TOLERATING AN ABSURDITY
The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (11/02/06)

Watching President Bush whipping up Republicans at a pep rally to support his Iraqi War was like watching cheer leaders whipping up high school students to support a losing football team. Of course, Mr. Bush comes by this honestly, having been a college cheer leader himself, the closest to armed combat he has ever come.

One can hear him call out the old locomotive, “Hip, hip, rah-rah-rah, go-team, go-team, go-team, rah, rah, rah, sis, boom, bah!”

“Stay-the course, stay-the course, no-cut-n-run, no-cut-n-run, we-are-winning, we-will-win, sis, boom, bah!”

Mr. Bush’s cheer leading covers a strategy of defeat clothed in the words of victory. Without reason to wage war against Iraq, he took the nation to war on a deceit. Continuing the deceit, on May 1, 2003, he proclaimed on board the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln “Mission Accomplished.” By now, we know that not cutting and running means an endless, grinding conflict with no end in sight. In the three and a half years of his victory Bush has “stayed the course” on the backs of nearly 3,000 American dead.

The Republicans believe that the path to victory is the pursuit of a strategy of defeat. Such a belief requires tolerating the absurdity that by defeating the Iraqis we will win their hearts and minds. Such a victory would be Pyrrhic, a victory at the cost of our own ruin.

Continuing the absurdity, Bush’s latest words on the subject of supporting our troops in Iraq are, “They’ve got what they can live with.”

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2006

WHAT A FALLING-OFF WAS THERE!

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (Veterans’ Day 2006)

“What a falling-off was there!” The Ghost’s words to Hamlet are as applicable today as they were in Shakespeare’s treasonous Danish court, only now they apply to the Republicans’ falling-off. They were repudiated because their previously winning strategy of divide and conquer was finally a failure.

Bush and the Republicans thought of the United States as a foreign territory to be conquered, much like the Soviet Union divided and conquered Eastern Europe only eventually to lose it. Bush gained power by alienating the evangelicals from the liberals, the gays from the straights, the rich from the middle-class and poor. Rather than governing with a majority, they chose to govern with a privileged minority using the tool of enmity.

Forsaking reconciliation, they chose alienation, pitting one group against another. They gave privileges to select groups and false promises to others, just as the Soviets promised prosperity to the workers while it created wealth for the favored apparatchiks and poverty for the people. The inevitable corruption that led to their downfall was repeated by the Republicans.

In short, the Republicans raised the bugbears of gay marriage and flag burning while enriching the rich, reducing the middle-class, further impoverishing the poor, and diverting everyone’s attention with a war of their own making. As Abraham Lincoln said, “You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2006