Editor,
I feel like I'm living the novel 1984 as I watch Bush puffing, strutting and dominating the headlines on the anniversary of one of the most complete failures of government since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In 1984, the central government used slogans like "War is Peace," "Ignorance is Strength" and "Freedom is Slavery" to turn rational, critical thought on its head. I thought perhaps Karl Rove was working a failure-is-success angle with Bush to rewrite the history of the Katrina debacle.
As the utter failure of the neoconservative agenda makes itself obvious to anyone with a minimally functioning brain, I guess this kind of tactic becomes seductive. When you've messed up protecting the country in spite of the knowledge that Saudi Visa holders were taking flying lessons and daily briefings were warning that Bin Laden may use planes to attack the U.S., then can't respond to a devastating hurricane with the slightest degree of care for the living, breathing Americans of New Orleans, what else are you going to do? Lie, that's what - doublethink.
But there is some hope. I think the American people are starting to wake up and realize how little these fools who are pretending to run the country care about the average folks, let alone the disenfranchised. They are too busy getting the government out of the way of the oil and energy industry - no time to worry about details like bussing the folks without cars out of the fetid hell-hole that was once the Crescent City. The best line I've heard about this contemptuous failure so far is that this is what government looks like when it's run by people who don't believe in it.
I don't think too many people believe in this neoconservative circus anymore. They'd like us to believe that fear is safety, but I sure don't feel any safer after all the time and money wasted since Sept. 11. They'd like us to believe that poverty is wealth, but ask anyone whose job has been outsourced or whose pension has been ripped off by one of Bush's cronies how the economy is doing. I doubt they'd describe it as anything but lousy. I guess it's all in who you ask.
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They'd like us to believe that aggression is defense, but after all the lies and fairy tales about weapons of mass destruction and mushroom clouds vanished into thin air, we had to listen to a bunch of new lies.
Today, Bush wants us to forget the inexcusable lack of human compassion shown to the victims of Katrina, dying in their attics as they waited for rescue from an American government that didn't care about them. Amid piles of debris still left littering the Ninth Ward, next to levees that have been poorly rebuilt and won't withstand a smaller storm, surrounded by homes that are in ruins and are making little progress toward being rebuilt, Bush wants us to believe that incompetence is heroism.
The mainstream news media may be going along with this charade, but I'm not, and I'm betting that most Americans aren't either.
John Steiner
UNM staff
