The Bush League, "Wag the Dog" Government

January 9, 2006:

Wow - yesterday, one of my tertulia at the Half-Price Bookstore in Corpus handed me an old movie, "Wag the Dog." Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Anne Heche. It's what's actually happening in the U.S., and should be required viewing in every educational establishment in the country, including the family home. Many years ago, I heard a policy wonk from the Fletcher School of Diplomacy speak at a conference at the University of Colorado. He recommended and argued that the U.S. Government begin to "using state of the art propaganda and behavior-altering science and methodology propagated and disseminated by modern broadcast media to "deceive, confuse, and bewilder" the public as a means to maintain law and order superior to law enforcement and police departments. The movie written by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet (I wonder if they were at CU that day?), and directed by Barry Levinson portrays a White House doing just that.

Mamet, by the way is also quoted in my book, "Letters to Aaron, the Hal Luebbert Story."

The President, it seems, has gotten himself in a bind having to do with sexual misconduct and a few days before election day. White House Aide Anne Heche sends for His Majesty the President's spin doctor, Robert DeNiro. The latter, having decided it will take at least a war to distract the public's children-like attention, hires top Hollywood movie producer Dustin Hoffman to create it. Anyone who has watched a media feeding frenzy like, for instance, the Natalee Holloway Affair will recognize the tactic immediately. Anyone who has been reading my "blogs" here will have thought that I, too, had seen the movie. Nope, I lived it - have since 1977.

It will be interesting to see how the White House and Congress' spin doctors handle the latest orgy of corporate incest from Prostitution on the Potomac. We've already got the war, of course, but the public's attention has long since shifted to things like the pizza and beer, redneck rodeo more commonly known as bowl games. The Stupor Bowl is yet to come, and guys doing celebratory bumps and grinds - or whatever moron maneuver the scorer can devise - are of far more interest than the latest real heroics and death toll from Iraq and Afghanistan. It's enough to make you puke. The bowl hype will have to be something to cover the stupefying stench - hard on the heels of the revelation that the White House had violated the Constitution it is sworn to uphold - resulted from the latest revelations of what has now become traditional Congressional behavior.

On the other hand, maybe they won't bother. The public's consciousness, having been subjected now for decades to the "Wag the Dog" behavioral science and techniques the Fletcher policy wonk expounded on all those years ago in Colorado, is so far removed now from reality that no similar propagandist prestidigitation may be necessary. No one observing the success and aftermath of the Bush Administration's bunco game having to do with Iraq and Afghanistan can expect this latest evidence of government gone mad to stir significant outcry. I think we're past that. No nation able to watch as stolidly and stupidly what happened in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita has the character remaining necessary to save itself from what must now occur. Thousands of lives lost, to war born of corrupted hubris and greed or to indifferent malfeasance and neglect in the aftermath of natural disaster, don't mean that much to a nation of individuals intent only upon gluttony, concupiscence, and self-interest. Their government of representatives is indeed representative of its constituency. The corrupt have elevated the most corrupt among them to the most corrupt places. What would you expect?

What can the rest do? Nothing, I'm afraid. Do you really think people absolutely corrupt will heal themselves? "You cannot show me," Patrick Henry observed, "a single instance in all of human history wherein the powerful have voluntarily relinquished power." Neither can anyone find anywhere in history wherein the corrupt have voluntarily surrendered their corruption.

There is, of course, one way for those who would help and addict free himself of his addiction. That is to take away from him the source of his addiction. The results of that, of course, are well known. "Withdrawal," it's called. It's also called "rebellion," because it is against the law to withhold from the patient the source of his insane corruption. That, you see, is tax money. Still, there are no other choices. The tail is wagging the dog. That's it. Fish or cut bait. We go back to what made us great in the first place, or we cease to be much of anything. Two thousand and six may very well be the year that decides it for the Home of the Brave.

We can't go on like this - the rest of the world won't let us, for one thing.

Meanwhile, the comedy about "truth, justice and other special effects" goes on unabated. Enjoy - while you can.

January 10, 2006:
The nation continues its dive toward crush depth in the oceans of virtual reality made of rhetoric made, in turn, in Washington, D.C. Desperate to cover its rape of the nation's female icon, the Lady Liberty, the White House has mounted, and goes on mounting, an assault on truth that makes the Normandy Invasions look like "rub a dub-dub, three men in a tub" by comparison. Lest anyone mistake how seriously the White House really takes what their tactics require making of the rape a mere peccadillo and nuisance, they've pulled all the stops. From smoke and mirrors by the media, to fustian, even if specious, pronouncements by prostituted legal scholars, to lugubriously ludicrous protests like that of FoxNews' Stuart Varney ("They've insulted my president"), the Bush League has gone "Wag the Dog" strategists DeNiro, Hoffman, and Heche one or two - or three - better. No device in the propagandists repertory is being left out. In my sixty-odd years of listening and watching the news, I've never seen anything remotely like it.

Reason? Well, for one, if there is - has ever been - a more classic example of cause for impeachment of a president, this is it. Having sworn to "preserve, protect, and defend," the guard has not just abandoned his post, he has upon being caught in the act repudiated the contract he made with the owners of the object he was to guard. How much more derelict can you be?

Ah, but that's not all. Hard on the heels of having been caught lying in order to send our nation and its military to utterly pointless war, the president guard wants not only to keep the consideration offered him for standing guard, he now wants to alter the deal he's repudiated - to do, in other words, as he damned-well pleases. That, folks, can be described by only one word: chutzpah. You doubt that George W. Bush thinks he's a king?

Only the arguments made by his sycophants rival the colossal temerity of the man. Realizing that what follows can only be a tiny précis of the veritable blizzard of falsehood blowing from the White House, listen!

"It's not a big deal - the president only bugged e-mails, and those of suspected al Qa'ida operatives." Well, then - how the hell did I get on the list?! I, and several friends, both found the federal "data miner" on my computer, we were able to demonstrate to several perfect stranger - that's utterly disinterested and impartial - witnesses the fact. I not only have no ties with any member of al Qa'ida (I detest the son-of-a-bitches), I have no ties with any Muslim or Arab. I have no ties with anyone from a foreign country, as a matter of fact. By now well-known to be a hermit loner, I have few ties with ANYBODY!

But, in contrast to the gossamer-thin depth of analysis cynically bloviated to the public by the Uriah Heep media, let's have a more penetrating look. We're asked to believe that big-time, fervent as jihaddists are commandos would put plan of attack operation details on the Internet. I'm not only going to risk capture and torture (we've publicized our intent to do just that - remember?), but failing Allah and losing my place in heaven with its seventy-two virgins, to say nothing of disappointing and dishonoring myself before my country, my race, and my family while smuggling a nuke or the like into a major city, and I put everything I plan out on the World Wide Web. YOU BELIEVE THAT?

Well, you might - you believed that World Trade Center, 9-11 fairy tale, too.
Bullshit. So what was - is - Bush REALLY up to? You could start with something simple, and much more characteristic. One of the first things a fed does with anything he gets his hands on that he can sell is SELL it. One of my first successes during the time I did electronic surveillance and convert intelligence operations against the government was the revelation that IRS was selling the taxpayers' records to the highest bidder. It was the beginning and earliest example of what was to become the now infamous "data mining" that infects the Internet. IRS sold thousands of records - that's identities, in case federal MKULTRA brain-washing has made you dead between the ears - to everyone willing to pay. That one even made the papers, briefly - just enough to create the now classic feat of legerdemain known as "damage control."

That's at least part of it, however small. No federal functionary sneak will have been able to resist the chance for a little quick profit, however earth-shaking the real reason for the burglaries (that's what this really is, you know) might have been, or is. I think tactically, though. I put little credence in "leaks" like this one. Come on. The White House couldn't keep something like this secret? Are you kidding? Maybe you should see that movie ("Wag the Dog," in case you've forgotten) again. And let me remind you of something another president once said, FDR. "If it happened in Washington, you can bet it was planned."

The White House - meaning the military industrial complex who owns the place lock, stock, and barrel - knew, and knows damned well that the cesspool of the corrupt we call Congress hasn't anything like the character - that's balls - it would take to impeach him. For Christ's sake, he lied - not once, but literally dozens of times over months - in order to send more than 15,000 of our troops to be maimed for life, and almost 2,200 to die and got away with it. You think he thought he'd get axed for THIS?

So what is he really up to? Well, "where the carcass is, there are the eagles." The NSA, and George, of course, gets the names of several thousand - judging from the fact that I seem to have been a "suspect," probably TENS of thousands - of "suspected" terrorist commandos. That would justify - to people so stupid they still believe that technology long since able to read a license plate from outer space couldn't find a chemical weapons or guided missile factories in Iraq - both years of dithering (remind yourself of New Orleans, Katrina and Rita) and f------ up. You could easily have another World Trade Center Attack; and explain why that wonderful Homeland Security dog didn't bark, too.

Or, you might use the tens of thousands of supposed new threats to justify another round of what would otherwise be staggering industrial military spending. A "Star Wars" defense able to intercept a gnat with a suitcase nuke (85-90 lbs - hey, in Washington, one fantasy spawns another; "No problem," as Dustin Hoffman's character kept saying) on its back. Bug every telephone and computer six times, with twelve back-ups. A million more federal cops. Two million more in the military. A draft. Raise taxes. SPARE NO EXPENSE - THIS IS NATIONAL SECURITY!

Damn right. All kinds of things are possible. Suppose they claim that one of the Internet intercepts has disclosed a plan to smuggle in vials of anthrax in a woman's vagina. Sure. Now we have to search them all. No time for all those warrants, either. Any babe unwilling to lie down and spread 'em is un-patriotic. A traitor. They oughta be jailed. Shot. Damned right!

Hell, for that matter, make it nukes in the vaginas; with this Texas Liar's Contest going on as it is, and the credibility of the public what it is, who can put a limit on what we might hear? Besides, that last one's about the only way they can top what we've already been told.

Whatever. If there's one thing I know, learned, from having been the object and victim of wholesale federal rights violation, and from having listened at the federal keyhole for decades, it's that they never tell it like it is. NEVER! Even when the truth would serve their purposes, there's always ANOTHER purpose they want to further even more. These are capitalists, you know - NO amount of money and power is enough.

Why did they leak the Fourth Amendment violation? Why now (again)? They've been doing that for forty years. They're up to something. Best bet? A probing attack. Washington, and the military industrial complex that owns it in plain sight, may have the final coup d'etat in mind. We may be about to see a reprise of the coup once plotted and launched from Jekyll Island, the one that turned billions of indebtedness for the nation's bankers into control of the nation's money. Now controlling completely their military industrial complex avatar, the bankers who also own completely the United States (the latter unable even to pay any longer the interest on the debt owed the former) may intend total takeover, and end to having to pretend democracy any longer. Their centuries-long dream of "new world order" will have been furthered mightily. On, by god, to subjugation of the planet! Our (manifest) destiny!

For anyone who has studied in detail events since the turn of the Twentieth Century, and especially those since World War Two, no doubt is possible about the direction we are tending. Everything must be at least considered as a factor in that equation. In this instance, it all fits. Must be. Let's see what happens.

For some of us, caught in the Land of the Fee with no way out, that's all that can be done. It's not, after all, a free country - not any more.