← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 13998 | Posts: 8 | Started: 2004-06-01
2004-06-01 16:47 | User Profile
[B] The King’s English [/B]
May 18, 2004
[COLOR=DarkRed][FONT=Book Antiqua]All the recent bad news from Iraq may distract us from the good news. Despite the mounting casualty toll that gets so much attention, it’s important to keep our heads and remember that we haven’t lost a single neoconservative.
The indispensable men who provided the brainpower for this war have, so far, escaped entirely unscathed and may live to plan another war. In fact, not content to rest on their laurels, they are already planning one or two, with Syria and Iran. Cynics may argue that you can only build so many democracies at a time, but that won’t stop these dauntless idealists.
Their brains are badly needed in the cause of freedom, because, frankly, the ÃÅbergoy, President George W. Bush, doesn’t have any. His father, Aitch Dubya, wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but no mere genetic explanation can explain the son, who appears to be a mutant. His mother, Barbara Bush, can hardly have known she was conceiving a future president of the Republic and was probably hoping for just a normal, healthy child. Look what she got.
Dumb? George Dubya is barely photosensitive. His conservative admirers, who hang on his every grunt, would have us believe that, though he isn’t exactly eloquent, he harbors deep Burkean reserves of implicit wisdom and an unsophisticated but basically sound “moral clarity” that are denied to glib liberal intellectuals. That must be why he’s adding trillions to the national debt. How on earth did he get through two Ivy League universities? Did Ted Kennedy take his tests for him?
The brilliant success of the Iraq war suggests that Bush’s lack of superficial polish is by no means compensated for by a superabundance of common sense. He has turned the world’s only remaining superpower into a global superpariah.
Like rap music, Bush is an alarming sign of America’s cultural decline. When the president of France and the king of Jordan speak better English than the successor of Jefferson and Lincoln, something has gone wrong. It’s not just that he has trouble with big, fancy words; he even misuses prepositions like to and for. At his most recent press conference, the reporters could have gotten more thoughtful answers from a Magic Eight-Ball.
Yet, in some dim way, Bush seems to sense that his grand project of democratizing the globe is already an irretrievable failure. When he defends his policies, he speaks obsessively of his “beliefs” and “convictions,” as if he should be judged by his good intentions, not his objective impact on the real world. Disowning the actual results may be a step toward cutting his losses.
On top of his other intellectual and verbal shortcomings, Bush is staggeringly naive. He was so preoccupied with justifying “preemptive” war that he failed to foresee the sort of things that always go wrong in wartime, no matter what the moral pretexts under which it begins. Apart from the well-known tendency of conquerors to torture their captives, such things as the Abu Ghraib horrors are harder than ever to conceal when they occur. Bush has been caught flat-footed by the revelation that our occupation forces aren’t endearing themselves to the Arab world they are supposed to be liberating.
Once upon a time, “Yanqui, go home!” seemed to be a sectarian slogan of Latin American Marxist students. It turns out it can be translated into Arabic and other languages without loss. Even foreign politicians who have supported Bush are in trouble, while his approval ratings plunge at home. He has reduced American diplomacy to rubble.
The idea of conservatism is to conserve. Bush’s faith is in force, which only destroys. Oddly enough, Colin Powell, the most liberal member of his inner circle, seems to be the only one who grasps this simple distinction. But in an administration badly in need of adult supervision, one Powell isn’t nearly enough.
What’s amazing, and appalling, is that so many traditional conservatives, not just the neocons, are still groveling before Bush, who has not only abandoned but flagrantly violated their once-sacred principles of limited government and prudence. It will be a tragedy for conservatism if it comes to be identified with a president who is a deadly enemy of nearly everything conservatives used to espouse. [/FONT] [/COLOR] Joseph Sobran
2004-06-01 17:09 | User Profile
Wow, Joe's really got the knives out! Allow me to call attention to a couple of particularly amusing bits.
[QUOTE=il ragno][color=DarkRed][font=Book Antiqua] Their brains are badly needed in the cause of freedom, because, frankly, the[u] ÃÅbergoy[/u], President George W. Bush, doesnââ¬â¢t have any.
Dumb? George Dubya is barely photosensitive.
Like rap music, Bush is an alarming sign of Americaââ¬â¢s cultural decline. When the president of France and the king of Jordan speak better English than the successor of Jefferson and Lincoln, something has gone wrong. Itââ¬â¢s not just that he has trouble with big, fancy words; he even misuses prepositions like to and for. At his most recent press conference, the reporters could have gotten more thoughtful answers from a Magic Eight-Ball. [/font][/color] Joseph Sobran[/QUOTE] Ouch! Nice article.
2004-06-01 19:22 | User Profile
I've been wondering why Sobran was holding back on his Bush bashing. Glad he is letting loose.
My understanding is that Bush never made any money on his life except for the baseball team, on which he was a figurehead. Everything else he's done has tanked, and he's gotten out only by being bailed out by his father's buddies.
Any quarrel with that account?
2004-06-01 21:57 | User Profile
"ÃÅbergoy"! That's awesome. :thumbsup:
2004-06-01 22:26 | User Profile
My own favorite:
[QUOTE]....no mere genetic explanation can explain the son, [B]who appears to be a mutant[/B]. His mother, Barbara Bush, can hardly have known she was conceiving a future president of the Republic and was probably hoping for just a normal, healthy child. [B]Look what she got[/B]. [/QUOTE]
Not since the last time I ate Mexican food has such a [I]hellacious [/I] dump been taken.
2004-06-02 00:21 | User Profile
Yeah, the whole article is really deliciously brutal. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
2004-06-03 21:45 | User Profile
Is Sobran still syndicated in any secular newspaper, or is he confined to the web?
2004-06-11 14:53 | User Profile
I note a lot of agreement among posters as concerns "Ubergoy", which makes me wonder; for whom will you vote in November? Is Kerry better?