Last year this country succumbed to a snake oil salesman. This guy used all his craftiness to sell us a bill of goods and we fell for his line of overblown rhetoric (...spread freedom around the world...) hook, line and sinker and voted him back into office. Now we're starting to find out just what we bought ourselves because we were such willing pawns. All it took was a slick appeal to our fears, our prejudices and our uncertainties. All it took was playing to the lowest part of ourselves, and we gave away the store. This man, this george bush has staffed government agencies with his political cronies, putting into place a leadership that is vastly less experienced and less qualified, putting into place people whose most significant qualification for their jobs is their allegiance to w.
We let him back in, we let him put unqualified people in these jobs and watched while the experienced veterans of these agencies have been leaving wholesale, leaving the political hacks in charge. Now the glaring inadequacies of just one of these political appointees is exposed in the face of the most catastrophic natural disaster in our history. There are others. They are quietly gutting agencies that are supposed to protect and keep us safe.
This was the administration that got into office because it convinced an audience willing to abdicate its responsibility to think for itself in favor of a falling for a cheap play on the emotions of a frightened nation, this man managed to convince the voting public that he could protect us better than "the other side". Now we're angry because the government did such a poor job of protecting and rescuing victims in this disaster. But we didn't really ask anything of him, did we? We took what he said at face value and didn't bother to check the facts. When its all said and done, We have only ourselves to blame.
For more details about these political appointments, read these articles (Some require subscription):
All the President's Friends New York Times
Leaders Lacking Disaster Experience - The Washington Post
1 comment:
I really like the way you put that. We did succomb to our fears and prejudices. We were OK with not thinking b/c W. (and I noticed you did not cap the letters in his name) claimed to have thought it through for us. The country was scared and the country wanted reassurance and retribution, not responsibility. But in the end, though, what did we get? A real big zero.
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