I refuse to kiss the whip: my complete answer to the failure of Bush

[Selwynn]

NPR news and now CBS news reports that the New York Police Department concurs with Organizer's estimates that over a half a million people turned up to protest the current administration in New York City on Sunday.

CBS reported that the line of people in the streets was *two miles* long. This makes these protests on Sunday the largest protests ever in the history of the Presidential Conventions.

This is on top of the massive protests in Greece which forced the State Department to cancel plans to have Colin Powell at the closing ceremonies of the Olympics, and on top of the *two million* people who took to the streets when the President visited Great Britain.

I remember a CNN news report from back in the lead up to the Iraq war that said basically that the total number of people around the world who have actively participated in protests against the US Bush Administration has exceeded 1 billion people combined. Nothing like that has ever happened in past history.

I am deeply grateful to know that there are people out there who get the level of evil and tyranny that has been created under the administration of the last four years, whether it is Ashcroft and the Justice Department waging war on democracy of by and for the people not the establishment, against government accountability to the people, against citizens right to information, against, rights to fair representation, to due process, to privacy, to be innocent until proven guilty, to trial by jury, etc.

Or whether it is Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon taking a Rambo-esque swaggering Texan attitude towards warfare and violence, who speak of it eagerly, who advocate even further military escalation, who take a brazen and calloused attitude towards that cost of war, who see it as a first choice rather than a last and tragic result, who arrogantly refuses to listen to the guidance of military leaders, or to develop cautious careful military plans when necessary, and whose policies of recklessness and indifference have directly contributed to an environment where torture and abuse by our military occurs.

Or whether it is Dick Cheney and Halliburton, who has pushed for the invasion of Iraq since the inauguration of Bush, nine months before September 11th even occurred, and not part of any war on "terror" (since it was part of the agenda long before 9/11, and this is well documented, in Cheney's own words in memos) but rather as part of "unfinished" business from the last times Cheney was in an Administration. Whose preoccupation with dollar signs in the Middle East clouded all moral concern about the human cost of invasion, the hundreds of thousands of innocents who would be caught in an unnecessary crossfire, the over one thousand US troops who have now been killed and the tens of thousands who have been wounded. Who, rather than feeling remorse or admitting mistakes, is instead pushing forward with plans to invade Iran, Syria, and anyone else who stands in the way of our profit and power.

Or whether it is all the members of the project for the New American Century - Paul Wolfowitz (assistant secretary of defense), Donald Rumsfeld (secretary of defense), Dick Cheney (Vice President), the VP Chief of Staff, Jeb Bush (the President's brother and Governor of Florida) - all of who are signatory members of the organization, who are pursuing an agenda of global warfare, pursuing and planning a policy of starting wars in order to control more of the world via military supremacy and conquest, for the goal of establishing a "pax Americana" and controlling all relevant markets for profit and power (all of which is well documented and clearly spelled out in the PNAC's own documentation, signed by those mentioned above.

Or whether it is the president himself, who mistakes "conviction" with stubborn ignorance, who fails to appreciate that when you let pride and stubbornness be the reason you are unwilling to listen or to admit to mistakes you fail in leadership, who fails to humble himself and acknowledge the massive amount of things he does not know and listen to people who do, who preached a message of compassionate moderate conservative politics only to run immediately to the most extreme and fanatical base after being appointed president, who has back tracked on his statements on the environment, on civil liberties, on the role of the military in the world, on nation-building, who has been untruthful with the America public about tax breaks which provide next to nothing to 80% of Americans while giving huge breaks to the wealthiest, who has not been truthful about health care reform, which has actually cost the government for more than was originally told, and which has little benefits, who has not been truthful about the war on terror or the implications of a pre-emptive war doctrine and its implicit immorality,

..who has consistently demonstrated an absolute intolerance to other points of view, who has been the most divisive and closed-minded president in memory, rather than a "uniter," who talks down in haughty, swaggering disdain towards others, and alienates every ally we have in the world, whose economic policy is not just incorrect, its immoral, whose social policy has the affect of creating a new group of second-class citizens: gay Americans, whose wholesale disembowelment of social programs benefiting the majority of Americans just so the wealthy power brokers of American and put yet more money into their coffers violates every principle of decency, who has allowed himself to be manipulated and controlled by those around him, so that our administration is really the administration of Cheney and Rumsfeld, who has NOT - not I say, contrary to the impressions of so many - who has not remained committed to his convictions, but instead has allowed the political influence of Karl Rove and the strategy of what sells to determine his principles and message,

...and who has consistently demonstrated the fact that no matter how swell of a guy he may be to "have a beer with" he is a miserable failure as a leader who tries to make up for his lack of intellect and ability to deal with complicated issues by increasing his stubbornness and all-or-nothing absolutism, who mistakes blind unreflective ignorance with "steady leadership in times of change" and who refuses, not matter what, to be self-reflective in any way or to admit any kind of responsibility for anything. I am deeply grateful to know that there are other people in the world - a lot of them - who are aware of the fact that George W. Bush and his administration constitute the failure of democracy in the theft of the election - not from vote count but from the illegal purging of 59,000 black votes from the roles, all who were innocent and had the right to vote, and act which can be traced right back the offices of the Republican governor who just happened to be the brother of the man who benefited. I'm very glad that there are a lot of people with me who underst and that this administration has done the most to undermine the principles of our Constitution and the founding ideals that made this nation great - more than any other administration of the twentieth century, if not ever.

Most of all, I'm glad that there are people out there with me who won't allow their dislike for alternatives to keep them from standing up and forcefully opposing this administration. People who believe moderate democrats are the answer and people who believe both parties are in desperate need of reform can agree on the absolutely injustice of this Administration and committed to at least one thing: We will not vote for Bush. We may vote for an independent candidate. We may vote for Kerry. Or we may not vote at all as a deliberate act of conscience. But we will not kiss the whip that beats us. We will not bow down to these false prophets who betray every ideal of justice while speaking all the rhetoric and invoking the name of my God in the process. We will not do that, no matter what.

[istruthfull]

1. saying it again

I think that the biggest threat to democracy in the world is Bush and the republican party.

[Selwynn]

2. I absolutely agree.