On Tuesday, Fred Kaplan published a somewhat more serious piece in Slate examining Bush's obsession with his own authority. This attitude colors matters foreign....
Just this past January, in an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, President Bush returned to the theme, this time annoyed that the people he'd liberated seemed so unappreciative.
"I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude," he said. "I mean … we've endured great sacrifices to help them," and the American people "wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq."
There's a skewed view of the world reflected in these remarks. Does Bush really fail to recognize that even the most pro-Western Iraqis might have mixed feelings, to say the least, about America's intervention in their affairs—that they might be, at once, thankful for the toppling of Saddam Hussein, resentful about the prolonged occupation, and full of hatred toward us for the violent chaos that we unleashed without a hint of a plan for restoring order?
Bush may have had a political motive in making these remarks. He may have calculated that Americans would be more likely to support the war if the people for whom we're fighting thanked us publicly for the effort. By the same token, their palpable lack of gratitude, and the war's deepening unpopularity at home, might have heightened his frustration and impelled such peevish outbursts.
But this peevish imperiousness is precisely what's most disturbing about Bush's incessant concern with the proper level of fealty. The word that he repeatedly uses when discussing what he wants from nations he thinks he's helping—"gratitude"—implies a supplicant's relationship to his lord.
As Stanley Renshon, a political psychologist at the City University of New York Graduate Center (and generally a Bush supporter), puts it, "Gratitude is something you give to somebody who's superior. It's very different from, say, appreciation, which is something that equals give each other."
....as well as matters domestic.
Not to put the president on the couch, but personality probably plays some role here. I remember watching a White House press conference (looking it up, I see that it took place on April 5, 2004), where an Associated Press reporter started to ask Bush a question without first uttering "Mr. President," the customary preface when addressing the leader of the free world. Bush snapped at him: "Who are you talking to?" The reporter corrected his discourteousness, reciting the honorific, before restarting his question.
It was a startling display of a president who seemed insecure in his authority, bitter that some piddling reporter wasn't treating him (the president of the United States, damn it!) with the proper respect. The same complex may be triggered when piddling nations don't repay his good intentions with the proper "gratitude."
This administration's delusional obsession with its own majesty is more than just symbolically anti-democratic feudalism. It is in fact quite in line with the presumptions under which this White House conducts business. One would expect a President with such feudal pretensions to reserve for himself the right to wantonly purge the federal judiciary of those deemed too ungracious to be tolerated, or to ignore the constitution in pursuit of erecting a society-wide surveillance apparatus or to lie his way past the nominal authority of Congress to launch a stupid imperial war.. and the several secret illegal wars and black ops actions that come with it.
And certainly we wouldn't expect a President who stewards the republic as though it were a personal baronage bequeathed to him by birthright, to look upon the reconstruction and protection of a decimated city as anything other than a opportunity to split the spoils amongst the ducal family and its cronies.
It's become a familiar theme in the ongoing Hurricane Katrina saga: Businesses with close Bush administration ties get key contracts, only to flub the job they were paid handsomely to do.
Yet another example came to light this week, thanks to the Associated Press: Scrambling to meet President Bush's promise to protect New Orleans before the start of last year's hurricane season, the Army Corps of Engineers installed defective flood-control pumps despite warnings from its own engineer that the equipment would likely fail during a storm. And -- surprise, surprise -- the manufacturer who got the $26.6 million contract to install the problem pumps happened to have close ties to the Bush family.
Oyster has an outstanding post on the pump issue which he concludes thusly
....do you think Jane Taxpayer is getting her dollar's worth in the War in Iraq? Is she getting her dollar's worth in the rebuilding of New Orleans? Seriously, how many cents on the tax dollar are we getting in real value in our Iraq misadventure? How many cents on the dollar are we getting for our investment in a rebuilt New Orleans? Who is laughing all the way to the bank while our national "investments" in Iraq and New Orleans provide such pitiful returns? Who profits while others assume all the risk?
In an economic sense, Crony Capitalism is a bastard form of Fascism.
Fascism, feudalism, call it what you will. Either way, we currently live under a system where our rulers enrich and "pay gratitude" to one another while the world is left to burn and New Orleans is left to drown.
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