An Open Appeal to President Bush: Less than Eight Months to Avoid a Legacy of Infamy

From History of the Present:

News flash: President Bush is surprised at the tone of Scott McClellan's book! What a surprise this is (not!)--

Last August, in my open letter to President Bush on this blog, I appealed to President Bush to come clean with the American people, and to begin to correct the harm he has done. I appealed to him to turn to the truth and dramatically change his policies on war and global warming to do whatever he could to save some shred of a positive legacy for himself and his administration. But true to form he has utterly refused to change course, or to admit the terrible harm his administration has done to this country and the world.

Instead, President Bush has continued to insist on the same old policies and approach, in ways that have confirmed his intention, seemingly, to become the worst President in the history of the United States.

So be it. And now the truth is already, even before the end of his administration, beginning to reveal itself--from sources within the administration now rebelling against the ways they were used to disseminate lies and betray the American people.

Finally the real bottom-line of the Bush administration--which we have long suspected, and have been catching glimpses of from other sources--is beginning to be revealed. A few of those like Scott McClellan, formerly inside the administration, have finally realized they have more to lose by going down in infamy with the Bush administration, than by fessing up to all the ways they allowed themselves to be used to lie to the American people while they played their infamous parts in the administration.

While we cannot forgive McClellan's failure to speak truth to power in a more timely way that would have allowed us to unmask the workings of the administration in time to prevent it from doing some of the harm it has done over the last several years, we can certainly commend him and all like him who realize it is NOW in their interest and the interests of the American people to cut their losses and speak the truth about what they have been part of.

For history will remember, and will convict--even if the law does not--all those who have been willing parts of the conspiracy of silence that allowed this administration to perpetrate its offenses against the constitutional rights of all Americans, while bringing shame and condemnation upon this entire nation in the eyes of the rest of the world.

THE LEAST that all who were part of this administration can now do is to imitate Scott McClellan, and confess what they know about what really happened so that we all can learn the truth about this administration as quickly as possible, and begin to turn to the work of correcting the great harm done to the Constitution, this Nation, and the world, before it is too late.

So we now call on all who have been part of this Administration, to follow the brave example of Scott McClellan, and to come clean on all the ways this administration has manipulated reality through propaganda and worse, to achieve its ends of power--by treating the American people as if we were the enemy that needed to be manipulated into allowing the administration to act out its war on the world.

Since Bush is now making broad comparisons to WWII and the war against Hitler, he should realize that historical references to Hitler work both ways, and require responsibility from him: While he may not have gone as far as Hitler to commit the level of crimes against humanity that led to the Holocaust, yet by coercing the American people into an unnecessary war in Iraq, he has been the cause of the deaths of more than 4000 American soldiers, and of tens of thousands of life-disabling injuries, and of the wreckage of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives--and all for what, exactly?!

And so, as this disastrous administration declines into history, I write this second open letter to President Bush, as a last appeal to President Bush to do something NOW to salvage some shard of respect for his historical legacy:

Dear President Bush--

Historical legacy is a tricky thing. While you may have wished to use lies and deception in the name of building up your historical legacy through war, History is not so easily manipulated, and the truth will eventually come out. Just as saving one life is the equivalent of saving a world, you must at some point realize that all the lives you have brought to an unnecessary end are the equivalent of many thousands of worlds destroyed.

Lives wasted, worlds destroyed, and all the while your war has distracted us from deploying our resources to address the real problems that face humanity in the battle to save us all from the ravages of global warming. This will be the destructive legacy of your Presidency, Mr. Bush, which will make the memory of your administration one of infamy to all future generations--unless you do something NOW to alter your fate.

Your only chance now of avoiding this legacy of Infamy, Mr. Bush, is to follow the example of Scott McClellan, and come clean with the American people about what your administration has done, so we can all immediately begin to work together to heal the great harm your administration has done to this country and the world.

If you want to help to repair some portion of the harm you have done, you can still change your ways, and turn to the truth. But you now have less than eight months left to begin to repair some of the harm you have done. How you will be remembered is indeed up to you. Will you choose to continue down your path of infamy, or will you do what is necessary to become part of the healing and work of repair? The choice is up to you.

But one way or another, history will reveal the truth of what your administration has done, whether you wish it to or not. And if we are forced to discover the truth of what you've done without your help, the depth of the infamy with which you are remembered will only deepen as ever more of the truth is revealed--as we are already beginning to see.

You don't have much time left, Mr. Bush, to avoid going down in history as the most infamous of American Presidents. However, if you now turn to the truth, and become honest with the American people about what you've done, you can perhaps avoid this fate. The choice is up to you. I hope you'll make the right choice, and begin to help the American people repair the harm your administration has done. History, and the whole world, is watching, and will judge your legacy--based not only on the truth of what you have done, but also on all that you have not done.

But if you choose to continue along your current path, know that your refusal to admit the truth and to begin to help us all repair the damage of the last eight years, will be the final testament and seal on your legacy of infamy, which in the years to come will be revealed for all the world to see. If this is how you would choose to be remembered, the best we can say is: May God have mercy on your poor soul.

"There's a Pattern Emerging Here": Or, How the Clinton Campaign Betrayed Bill's Honorific Title of "First Black President"

Who really has "a much broader base to build a winning coalition on"?

There is a clear pattern emerging from the Clinton campaign, but it's not the one Hillary Clinton wished to suggest.

Hillary's recent words underline a clear pattern in the way both the Clintons have been using race in this campaign. However poorly worded, Hillary's recent words suggest the fundamental reason the Clintons have betrayed the honorific title of "first black president" once bestowed on Bill Clinton by the great American writer Toni Morrison:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

The African-American community has clearly recognized and understood the implications of this pattern of racialized discourse, and has almost completly renounced and rejected the Clintons as a result. Results from the Indiana and North Carolina primaries this week indicate that over 90% of African-Americans voted against the Clintons.

And since the election of a Democratic President in November depends so heavily on the African-American vote, all superdelegates need to be asking, in spite of Hillary Clinton's claims to the contrary: Who really has "a much broader base to build a winning coalition on"?

Big Media Becoming More Powerful and Stupid at same time: Stop Big Media's Assault on our Democracy!

Even as Big Media is becoming more stupid in the way it frames the discussion of the most important issues for this country's future, such as Race (see previous blog posts), so that it distracts public attention from the real information and policy issues needed for democracy to function, Big Media (with the help of the Bush administration) has been growing ever more consolidated and powerful.

Big Media has thereby developed increasing capacity to control how the discussion of major issues takes place in this country.

Democratic citizens of all persuasions and parties in this country need to unite to oppose this consolidation of big corporate media power that threatens the very foundations of our democracy.

From Credo:

Stop Big Media Consolidation

Tell the Senate to reverse the FCC and prevent the media consolidation that is so damaging to our democracy.

In this very important election year, will a small handful of companies gain even more control over what we see, hear and read every day?

Click here to tell your senators and Majority Leader Reid to reverse the FCC's recent decision to allow greater media consolidation.

Senator Dorgan of North Dakota has launched an effort to reverse the FCC's decision to gut the longstanding "newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership" ban, which prohibits a local newspaper from owning TV and radio stations in the same market. Senator Dorgan has introduced a "resolution of disapproval" in the Senate to veto the FCC's decision; the resolution cleared an important committee vote last week, and is headed for a full Senate vote in upcoming days. Your voice is needed now—under Senate rules, this resolution must pass within 60 legislative days, and the clock is ticking.

We all know that democracy can't exist without an informed public—but media consolidation leads to fewer and less diverse voices in the debate, and less competition in the overall media system. When just a few companies are poised to gain control of the messages we see and hear every day, it poses a threat to the very fabric of our democratic society.

Click here to ask your Senators to support the resolution of disapproval and reverse the FCC's decision.

Thank you for working to build a better world.

Will Easton, Activism Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

The Patriotism of Stupid White Men?: Lapel-Pin Patriotism vs. Responsible Citizenship

As a person of European-Mediterranean heritage, the insistently shameful stupidity of white media pundits over this past week and weekend in response to the Wright controversy has made me so sick of heart that I've been compelled to write out some basic notes (for my own sanity’s sake, if nothing else) about what distinguishes the true patriotism of democratic citizens from the false patriotism of those whom Michael Moore has so appropriately labeled "stupid white men"—who often happen to be the most privileged and powerful in our society and politics.

(This suggests a new formula for the production of stupidity: whiteness + power = stupidity; and the more power and privilege one has--especially when that power is in the media or politics--the more stupid many seem to get....)

And PLEASE NOTE: since "stupid white man" is a state of being rather than a skin color or gender, you do not need to be either light-skinned or in possession of an xy sex chromosome to fit the category of "stupid white men."

Inspiration for these notes on patriotism: The white media pundits and corporate media structure cannot seem to get enough of asking Obama about his relationship with Rev. Wright. Instead of focusing on the real problems and policy issues confronting this country, they would rather focus on white noise, repeating the same dumb questions over and over again:

Why don't you wear a flag pin, Mr. Obama?

Why would your wife ever suggest she had problems with the way this country has been run, Mr. Obama?

Why did you wait so long to renounce your pastor, Mr. Obama?

Why didn't you hold your hand over your heart that one time when saying the pledge of allegiance, Mr. Obama?

No matter how many times Mr. Obama calmly (and with a straight face I could never maintain if I were faced with such blatantly stupid questions) answers these questions, the white pundits just keep asking them over and over and over again. It's at times like these that anyone who hasn't already recognized how most of the network news shows are dominated by clueless white pundits--who seem oblivious to how ridiculously out of touch and stupid they sound to anyone who is not protected by the insular power of the corporate media hierarchy--must be either comatose or blind.

After all, you would never hear Tavis Smiley asking such stupid questions!!! To the contrary, Tavis Smiley and Bill Moyers (a couple of guys who are not stupid) were the only major media pundits I heard criticize the way this whole controversy was being presented. Over the past month, since the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King, Tavis has had some of the most significant thinkers on race and politics in America appear on his show to offer critical commentary that has, without mentioning the Wright controversy, suggested the complete absurdity and vacuity of what goes for political commentary in the dominant white media.

It’s the intensity of the corporate media’s barrage of stupid questions that provides another overwhelming source of evidence--for anyone who still needs more evidence--of the fundamentally racialized power structure supported by our current media set-up.

Yesterday, for example, two major Sunday news magazines hosted by white men continued to devote a large percentage of their time on Obama to the Wright controversy, to the neglect of all the other real issues--including the need for a real conversation about racism in this country--that they could have been exploring with Obama.

Wolf Blitzer, on his two-hour Sunday program on CNN, spent almost 30 minutes on the Wright controversy. In his second segment on Wright--where his producers at least had the good sense to interview three black commentators--even after all three of his guests criticized the stupidity of the way the media has fixated on the Wright controversy, Blitzer kept right on pursuing the same line of questions on Wright, as if he had not comprehended one word of what his three guests has just told him.

I'm not a believer in conspiracies, but when you hear the same stupid questions repeated over and over again by every major media station and pundit, you begin to understand why it does not take a conspiracy theorist to emphasize the need for some kind of structural explanation of why so much of the media seems to be following the same stupid script.

And for Obama's "exclusive" Sunday interview appearance on Meet the Press, Tim Russert spent almost twenty of his 45 minutes of show time discussing the Wright controversy with Obama, asking the same questions we had heard twenty times over during the previous week. Obama stoically answered every question with more patience than many saints could summon, and this alone should serve as a major qualification for his presidential candidacy--since such patience and reserve will serve him well in negotiating with the toughest foreign and domestic dictators and bullies.

All of this media bullying by stupid white men compelled me to ask the patriotism question in a new way:

What distinguishes the patriotism of stupid white men from the patriotism of real democratic citizens who value the future of our beloved country?

Here are some basic answers I’ve casually noted (and I would encourage everyone to come up with a similar list, so we can all provide the corporate media and politicians some desperately needed aid in discriminating real patriotism from the easy patriotism of stupid white men throughout the remaining months of this political campaign season, and beyond--since whoever gets elected will need the strong support of real citizens to make sure our government begins to enforce policies that strengthen rather than weaken democracy. The last eight years of rule by faux patriots of both parties has terribly weakened our democracy, and four more years of such lapel-pin patriotism may do it in for good):

1) Real patriotism understands the fundamental value of criticism and critical thought, for the preservation of democratic government and policies, since without criticism of prevailing policies, we would never have seen the Revolution against the British that founded this country; we would still have slavery; and we would never have gained the semblance of democracy that we have today-- we would have fallen into dictatorship eras ago.

Faux patriotism insists that criticism is unpatriotic; thus Michelle Obama is considered unpatriotic by stupid white men because she clearly has the ability to think critically about the previous history of this country, and even dared to voice a critical opinion in public.

2) Faux patriotism believes the most important sign of patriotism is to wear an easily recognizable symbol of patriotism on one's sleeve or lapel or car--and therefore the easiest way to identify the unpatriotic is to simply note whether or not a person is conspicuously sporting a symbol like a flag, a red-white-and blue ribbon, or an "In God We Trust" license plate, etc.

Indeed, this is why the Nazis insisted that every good German sport a swastika--since this made it easy to distinguish those with loyalty to the Fuhrer from those bold or stupid enough to suggest they lacked this kind of patriotism. The easier patriotism is to sum up in a symbol, the easier it is for demagogues and tyrants to manipulate patriotism in ways that destroy democracy.

Real patriotism values the substance of how one puts into practice one's love of country and democratic citizenship, rather than the symbols one wears on one's sleeve. Real patriotism cannot be worn on one's sleeve, or demonstrated by pinning a flag to one's lapel pin. Of course, those who would prefer to rely on symbols over substance would love to make wearing a lapel pin the substance of patriotism, since this would allow them to cover up a host of actions that betray the opposite truth. And wouldn’t patriotism be oh so much easier if all it required were a shiny flag pinned obediently to the lapel every day? Then one could just ignore the difficulties of having to actually put into practice the values of democratic citizenship.

3) Faux patriotism believes it is entirely proper to mix religion and politics, in spite of some troublesome principles contained in the U.S. constitution, which attempts to draw a wall of separation between religion and politics precisely because of a long bloody history of tyrannical manipulation of religion and political power, which the founders of this country had the wisdom to reject.

But never mind the wisdom of the founders! On this issue faux patriots of the twenty-first century believe they are much wiser than the founders. These patriots seem to believe we should return to some of the grand old practices of yesteryear: If you’re going to run for political office these days, you’d better be ready to submit to religious truth tests. Not only must you be ready to submit to probes of your own religious beliefs and associations, but now you should also prepare to be held responsible for the words and beliefs of your pastors, priests, rabbis, and imams. Perhaps the next step in this progress toward religious tests will be to begin requiring the FBI to conduct background checks on every member of one’s religious congregation… (or, excuse me, are we already doing this?)

Real patriotism understands the reasons current trends toward bringing religious tests back into politics are fundamentally threatening to the future of democracy, especially when these religious tests are combined with all the other trends that indicate we are losing hold of fundamental principles of democratic liberty (such as freedom from surveillance in private spaces--What’s wrong, after all, with abolishing privacy altogether?! Now that the Soviet Union and communism are dead, why should we worry about abolishing privacy or creating a gulag system, since surely our own system of government could never fall into forms of tyranny similar to those of the Soviet system! After all, we’re all good red-blooded Americans, and we would never let that happen! Historical note: The Germans continued to believe that something like National Socialism could never take over their country, even as that very takeover was occurring in the 1930s.)

So, in sum, if you believe that patriotism can be reduced to pinning a flag to your lapel, denying the validity of any criticism of past or present problems in our country, and insisting on your right to interrogate the religious background of your political representatives, along with the beliefs of their religious leaders (and while you’re at it, of any other associations with suspect persons they might know)—you win the right to sport the stupid white man patriotism label to your heart’s content. Wear it with pride!

As for the rest of us, well, we’ll just have to settle for the harder and less conspicuous work of creating a more democratic and just Republic—the signs of which we cannot wear on our lapels or sleeves. As for me and my kin, may this latter kind of patriotism, along with great suspicion of all flag-pin wearers, flourish!