George W. Bush is traveling in the Middle East ostensibly to move things along in the Israeli Palestinian peace process. He’s obviously worried about the end coming. What will be his legacy?
He actually believes that history will celebrate his stubborn commitment to his wars, and all the clandestine renditions and torture, the shredding of our bill of rights, the disaster of Katrina, the stolen elections – history will prove him right. Mr Bush says history is always evaluating data, that people are still disagreeing even about the legacy of George Washington. Right. The father of our country, the face on our one dollar bill, after whom DC and the State are named, whose face is on Rushmore.
Bush’s only hope is martyrdom – maybe that’s what’s behind this Hail Mary trip – and even that would only quiet the flood of corruption and profiteering revelations a couple of weeks. And the tide of impeachment would definitely rise around President Cheney pretty quickly. Keith Olbermann, the Barak Obama of the news media, (MSNBC) opens every evening’s newscast with a countdown, the number of days left in this desperately retrograde regime.
Many link the Clinton campaign’s tumble in the polls to the fact that Mrs Clinton’s closed, calculating style is simply too reminiscent of the Karl Rove White House. Hillary is reminding people of those Clinton years, the fighting, the legal battles, the right wing echo chamber. This sour taste in the mouth isn’t her fault alone, but it’s really time, after all these years, for something a little less false, less self-serving, more above board and morally uplifting.
Ever since Reagan, (and that’s 30 years ago!!) many of us have felt powerless, living in a country that wasn’t ours. Corruption, militarism, Star Wars stupidity, the Contra debacle, killings in Central America, the whole enchilada. Bush pere covered his implication in all that by ginning up a war against Saddam, and otherwise dissembling for the next 4 years. Then the Clintons, who botched their opportunity the first time round, led us, unwittingly and unwillingly, but nevertheless – into the bitterness of end-game partisanship, which has risen to a loud assault on hope and reason through the younger Bush years.
Here, in the real reason for not having family dynasties, W is always triangulating off his relationship to his father (mother?!), whether it’s with criminal tax cuts, or starting a war to finish what his Dad didn’t. He certainly trumped his Father’s perfidy, yielding in the process a devastating assault on democracy, the environment, and hope. Our way of life, the continuation of life on earth itself, is now on the line. And we're a big part of the problem, not the solution.
Legacy. What a sad, tragic King Lear Mr Bush has become. He’s in the storm, he’s broken nearly everything that matters. But no insight, no repentance, no change to hear in his howlingly empty reassurances as real people are killed, broken, and pulled down by his self-absorption. Does he even recognize how much he was “taken” by the Roves and Cheneys for their own ends, and left hanging when his utility ended.
Can we survive the three hundred seventy seven days.
But it led me to think about legacy. My legacy. Now that Matteo is here, he’s it. I guess.
But he probably won’t care much about the stuff I’ve thought, written, done, the photos I’ve taken, people I’ve loved, the failures I’ve faced, the joys the successes the hopes and fears. So, are our legacies our descendants, and that’s that? I’m Esther and Sterling’s legacy. And my sweet memories of them floating atop the less sanguine ones - that's it for them?
Okay, maybe I need to cast the net a little wider... But then I have to say, I don’t believe that “history” will be kind to people like me. We ruined the environment, we sat quietly by while lobbyists and corporations and their front men gobbled up our American dream, like the henchmen surrounding Mr Hitler took the German culture, discipline and economy and rode it into infamy. (Note, the Chinese leaders and businessmen are doing precisely the same to the Chinese today – a report about a deepening Chinese rage against what is being done to their land and water).
Like I wrote yesterday, how can we love, deeply and desperately, give our lives not just to secure our comfort, our personal safety, but to join with others in a spiritual revolution? That’s why Obama is winning. Can we come back to life after decades of sleeping at the wheel, while corporations and their lobbies have grown like a silent cancer to devastate our body politic? Can we still dance, to a beat of hope, born in our bones?
Showing posts with label Bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bush. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Lives of Others / Christmas Day 5
Marin has been longing to see a movie for the longest time. We finally decided to get a movie, and stay up late for a change. We located "The Lives of Others" which her sister, Marisa, and others recommended.
It’s about East Germany in the 80's, with the Stasi (secret police) on one side, and a playwright, whom the bureaucrats decide to surveille, on the other. The playwright, Georg, has dissident friends, but he actually seems to believe, mostly, in the official idea of Socialism.
The film’s other focus is on the spook, Gerd, who listens in on Georg’s every conversation, who also is a straight arrow in the GDR. But Gerd’s colleagues, especially a supervisor who is using his position in the Stasi to force the playwright’s girlfriend to have sex with him, push Gerd to get some dirt on Georg.
The climax for me comes when a blacklisted (and therefore unemployed and unemployable) friend of Georg’s kills himself. This colleague was the playwright’s favored director, and Georg had sought to intervene to change his friend’s fate. At Georg’s birthday party, this friend’s gift is a piece of piano music. Stunned after learning of the suicide, the playwright sits down at the piano and begins to play "Sonata for a Good Man" (a piece apparently composed for the movie).
Gerd, listening in to the whole tragic sequence, hears the music and is changed. His own life, lived by himself in a faceless apartment, eating cold meals, watching state TV, calling in the occasional prostitute, is seen in stark contrast to the life of a man who has been surrounded by literature, by a community of artists, by ideas, and by beauty.
As the absurdity of the state’s claim on human lives and hopes, through the maddening power of small men, plays out, both Georg and Gerd are drawn inexorably into deeds of untold, but remarkable courage.
I read a breathtaking article yesterday about the parallels between Germany’s legislature’s inability to stand against Hitler when it was still possible in the early thirties, and America’s indifference to infringements on our Constitution and Bill of Rights when it’s still possible to register protest. Many on the left have written about how easily the "imperial presidency" which Bush/Cheney have managed to hew out (to the amazement of Richard Nixon, spinning jealously in his grave), could be used to jail anyone (including me for writing this) if another 9/11 came to pass. This story about citizens and their leaders sleepwalking into tyranny was neatly coupled with a rant I later read about those same citizens passively accepting absurd infringements of their rights whenever they enter American airports.
"The Lives of Others" shows one true believer in the "powers that be" being challenged to the core when he comes into contact with authentic human courage, and beauty, and hope. All of which the "system" (bureaucrats craving power in government) have no use for, and no understanding of. But who tend to rule us, and can hurt us, and our children to the third and fourth generation, as the bible says.
Think about the present Republican attitude toward citizens. They use the "religious" to win elections, but don’t help religious people figure out a way to live together as citizens in a diverse culture. They use the "military," making use of their courage and patriotism (think of how Bush manipulated and destroyed Colin Powell), but unable fully to comprehend the limits of militarism, and the vulnerability of the people involved, and unwilling to protect them. What Republicans seem to want, mostly, is unfettered capitalism, markets which are supported for the banks and investment firms, at the expense of the people. Haliburton, not health care. Or, if health care, then only via Kaiser Permanente.
I so long to play a role in the healing of our nation, our communities, and our world, as we lurch into the enormous, chaotic, tragic challenge of climate change together.
(Note, The Lives of Others is a foreign film, with subtitles. Some people don’t like when stories aren’t happening in English. Just a forewarning.)
It’s about East Germany in the 80's, with the Stasi (secret police) on one side, and a playwright, whom the bureaucrats decide to surveille, on the other. The playwright, Georg, has dissident friends, but he actually seems to believe, mostly, in the official idea of Socialism.
The film’s other focus is on the spook, Gerd, who listens in on Georg’s every conversation, who also is a straight arrow in the GDR. But Gerd’s colleagues, especially a supervisor who is using his position in the Stasi to force the playwright’s girlfriend to have sex with him, push Gerd to get some dirt on Georg.
The climax for me comes when a blacklisted (and therefore unemployed and unemployable) friend of Georg’s kills himself. This colleague was the playwright’s favored director, and Georg had sought to intervene to change his friend’s fate. At Georg’s birthday party, this friend’s gift is a piece of piano music. Stunned after learning of the suicide, the playwright sits down at the piano and begins to play "Sonata for a Good Man" (a piece apparently composed for the movie).
Gerd, listening in to the whole tragic sequence, hears the music and is changed. His own life, lived by himself in a faceless apartment, eating cold meals, watching state TV, calling in the occasional prostitute, is seen in stark contrast to the life of a man who has been surrounded by literature, by a community of artists, by ideas, and by beauty.
As the absurdity of the state’s claim on human lives and hopes, through the maddening power of small men, plays out, both Georg and Gerd are drawn inexorably into deeds of untold, but remarkable courage.
I read a breathtaking article yesterday about the parallels between Germany’s legislature’s inability to stand against Hitler when it was still possible in the early thirties, and America’s indifference to infringements on our Constitution and Bill of Rights when it’s still possible to register protest. Many on the left have written about how easily the "imperial presidency" which Bush/Cheney have managed to hew out (to the amazement of Richard Nixon, spinning jealously in his grave), could be used to jail anyone (including me for writing this) if another 9/11 came to pass. This story about citizens and their leaders sleepwalking into tyranny was neatly coupled with a rant I later read about those same citizens passively accepting absurd infringements of their rights whenever they enter American airports.
"The Lives of Others" shows one true believer in the "powers that be" being challenged to the core when he comes into contact with authentic human courage, and beauty, and hope. All of which the "system" (bureaucrats craving power in government) have no use for, and no understanding of. But who tend to rule us, and can hurt us, and our children to the third and fourth generation, as the bible says.
Think about the present Republican attitude toward citizens. They use the "religious" to win elections, but don’t help religious people figure out a way to live together as citizens in a diverse culture. They use the "military," making use of their courage and patriotism (think of how Bush manipulated and destroyed Colin Powell), but unable fully to comprehend the limits of militarism, and the vulnerability of the people involved, and unwilling to protect them. What Republicans seem to want, mostly, is unfettered capitalism, markets which are supported for the banks and investment firms, at the expense of the people. Haliburton, not health care. Or, if health care, then only via Kaiser Permanente.
I so long to play a role in the healing of our nation, our communities, and our world, as we lurch into the enormous, chaotic, tragic challenge of climate change together.
(Note, The Lives of Others is a foreign film, with subtitles. Some people don’t like when stories aren’t happening in English. Just a forewarning.)
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