Lucky Bastard

By: William Rivers Pitt

"Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others."

- Ambrose Bierce

The attacks of September 11th wrought a profound spiritual and psychological transformation upon the citizens of the United States of America. In the vernacular of the media, everything changed. We became aware of our vulnerabilities, and were faced with the dismal fact that the comfortable reality we had grown used to had been shattered forever.

Fights with loved ones became more stressful; we had to make up and say everything that needed to be said, because we no longer knew if we would meet again after that person went to work. Airplanes became fearful symbols as they cut contrails across the sky, and ambulance sirens were harbingers of disaster. The mail was dangerous. Arab-Americans were potentially lethal, and even the most kind-hearted found themselves profiling total strangers they saw on the street.

There are not enough hours in any lifetime to list all the ways American life has changed, but the simple fact of those changes stares back at you from your bathroom mirror every morning. You are a different person, and so am I. Your soul is different. Your nation is different.

There is one person in America who is not different, who has not changed, whose priorities are exactly the same as they were on September 10th, 2001. His name is George W. Bush.

For example, when White House budget director Mitch Daniels came to Bush recently and informed him that America was in a recession, that the government was diving back into deficit spending that would amount to approximately $100 billion by 2005, and that Social Security would have to be tapped to cover the shortfall, Bush responded thusly:

This comment refers to his statement, made during the campaign of 2000, that he would not tap the Social Security fund until the advent of war, recession or national emergency. September 11th has come to embody all three, and Bush feels lucky to have it, apparently. The attack covers up the fact that he would have had to tap that fund to pay for his ruinous tax cut. He has avoided facing the truth of a broken vow.

More than that, it reveals the fact that September 11th has changed Bush not at all. He is still the maladroit, inappropriate corporate profiteer he was in August.

"Lucky me", says Bush, in the face of a horrendous torrent of woe that will sweep across all but the most fortunate and fortune-fattened few. Americans live in terror today, both of their lives and of their jobs - not to mention those Americans who live in terror for the lives of their loved ones serving in Afghanistan - and George W. Bush is feeling lucky.

This is our war leader. This is the man who is supposed to be the penultimate representative of the people. There he sits, feeling lucky that his mistakes are covered by the death of thousands. Are you feeling lucky to have him where he is?

Let us review a list of all the benefits George W. Bush has garnered since the September 11th attack:

1. His odious fiscal mismanagement has been all but forgotten. Before September 11th, Bush was discovering himself to be in the unenviable position that Yasser Arafat finds himself in today. Arafat has been trying to balance himself between those who wish to make peace with Israel (the moderates) and those who wish to drive the Jews into the sea (the hardliners). Such a balance is doomed to fail, because both sides cannot be appeased at the same time.
   
   Bush was attempting much the same trapeze act on September 10th, between the moderate majority and the hard Right constituency to whom he owed his success, with the same dearth of success. This was becoming more and more obvious as the recession numbers rolled in after his ruinous corporate/rich people tax cut was passed. The recession we are now buried in began in March, roundabout the same time the Clinton budget surplus was gutted by that very tax cut. Things started to slide, and Bush's mismanagement became manifest. He had no answers and the wolves were circling. Now, that truth is gone.
   
   
2. Along the same vein, the fact that his tax cut basically kick-started this recession has been forgotten completely. America is so traumatized by September 11th that they have rallied behind Bush in an unprecedented fashion, giving him a 90% approval rating. The American people are nothing if not loyal in times of crisis, which essentially means that a ham sandwich would get a 90% approval rating if it were put in charge of this mess, and was made to look as if it were doing something.
   
   That 90% rating means Bush can blame this recession on the terrorists, and no one will call him on it, even though he is only half-right in that statement. Anyone who dares to do so will be labeled treasonous and smashed.
   
   
3. He can bury the shameful legacy of Ronald Reagan and his own father. Short of Nixon's crew, no more criminal and murderous a mob has ever occupied the White House than those who came in under the Reagan/Bush flag. Many of those players are working for George Jr. today. The wretched truth of their legacy was set to be exposed some weeks ago with the release of the Reagan Papers, but Bush put that on hold with an absurdly over-reaching Executive Order that buried them forever. The 'War on Terra' has made this possible - no one in the media is paying attention to his actions, and it will be forgotten...
   
   ...or maybe not. An organization called Public Citizen has sued Bush over his actions in regards to these papers. Interesting.
   
   
4. In the long term, Bush has erased the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by eviscerating the budget with his tax cut, thereby denying funds to social programs the Republicans have long desired to destroy. The September 11th attack has also erased this history, and given him further justification to loot the Treasury to give money to corporations operating safely in the black while the unemployed are sent to go pound sand.
   
   
5. Perhaps most importantly, Bush has managed to dramatically expand the powers of the same Federal government he and his Republicans have spent so many years denigrating. Those powers now have mastery over citizens' rights as described in the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 13th Amendments to the Constitution - those pesky parts about freedom of speech, zealous representation by counsel, security in person, home and thought, and the importance of avoiding cruel and unusual punishments.
   
   This trick has been accomplished with nary a cry of hypocrisy, and very little complaint from a cowed American populace. The early draft of the ruinous PATRIOT Anti-Terrorism Bill had a line item rescinding the right of habeas corpus, something that has not happened since the Civil War. As DU poster Warren Pease so eloquently put it, this is happening "as John Ashcroft rubs his hands in glee and imagines a new American Inquisition designed to resolve the secular humanist question once and for all".
   
   

Big, Intrusive Government is suddenly a good thing, it seems. Lucky for Mr. Bush this is so. If not, people might not be so afraid to challenge the death of the American Dream he so completely represents.

If you are American and you have a soul, September 11th changed you. It altered your priorities, it rearranged the way you look at the world. Not so for Mr. Bush. His agenda remains exactly the same as it was the day he took office, and damn the brave new world. Kill the social programs, give as much as possible to corporations, and hide the stained history that lifted him on high. He is lucky indeed.

His luck is our misfortune. His 'trifecta' is our unemployment, our bread line, our war, our fear, our spiritual and psychological crisis. His luck is the target on our foreheads, bracketed and braced by terrorists who carry the death wind on their wings. His fortune is our ruin.

Lucky us.