, namely, the worst person to ever occupy the White House, becoming, through infamy, the mistake that was and the lesson learned.

The Pestilent Presidency was given all the tools in life to become a success, yet throughout his life, he has failed at everything, only succeeding in politics thanks to his last name and the power of his father. Born to wealth beyond our dreams, he became not a competent and able leader, but a man devoid of talent and ability, a person squandering the opportunity given him. Wrapped inside a bubble of luxury and elitism, he failed to understand the mass of humanity, seeing it as easily exploitable, easily suppressed and easily controlled. In his upbringing can we see the destruction he has unleashed upon our nation. In his failures can we understand todayÂ’s most troubled times.

The Pestilent Presidency has been a malignant tumor to the America of you, me and everyone else. He has been a grand success to the corporate world. Who do you think he represents? Whose interests does he help further? Only when he departs and exits our lives will the curse of Bush lift from our country, dissipating like a long, permanent haze, and perhaps only then can we try and reclaim what has been lost, if it is not already too late. The ruins of what George W. Bush will leave behind after he leaves our reality will be strewn all around us, rotting and eroding, the whispers of a better America barely audible, yet its horizon ready to be radiant once again.

With him gone we will finally try to rebuild and move forward, trying to erase memories of the Pestilent Presidency from our midst, trying, desperately, to make right the direction of America, trying, as much as possible, to never again allow a pestilence to destroy what we stand for, in the process inoculating ourselves with the antidote of harsh lessons learned, finally eradicating the diseases and fears that most ail us.


Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst and Internet columnist. His articles as well as his archive can be found at his blog, http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com as well as at other alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net. Mr. Valenzuela is also author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel made available at most online book sellers.

Bush had to square the circle, so he concentrated on Hamas terrorism and its constitutional commitment to the eradication of Israel. America would not deal with the new government chosen by the Palestinian voters until it had disbanded its armed wing, given up violence and acknowledged IsraelÂ’s right to exist.

In laying down these requirements, the president demonstrated his inability to appreciate that Israel too is guilty of great violence against Palestinians and continues its program of assassinations, the latest being that of Islamic Jihad leader Nidal Abu-Saada on the very day of BushÂ’s speech. Israel has also yet to give concrete acknowledgement of the state of PalestineÂ’s right to exist, preferring instead to keep its people huddled in ghettos while Tel Aviv continues to steal their land.

The murders committed by Palestinian suicide bombers who are members of Hamas or who are not members of Hamas are no more acceptable than the murders committed by Israeli security forces. Sending Palestinians to die among innocent Israelis is a terrible act which cannot be justified but can nevertheless be explained; it is the only way that Palestinians can fight back against a clever, strong and hugely manipulative occupying power.

In voting for Hamas, Palestinians were not just rejecting what they saw as the failures of the Fatah years, they were also choosing a government which they hope will stand up more strongly to Israel and produce a just and lasting peace from a position of strength.

In his address, Bush made no attempt to analyze the motives of the majority of Palestinian electors, demonstrated no insight whatsoever into their agonies and frustrations. Instead he made it clear that though they had held a free and fair election, the Palestinians had made the wrong choice and America therefore had no intention of accepting it. Yet in the very same speech, Bush trotted out his hopes for a democratic Iran and a freely elected government with whom Washington would one day be able to work.

Now at least BushÂ’s perverse vision of the democratic process is patently clear. A democratic election must produce a government that is acceptable to the White House. Anything else will be rejected. The democratic voice of the people will be ignored unless it is singing the song that Washington wants to hear. This astounding hypocrisy undermines everything America says it is trying to achieve in the region and everything that America once stood for.

In his annual (State of the Union) address presented yesterday in the Capitol, President George W. Bush displayed the enormous political, ideological and moral erosion of his government, a lack of any accurate perceptions of reality, or new ideas to confront criticism of his domestic and foreign policies.

On the domestic front, orating from his bully-pulpit, Bush referred to "building our prosperity" which is in contrast to the brutal concentration of wealth that has taken place during his five years in power; to social programs which bear no relation to the growth of poverty in the richest country on the planet; and to his absurd tax breaks.

He received emotional applause with an offer to reform the social security system that was wrapped in charitable sentimentality. He pushed for reinforcing the borders; and he advocated improving education with an educational system on its knees because of budgetary cutbacks, and plagued with anti-science superstition, sometimes coming from Bush himself.

To the rest of the world, the President offered more of the same: the reinforcement of American "Planetary Leadership," a leadership which hasn't diminished under his management; and the promotion of "liberty" and "democracy" in accordance with the perfectly well-known reality of what these words mean in the superpower's traditional foreign policies: the submission and obedience of other governments to Washington.

The leader remained faithful to his personal obsessions on the theme of "international terrorism," and he added a note of urgency toward the current offensive against Iran, because of the nuclear activities which the government of Tehran is developing.

Much more significant of the true "State of the Union" is what Bush did not say in his speech: the rise of authoritarianism, the diminishment of liberties and fundamental rights, the systematic use of torture, the rejection of democratic processes which are not to the liking of Washington, the scandalous and widespread corruption within the government and similarly in private enterprise, the criminal laziness of the federal authorities in facing the disaster of New Orleans, the deterioration of White House influence in South America, the (to date) $200 billion spent on the military adventure in Iraq, the almost 19,000 American casualties in that country (counting the dead and the wounded) and the tens of millions of dollars pilfered or stolen within the context of "reconstruction" in that unfortunate Arabian country. September 11, 2001 continues to be, at this point, the principle grounds and justification (and practically the only foreign policy) of the superpower; for these reasons the Commander-in-Chief called on Congress to ratify the Patriot Act, the tool of a regime exceptionally lacking in proposals.

The abyss between what Bush says and real life is so extensive, that it is opportune to apply a metaphor popular in Mexico to illustrate the tremendous gulf between official statements and reality. Bush has constructed a country that doesn't exist except in his speeches. His verbal concoction could well be called "Bushlandia," a psychological territory in which the occupant of the White House can take refuge and forget his distressing political situation, which is characterized by the fall in his approval ratings, public disapproval of his management, the outbreak of corruption scandals within his government and within his partisan surroundings, by the evidence that Washington cannot win the war which he unleashed in Iraq, by the astronomical and historical fiscal deficit, and by the unjustifiable growth of poverty and inequality within the world's largest economy.

Finally, the gap between Bush's speech and American realities has a worrisome similarity to that of the growing social unrest and the ease with which the political class in Washington, upon hearing the patriotic exhortations and sentiments from the Executive, enters into a type of hypnotic trance. And it is just that proof of their willingness to continue to live in Bushlandia, which the complacent audience in the Capitol gave yesterday.

Discussing ethics in science and medicine, Bush asked legislators in a packed House chamber to help him protect our society from these dreaded man-beasts:

"Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos. Human life is a gift from our creator, and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale".

And there you have it. The president once again rushing to protect us from the enemy. And if he also wants to bypass Congress and the courts and start bugging all the lab phones in this country, I say go for it. Look, I've never seen Sasquatch up close and personal, but I've watched countless documentaries featuring those who have. It's a horror they'll never forget. So let me tell you, I never want to encounter one of these nightmarish man-beasts the president warns of. President Bush, I implore you. Please continue to do everything in your power to make America's men, women and children safe from human-animal hybrids. America, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Democrats are trying to capitalize at the ballot box this year on uncertainty about Bush's leadership and about ethics scandals in Congress [but lacking both a spine and ethics, they failed].

Bush said he is leading a strong nation that is protecting itself and spreading freedom [by arresting Cindy Sheehan and "spreading" her outside the Capitol building]. He said the economy is "roaring," [like an out-of-control wild fire] despite concerns that people have after being forced to change [high paying] jobs [with good benefits] in the face of competition from China, India and elsewhere [and work without benefits for minimum wage at Wal Mart all the while paying significantly more for a roof over their head].

"My worry is that people see that uncertainty and decide to adopt isolationist policies or protectionist policies [because my rich cronies would never be able to make any money in that kind of environment]," Bush said. "In other words, in uncertain times it's easy for people to lose confidence in the capacity of this country to lead and to shape our future [because in uncertain times that confidence seems all the more misplaced]."

Bush said America's challenge is to stay ahead of competition without withdrawing from the world. He planned to expand his thoughts [to a second thought] on the issue in a tour to Minnesota, New Mexico and Texas on Thursday and Friday.

Bush's laid out his entire agenda in the 57-minute speech, going even beyond his State of the Union address. He touched on everything from war and education to technology in the automobile industry and medical malpractice suits.

The friendly audience [nobody was wearing T-shirts with uncomfortable messages] at the packed Grand Ole Opry House frequently interrupted the president with applause and laughter. Among the crowd were several country music stars, including Barbara Mandrell, Larry Gatlin, Lee Greenwood, Lorrie Morgan and the Oak Ridge Boys. [Boycott their music.]

Bush joked that he should have given the State of the Union at the hall. "How cool would it be to give a State of the Union address in a Porter Wagoner outfit?" he said, referencing the flashy singer who frequently played host on the stage.

Outside, more than 100 protesters held up their own signs that said "No Confidence" and "No warrant, no wiretap, no W." [but were safely sequestered in an out-of-the-way "free speech" area] That [last sign] was a reference to Bush's much-debated secret [illegal] program of eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails in an attempt to sniff out terrorist plots [that he helps create], which he vigorously defended in his State of the Union address and inside the concert hall.

"Let me put it to you in Texan: If al-Qaida is calling into the United States, we want to know, [because somebody needs to call me to the phone]" Bush said.

As of today, the 17 total co-sponsors of H. Res 635 are Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA), Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN), Rep. Major Owens (D-NY), Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ), Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Rep. Fortney Pete Stark (D-CA), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA).

As reported yesterday, US Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) withdrew her name, whereas she was listed as a cosponsor throughout January 2006, citing a clerical error for her name having been listed in the first place. LofgrenÂ’s Office told Atlanta Progressive News the Representative learned of her being listed as a co-sponsor after an article by APN issued January 01, 2006.

Meanwhile, US Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) said he would support impeaching Bush over the issue of domestic wiretapping in late December 2005. At the same time, US Reps. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and Bobby Rush (D-IL) have called for Bush to step down by signing on to a "World CanÂ’t Wait" statement issued to Atlanta Progressive News.

"The most basic foundations of our democracy are set forth in our nation's Constitution. For more than two centuries, people around the world have looked to our nation and our Constitution as a beacon of freedom and a model for the world to follow," US Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) told John Nichols of The Capital Times Newspaper (Madison, WI), of her support of H. Res 635.

"The founders of our nation were clear that the most important role of the president is to '... preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.' President Bush has twice taken this oath of office. In the past several years, numerous questions have been raised about President Bush's conduct in relation to some of the most basic elements of our democracy: respect for the rule of law, the principle of checks and balances, and the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights," Baldwin told The Capital Times.

The thing about H. Res. 635 is, it deals with impeaching Bush over a cluster of issues from misleading the public to go to war, to authorizing torture. Wiretapping was not listed as one of the reasons to investigate the grounds for BushÂ’s impeachment in the bill because the existence of the secret, illegal wiretapping had not come to light yet when the bill was being prepared.

Some Members of Congress such as US Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) appear to see firmer grounds for impeaching Bush over his controversial authorization of illegal wiretapping on Americans, than for the reasons cited in H. Res. 635. Mr. Lewis told a radio station in December he would support impeachment over wiretapping.

It is unclear at this point whether Conyers or another member of Congress is prepared to introduce a new bill which would deal specifically with impeaching Bush over wiretapping.

Meanwhile, the first professional poll commissioned by a progressive news agency found that 54% of all 850 Pennsylvanian respondents supported impeachment of President Bush if his authorization of domestic wiretapping is concluded to be illegal. The poll was conducted by Zobgy International and was commissioned by Rob Kall, Editor of OpEdNews.

US Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) asked four legal scholars to analyze the grounds for BushÂ’s impeachment in December 2005. Perhaps these scholarsÂ’ opinions, in conjunction with US Senate hearings to commence next week, will allow for the spyingÂ’s legality or illegality to be concluded with more certainty.

The text of H. Res 635 is as follows:

H. Res 635 reads as its official title: "Creating a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment."

"In brief, we have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice-President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration. There is at least a prima facie case that these actions that federal laws have been violated – from false statements to Congress to retaliating against Administration critics," Rep. Conyers said in a press release on 12/20/05.

Matthew Cardinale is the Editor of Atlanta Progressive News. He may be reached at matthew@atlantaprogressivenews.com