Consumption used to be the name for a mortal wasting disease. It still is.
A couple of weeks ago, I knew Katrina would spell doom for Bush. A couple of days into Katrina, I knew that for the first time race would be an issue for someone besides blacks in 2008. More than a week in, I knew. This was it. Bush was evil.
The reverend Bill Hinton gave a sermon a few years ago. I’m not Christianity’s biggest fan, but there are some things to be learned from it. In this sermon, he illustrated that the enabler is just as evil as the man who commits the crime. For example, if you hold down a woman while another man rapes her, you are just as guilty as he is. You agree with that. If you know of the rape and do not bring it to the attention of the authorities, you are enabling the rape-just as you would be if you held the woman down. You don’t have to help the sinner, you just have to not stop him, and he will continue.
In the same way, when Bush allows companies to pollute and screw with nature and the economy, it is just as if he did it himself. There was a contingency to take care of the people who had no way of escaping New Orleans. But nobody carried it out. Why? Bush’s budget cuts. Budget cuts to pay for tax cuts to the super mega rich.
Well, his budget cuts did pay for a couple of other things, like the Department of Homeland Security. And former head of FEMA Michael Brown’s paycheck. Three years have gone by, and while Iraq has made us less secure and wasted several hundred thousand lives, at least none of them died on American soil. At this point, I can safely say-Bush is, though he is several degrees removed, responsible for the killing of several hundred thousand people-some in Iraq, and some in America. We can no longer consider him a threat to those who live in Iraq, or those who are enlisted to kill people, often innocents, in Iraq. We can now consider this an attack on America.
Not only did all the freedoms the PATRIOT act took away undermine our country, but they were also lost in vain. All that money, all that time, and all that bullshit accomplished was more dead people. I know people have indeed died because of his environmental policies and his cutting loose every poor person in America from any help they might recieve. But even his strong suit, the thing he touted all through the last election he completely drops.
Bush’s repudiation of the clean air act and other pollution laws, combined with his kind attitude towards oil wasting cars has created a national attitude. The kind of attitude where you want the biggest, fastest, thing available, you want it now, and you don’t care about the liberals who say you can’t continue this for much longer. Global warming? It’s just cyclic! Oil? There’s more in Alaska! Never mind the fact that there’s 6-9 months worth of oil in Alaska-less if everybody drives an SUV. A lot less.
This kind of national consumption and wasting has to come to an end. I don’t mean it has to because it’s the right thing, I’m saying it has to because it is a scientific fact. The environment is not the issue I care about most, but it has to be addressed. And it will be.
