Soapbox

The Land of the Fed-up

George W. Bush, the man who vowed to restore integrity and decency to the White House has taken yet another bizarre backward step in his pursuit of that goal. He seems to have called half the population of the country Nazis.

On his official campaign website Bush officials have placed a flash movie called “The Face of John Kerry’s Democratic Party” whom he calls The Coalition of the Wild-eyed. It begins with a clip of Al Gore at his now famous speech saying, his voice hoarse with anger, “How dare they drag the good name of the United States through the mud!”. We see Howard Dean declare “I want my country back” and Dick Gephardt say, “This president has been the worst ever!”

Interspersed with these sane but angry men (who are, by the way, making very good points) we see images of Adolf Hitler, and also text saying “God told me to attack Iraq” which is, of course, George W. passing the buck to God for his miserable attempt at the conquest of Iraq. Then it says, “This is not the time for pessimism and rage” and we hear happy, heartland music and see Mr. Bush looking optimisticly into the future. Fade to black.

This little spot is as puzzling as it is insulting. First of all, it would appear that someone needs to give his campaign staff a little lesson in civics. The liberals are the Communists, man, don’t you remember? (Geeze, it was in all the papers! Just Google “Joe McCarthy” and read all about it.)

Plus it’s hard to see how a few people feeling angry at what you have done to the nation qualifies the democratic party as being compadres of Hitler.

I read today that the Bush camp has explained that the Nazi images used in that ad are actually taken from a spot developed (but fortunately not broadcast) by Moveon.org against the republicans. They are included not to call dems Nazis but to say that Dems are the kind of people who call other people Nazis.

Which should certainly illustrates to the moveon.org folks the danger of using inflammatory rhetoric like comparing anyone to Adolf Hitler! Such extreem measures have a way of coming back and harming the sender. I guess enough people realilzed that they were playing with fire that Moveon never ran the commercial the republicans refer to, but still they have been burned by it. Indeed, if the Moveon camp was offended by the apparent suggestion that they are Nazis then perhaps they know how it feels. Because no matter how right-wing and reactionary some of the Bush policies are, they are not facist mass-murders.

Which leaves us with the Bush ad. The first problem with it is that, whatever the true explaination for the Adolf Hitler montage, it is not explained in the movie and does leave the uninformed viewer with the clear and unfortunate impression that Bush is calling democrats Nazis. For that reason, I should think they would want to remove or at least modify the spot.

I also don’t see why the Bush campaign wants their supporters to see the Al Gore clip, because it is, in fact, a very legitimate and troubling question. We have been dragged through the mud- and why? Many people feel that America has been made to look like a greedy, grubby imperialist power that we no longer recognize, and we want our good name back. We want to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, not the land of the liar and the home of Halliburton!

Neither Gore nor Dean nor Gephardt look the least bit wild-eyed in this ad, just fed up. John Kerry isn’t really shown at all- apparently, even by their loose standards, he hasn’t said anything wild-enough to qualify.

As I understand it (and admittedly, I don’t) the point of the ad is that these men are bad leaders because… they tell the truth that the president doesn’t want us to hear. They refuse to wear the rose-colored glasses that President Bush wants the country to wear. They are pessimistic and angry at the frightening direction Bush in which is leading the country, and have the bad taste to speak out about it. The Bush camp cannot attack their message, so in typical cowardly fashion, they attack the messengers.

Apparently the proper behavior for a populace who finds themselves on the deck of the Titanic and notices an iceberg ahead is to strike up a rousing chorus of “You Are My Sunshine”!

Well excuse us all for not singing along with Mitch! We believe that there is still time to keep the ship of state from going down, but only if we, as Dean says, take back our country, change course from the deadly direction we are headed in and restore power to the hands of the people of this country, where it belongs. To paraphrase a famous movie, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!”

It is entirely reasonable to be angry with a government who labels all those who disagree, even those of the same party, as traitors. This administration lies, manipulates the media, wraps themselves in the righteous mantle of religion while violating the basic tenets of that religion, supports the rights of corporations over citizens, robs from the poor to give to the rich and starts a war for their own ends by announcing that only terrorists are opposed to the war. Of course people are angry. Anyone who isn’t angry is either one of Bush’s friends getting big hand-outs or is asleep and hasn’t been paying attention!

Naturally those who voice their anger will be labeled by the Bush camp as more examples of the “wild-eyed” crazies who support Kerry. But if enough people wake up by November 2nd, it won’t matter what the Bush campaign says.