From now until 2004 we must look hard at everything this administration says, especially its un-American insinuations that anyone who dissents or has no faith in our fine fellows is no patriot, perhaps even a traitor. But a traitor is one who does grave harm to his country, and by far the most harm done to our nation in recent times has been accomplished by the fundamentalist ideological agenda of the "Enron A-team" in the White House. From environmental pillage and the pointed curtailing of civil rights, to huge subsidies of the obsolete fossil fuel industry at the expense of the clean energy the world cries for, and grotesque tax cuts for the wealthiest among us, coupled with the most mean-spirited cutbacks of even modest assistance to the poor, the administration agenda has so far contained something for everyone to deplore.
Contrary to its public relations image, this is neither a strong administration nor a moral one. Indeed in its arrogance, its lack of wisdom, and its self-serving ethics, it seems to me the weakest in my lifetime. Before 9/11, less than a year into his presidency, the president was slipping sadly in the polls; since 9/11, swathed in smoke and fire and the American flag, his opportunist administration has buttressed itself by terrorist scare talk and patriotic bullying in a clever and loathsome exploitation of a national tragedy.
Peter Matthiessen in Orion online
