A few years sometimes make a big difference in human affairs. A few years ago, an American president was put through the 18th century ordeal of impeachment, a vast, expensively-staged comic opera of white manes waving and grave baritones intoning, over a dribble on a dress and the lie he told to save himself embarrassment. Today we have a president who has hurled the world into two dirty, pointless wars after what undoubtedly qualifies as the longest sequence of public lies ever uttered in a free society, and yet in his homeland, he remains popular and is collecting enough campaign cash to rival the Swiss bank balances of the Russian Mafia.
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But Bush has lied daily, doing it so awkwardly at times that you might think everyone is aware of it, and it seems to make no difference to his political standing.
What will Bush do with all the cash he is hoarding for the next campaign? He will use it to practice the worst lying possible in a democratic society, lying that subverts the intent of democracy, replacing meaningful debate by the suggestions, half-truths, and staged images of advertising and marketing. Perhaps I should correct that to the second-worst lying possible in a democratic society, for Bush, of course, entered office with the worst lying, claiming to have won an election he lost by any sensible reckoning.
Why are Americans not distressed at this?

John Chuckman
Yellow Times
link from :::wood s lot:::

{Mr Chuckman's essay is cogent and well-reasoned all in all, but I worry with increasing frequency that the little bit of resistance still vital in Anerica will be diverted in just this way. Bush either is or is not a sock puppet on some unseen hand. and the widespread coverage of his inability to do much of anything with his native tongue makes that pretty clear, all in all.
he was placed before the public. and is being kept before the public, by who or by what may not matter as much as getting people to realize it's being done. the minority of half-conscious intellects yet operating here seem to run toward him, salivating and growling, right on cue. and yet these same folks are saying that he stole, among other heinous gambits, the presidential election, he lied to the public about the purpose of the invasion of Iraq, and he co-operated enthusiastically as a covert agenda transformed America from 'the land of the free' into a penal colony.
getting him dead to rights on any of that is important, in a way, but it's only grabbing the sock, yes? not that big a deal in the overall scheme of things. it's the hand. and the rest of that evil figure, whoever or whatever it is. I think the short answer to Mr Chuckman's rhetorical question is:

Americans are not distressed at that because they are being told not to be distressed, by the only public voice they trust, the voice of their God, emanating from the little shrines in their homes. and it is the hand whose voice that is, that moves George Bush's lips when he speaks.}