Clash of Two Worlds and Bush Loses.

Clash of Two Worlds and Bush Loses.
Paschal Baute, August 18, 2005

A remarkable drama is happening deep in the heart of Texas on the doorstep of Mr. Bush’s ranch, where he has been made a prisoner by a grieving mother and his own disconnect.

Political drama. A mother who lost her son in Iraq wants an interview. The President rides his bike around joking, Our military is subject to horrendous attacks daily, with loss of life and grave wounds, and our President calls their sacrifice a “noble cause” while vacationing for five weeks.

It is a wondrous spectacle: If Bush meets with her, she wins. If he refuses to meet with her, she wins. If he returns early to the White House where he should be, figuring out how to get us out of this quagmire, she wins.

Furthermore, as long as she stays her ground, she is paralyzing and infuriating the political right and all the pro-war quasi-patriots into revealing their basic hate and venom. Epitomized by Limbaugh and O’Reilly. This negativity is more likely to turn off than turn on the undecided and the wavering. She wins here also.

In addition, Cindy Sheehan is facing all of America with the injustice of this war when most of us prefer not to think about it at all. In particular, she is a symbol of the downside devastation for many in denial (the majority of media and the American people) as well as those who prefer to think in black and white, either-or, good or bad categories. We are being confronted with a moral choice. How can we justify continuing to lose our men when the war is going so badly and so little hope for anything different? Her witness is confronting us all.

Finally, Mother Cindy is a clear and stark contrast to the refusal of this President to be honest with the American people. Her stark sacrifice confronts his unwillingness to call for sacrifice and even his dishonesty with himself. She wins the shoot-out with a man who now seems more disconnected and cowardly by the day.

If this stand up pretentious man does meet with her, Cindy Sheehan will win for sure because he lives inside his own world where he has been screened from reality for five years. He is incapable of unrehearsed vulnerability and of doing much of anything without a script. He hates the media and has given fewer press conferences than any President in fifty years.

My assessment of the man is that there would sooner or later be some occasion that would reveal his character flaw. I believe this to be his pretentiousness and shallowness. I have no other way to understand the vast control, deceit, manipulation of the American people and the media that we have witnessed. This is the most power hungry and secretive Administration my six decades have ever seen (I do not admit to seven plus) When one examines the entire picture, the Bushies make the misbehavior of Nixon and Clinton look like kinder-garten high jinks.

This single determined Gold Star mom has become the President’s nemesis and his character revealing moment and the potential awakening of our people.

What is really weird is how my conservative friends and relatives prefer to live inside their own worlds and overlook the immoral relativism of the Bush White House. They refuse to see what this man is doing to our country by his lack of leadership on many issues, undermining our economic future by lack of fiscal accountability, while destroying our nation as the beacon of human rights and freedom in the world. For the supposedly morally superior tribe among us, this is to me really weird.

His policies have enraged and aroused Muslim radicals around the world, and we, already with great loss of life and limb in Iraq, are now more subject to terror than ever before. Safer? Hah!

The terrible tragedy of 9/11 has been used for right wing imperial purposes to line the pockets of Republican corporate friends. It has been “damn those who differ and full speed ahead. We shall do what we damn well please as long as we can get away with it.”

There is the strong suspicion of treasonable behavior if we ever wake up to it. God bless Cindy Sheehan. We may be seeing the defining moment of the Bush Presidency. The drama is delicious. She is helping us understand what a closed, shallow and pretentious man we have in the White House.

Paschal Baute
tel (859) 293-5302