Bush Jong-Il

Oh holy crapweasel. First Hitler and now Kim Jong-Il?

If “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il of North Korea and George W. Bush ever meet, I suspect the two will bond like long-lost brothers. Both men are first-born sons of powerful fathers who partied like adolescents well into their adult lives, after which they submitted to their dynastic fates as heads of state.

Both avoid critical thought, preferring to surround themselves with yes men and apply propagandistic slogans to the onrushing complexities of justice, culture, economics, and foreign policy. Bush churns out buzz phrases with the best of them: He believes in “compassionate conservatism” and fancies himself part of the “army of compassion.” He’s the “reformer with results” who embraces the “culture of life.” He shouts his paeans to “liberty” and “freedom” (a combined 27 times during last night’s State of the Union speech, according to today’s Washington Post) while reducing civil liberties at home.

“…submitted to their dynastic fates as heads of state”? That poor George Bush, pushed cruelly to the position of President. Why, it’s not like he has to run two campaigns to get there at all. He was just a poor man who “submitted” to his “fate”.

Of course, once there, he began the Era of Cruelty, just exactly like Kim…well, except for the few million people starving to death, the occasional execution of a few political dissidents, and the complete suppression of free speech.

Aside from those things, then we definitely have a “separated at birth” situation here, folks.

And that Bush, he does no critical thinking at all. After all, any simple-minded dolt can write the Monroe Doctrine (or the Wilsonian school of foreign policy) over pretty much the whole planet and count four major demcoratic successes in his first four years. And, God knows it doesn’t take an ounce of real brain power at all to win the majority in a Presidential election. Nope…no critical thought there at all.

And “yes men”? Whoo! Let me tell you, boy. That Colin Powell was one hell of a lackey, wasn’t he? And who’d the President replace him with? Why, the 21st Century Stepinfetchit, Condoleeza Rice (Doctorate degree? Concert pianist? You can buy all that down at the ol’ “Minion Mart”. I hear Karl Rove can implant those knowledge chips right into the cerebral cortex for you nowadays). How about Donald Rumsfeld? Why you couldn’t find a more agreeable and willing-to-be-led person if you sent Kwai Chang Kaine walking the earth to find one. He’s a docile syncophantic lamb, that Rumsfeld!

Sloganeering? Yep, Bush is a master of that, too. Why, I understand that he even came up with “No Blood for Oil”, “Bush Lied, People Died”, and that Top of the Pops smash hit “reducing civil liberties at home” just so he could “shout his paeans” of liberty and freedom a few hundred more times. Goodness knows, there’s only one political sloganeer in Washington today and his name is George W. Bush.

No complaint about BushHitlerJong-IlRasputinKhanNoonianSingh would be complete, though, without a rousing chorus of “…reducing civil liberties at home”. Which civil liberties are eroded, I wonder? Did Mr. Shafer have to show his papers when he left the house this morning? Did he have to produce a ration-stamp for his morning coffee or his internet time? Did he have to run this column through a government censor for approval? Can anyone tell me what you could do before George Bush that you can’t do just as freely now? I mean, there has to be something otherwise I’m going to be forced to conclude that Jack Shafer is parroting one of those propagandistic slogans he hates so very, very much.

But, really, here’s where Bush and Kim meet at a locus of horror that should shiver us to our very bones.

Successful propagandists must also discourage dissenters who might disrupt the party line. And the two best ways to keep people stupid and nodding is by shutting down the information flow and by stiffing the press. At these chores, Bush excels.

Stifling the press! Now, see, that’s more like it! Nothing says “fascist dictator Chimpy McBushHitler” like an accusation of “stifling the press”.

I admit to being the teensienst bit skeptical about Mr. Shafer’s claims since I am reading his article free of charge and have to this point not been arrested by jackbooted thugs sent by the Presidential Press-Stifling Brigade. I’m guessing that Mr. Shafer hasn’t been locked up either, else we’d probably be reading his “Columns from a Manhattan Jail” right now and singing freedom songs.

But, see, “stifling the press” doesn’t mean actual stifling. It just means not talking to them. That’s what has Shafer’s bearclaw so frosted.

Bush regards the press as a filter—an unnecessary one. “I’m mindful of the filter through which some news travels, and somehow you just got to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people,” he said in October 2003 during a media push in which he gave interviews to five regional broadcasters about his Iraq policy because he disliked the national news coverage.

Yes, it’s true. The President doesn’t think the national media’s a necessary filter. Want to know why?

Because, Mr. Shafer, the American people don’t trust you and your media victims of cruel oppression. Why should they? You lie to them. You make up stories. You cover some big stories and leave other ones lying on the ground to rot (which reminds me, Mr. Shafer. When are we going to see that story about the head of CNN’s news division accusing US soldiers of deliberately killing reporters in war zones? Tomorrow? Monday? Could you maybe give us some idea when we might see some coverage?)

But you know, you’re dancing right on the edge of incredulity and flibbertigibbety nonsense. Why don’t you just come right out and say what you’re thinking?

Persuasion, Aristotle taught, depends on the speaker’s skill at portraying himself as a trustworthy source. With his “aw, shucks” demeanor and his maudlin speechifying, the former Andover cheerleader knows how to stage a “drama” and tap the audience’s emotions. He and his co-propagandists arranged one such emotionally manipulative “gallery play” during the State of the Union. Rather than explain his Iraq policy, he had the mother and father of a slain U.S. Marine seated behind an Iraqi voter in Laura Bush’s box. When the president paid tribute to the parents in his speech, the Iraqi turned and quite predictably embraced the sobbing mother.

Aaaaaaaand…..MARK!

Yep, it took him that long to get to the Big Accusation – that Bush and his Evil Minions staged the hug between an Iraqi whose father was executed by an actual dictator and the mother of a soldier who died freeing that woman from the dictator.

Yep. Staged. Got it.

Can we see that Harris Poll again? Just for a moment. Thanks.

Okay, know what else curdles Mr. Shafer’s milk? You’re going to want to sit down before you hear this. Okay, here it is.

Only the president is authorized to speak for the president. Sing the same song, or none at all, is the administration’s law: Doubters and people with competing facts are shunned and ostracized for their disloyalty.

Methinks Shafer might have twisted that just a little bit, don’t you think?

Look, Mr. Shafer. I don’t know about you, but when I run an organization of any sort, I don’t want my people running hither and yon publicly questioning my decisions and leaking secret information to a bunch of folks who aren’t all that trustworthy to begin with, do you?

How about we try a little experiment? Let’s call it “Trash Jack Shafer’s Management of Slate” Week. We’ll go ahead and poke around your staff and find folks who don’t like how you run things. Then, we’ll make them the very tippiest of the top stories in tomorrow’s newspaper. We’ll do that every day for a whole week. Sound like fun? Sound like something you might want to deal with for a week?

No, I imagine you wouldn’t. And I imagine that if you heard one of your Inner Circle constantly quoted about how much they disagree with you, you might start to wonder things to yourself. Like maybe you’d wonder why, if this person disagrees with you so often, they’re still working for you. you might wonder if they might not be happer working elsewhere, where they’ll find some agreement with their boss. You might start to wonder what folks outside your company are going to think of how stable and effective it could be since you can’t manage to keep your own people on message. I bet investors would flock right to you. Subscribers would beat a path to you door, drawn by the diversity of opinion you have and your forward-thinking way of letting everyone run you down in public. They wouldn’t at all see that as a sign of…say…chaos or anything, would they?

See, I would expect that the people around my President are all working off the same page. When they’re in the huddle, that’s time for different ideas to come out and some discussion to be done. But when they break that huddle and come to the line of scrimmage, I want to know that my President’s team is going to be running the same play and that he’s the one that called that play. Maybe you prefer something different, but I sort of doubt it.

Oh, and it’s not like “The Buck Stops Here” has ever graced a President’s desk before. It’d be horrible if the only one authorized to speak for the President was the President. That’d be unprecedented, right?

Let’s finish this off by answering your final questions.

But what of George W. Bush? How does he gain by fortressing himself and his administration away from critics, skeptics, and questioners? How, exactly, does it benefit him to follow the philosophy of Kim Jong-il?

Well, it’d be pretty bad for him to follow Kim’s philosophy, but since he isn’t, it’s an academic question.

But this “fortress” you speak of, I wonder if it’s really a fortress at all. Could it be that the reason he doesn’t avail himself of your opinions on a regular basis is because he has much smarter critical thinkers available to him?

Could it be that it’s not actually your job as a journalist to give the President your opinions?

Could it be that this sort of foolish comparisonis the reason that America doesn’t like you and your fellow media people?

Hmmm…..could be.

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Category: Oh, THAT liberal media., President George Bush