DON'T EXPECT DECENT GOVERNING FROM PEOPLE WHO DESPISE GOVERNMENT

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Our government is being gnawed by rats. And the rats are paid well for it. Allow me to explain:
I got a first-hand look at Bush governance several weeks ago when I applied for passport renewal. Like millions of other Americans in this fix, I got the same treatment as Franz Kafka’s poor schnooks in The Trial and his lesser known but even better allegory, The Castle. I was told to expect my new passport in maybe ten weeks or so, give or take a while, and meanwhile of course the State Department confiscated my old one. So in terms of international travel, I’m a man without a country – stuck, unable to leave our shores.
Thousands of Americans around the country are learning too late that under the Bush Administration this patch of bureaucracy has been allowed to rot into something beneath the dignity of a Third World country. This problem is, of course, trivial when compared to what residents along the Gulf Coast learned when Katrina struck, but it’s a chip off the same felled tree of government. The ultra-right wingers at the top of this regime despise government and emplaced political supervisors throughout the system who for the last six years have been gnawing at all the cables like the crazed rats I previously mentioned.
OSHA doesn’t protect workers, the EPA loathes the environment, the Food and Drug Administration assists the production and distribution of poisonous substances, the Agriculture Department puts the stamp of approval on cattle too weakened by disease to stand, the United Nations mission has, until earlier this year, been run by a walrus-like loon who ridiculed diplomacy, and the Justice Department is directed by a daffy but dangerous serial perjurer.
Just this week USA Today discovered all those family pets sickened by tainted cat and dog food were victimized by an FDA that was too disorganized and understaffed to prevent it even though it received ample warning.
While the country sinks under the weight of the AttaBoy Brownies Bush has placed throughout its supervisory ranks, his pals – oil cronies in Texas and Saudi Arabia, corporate buddies at Halliburton and equally corrupt business entities – all thrive at our expense.
To entrust the Defense Department to this band of malicious, criminal kooks is the mark of a nation that, to quote our esteemed vice president, could be “in its last throes.” While Bush complains Congress is trying to micro-manage the war politically, he in fact, combed through the military services to pass over everyone who told him the truth – that we can’t control Iraq with the military and must use diplomacy to extricate ourselves.
But of course this regime doesn’t really believe in diplomacy beyond the kind that tosses doggy treats to the British prime minister for throwing his country’s troops into a pointless, murderous conflict whose strategy was incongruent with logic or reality.
This Cheney-Bush-Rove axis follows a government theory, if you want to call it that, that was never grounded in reality. It wants Star Wars, eternal war, billions in favors for its country-club buddies, and no taxes. It wants to cripple government while inserting it into every level of our lives, even following us into bedrooms so it can sit on the end of the bed and frown on condoms. It dismisses and even hates the fact that our government defeated the Axis powers, educated veterans, pulled Europe from the ruins, devised pensions, fed the hungry, ultimately invited all races under the banner of liberty and equality.

Part of Kafka’s genius was to place his protagonists in nightmares that from time to time drew blood. The poor, dazed schlemiel in Metamorphosis woke and discovered he was an insect. It’s unlikely Bush could define the word “Kafkaesque” without a literary coach, but his talent is to make sure the rest of us can.