Ron Reagan: The Case Against George W. Bush

[Lorien]

http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/040729_mfe_reagan_1.html


The Case Against George W. Bush

The son of the fortieth president of the United States takes a hard look at the son of the forty-first and does not like what he sees
By Ron Reagan
September 2004, Volume 142, Issue 3
Illustration by Tim O'Brien
page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |

It may have been the guy in the hood teetering on the stool, electrodes clamped to his genitals. Or smirking Lynndie England and her leash. Maybe it was the smarmy memos tapped out by soft-fingered lawyers itching to justify such barbarism. The grudging, lunatic retreat of the neocons from their long-standing assertion that Saddam was in cahoots with Osama didn't hurt. Even the Enron audiotapes and their celebration of craven sociopathy likely played a part. As a result of all these displays and countless smaller ones, you could feel, a couple of months back, as summer spread across the country, the ground shifting beneath your feet. Not unlike that scene in The Day After Tomorrow, then in theaters, in which the giant ice shelf splits asunder, this was more a paradigm shift than anything strictly tectonic. No cataclysmic ice age, admittedly, yet something was in the air, and people were inhaling deeply. I began to get calls from friends whose parents had always voted Republican, "but not this time." There was the staid Zbigniew Brzezinski on the staid NewsHour with Jim Lehrer sneering at the "Orwellian language" flowing out of the Pentagon. Word spread through the usual channels that old hands from the days of Bush the Elder were quietly (but not too quietly) appalled by his son's misadventure in Iraq. Suddenly, everywhere you went, a surprising number of folks seemed to have had just about enough of what the Bush administration was dishing out. A fresh age appeared on the horizon, accompanied by the sound of scales falling from people's eyes. It felt something like a demonstration of that highest of American prerogatives and the most deeply cherished American freedom: dissent.

(snip)


Does anyone really favor an administration that so shamelessly lies? One that so tenaciously clings to secrecy, not to protect the American people, but to protect itself? That so willfully misrepresents its true aims and so knowingly misleads the people from whom it derives its power? I simply cannot think so. And to come to the same conclusion does not make you guilty of swallowing some liberal critique of the Bush presidency, because that's not what this is. This is the critique of a person who thinks that lying at the top levels of his government is abhorrent. Call it the honest guy's critique of George W. Bush.

(snip)

[Lorien]

1. Did someone already

post this today? I didn't see it anywhere. :shrug:

[Lorien]

2. kick

[mmonk]

3. Thanks

Now if the broadcast media would pick up on his article, it might make some people think until their rightwing pundits fire back. I think Ron speaking out strong helps.

[Jacobin]

4. Not only is he a very bright guy, he's an excellent writer

Nice to have this guy on board.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

5. OWOW! this is excellent...i was 6 feet from Ron Reagan in Boston on 28th