The approval of President Bush’s $87.5 billion war budget is a dream come true for both neo-conservative and liberal politicians alike. Neo-conservatives are overjoyed about winning this jackpot for obvious reasons. It allows them to further their ambiguously beneficial, supposedly patriotic, disturbingly crusade-like war against terror in a place that is widely accepted as a lot worse than Detroit. Liberals are secretly excited about the neo-cons winning political Powerball because it gives them more reason to whine. It gives them something else to direct their righteous indignation at. Although there are some politicians out there with philosophically sound liberal agendas, the majority of them are haters. As Thoreau said, a hater is not much without an issue to hate on. If Bush’s deficit, I mean budget, had not have passed, most liberals would feel awkward, empty, and far from home.
Considering that the neo-cons are essentially foreign investors and the liberals essentially haters, where might the real politicians be found? The war on Iraq, which really became damage control in Iraq after the first few weeks in, has become nothing more than a diversion. The neo-cons, who are throwing money at it, and the liberals, who are criticizing it publicly every chance they get, are equally responsible for the prolongation of this diversion.
I call it a diversion because it has effectively blinded much of the American public to the sole, true agenda of both the Republican and Democratic parties: to get elected. Actually, in the case of the GOP, the agenda is to make money and get elected. The war in Iraq serves both these purposes for them. Out of Iraq, Bush and the rest of the Texas mafia will get their money from oil and their votes from the glory of winning a war. Since the democrats do not currently have a figurehead in the commander-in-chief slot, making money off diversions like the war in Iraq is out of the question right now. Yet by criticizing it they too can work toward their agenda of getting elected. The hater platform appeals to as many as the triumphant plunderer platform these days. There’s always the indecisive minority who can be turned to one side or another by a clever catch phrase or whatnot as well.
The majority of the American public continues to accept the prolongation of the war in Iraq solely because Americans are dying. Shamelessly, both sides of the political spectrum are playing off Americans’ sympathy to advance their mutual agendas of getting elected once again. Neo-cons are pushing the continuation of the “war” with the argument that Americans cannot continue to die in vain in Iraq. Liberals are urging an end to the “war” with the argument that Americans cannot continue to die in vain, but at the same time are hoping that the war continues so that they can continue to urge an end to the “war” with the argument that Americans cannot continue to die in vain.
In essence then, the war in Iraq is a perfect reflection of both the alienation and trivialization of the American voter in politics and the disappearance of real issues in politics. Real issues are increasingly being replaced by political ploys. At the same time, politicians are being replaced by the class of people who run those expensive and impossible games at carnivals. For instance, the biggest issue this past week among the future of American politics, the Democratic presidential hopefuls, the people who are supposedly going to purge the Union of the “warlords” of the Bush dynasty, was not the economy, but rather how kosher the Confederate flag is in American society today. Ironically, in an era in which bipartisanship has supposedly ceased to exist, this debasement of politics is endorsed by both sides.
