It brought to mind this quote from his 2002 State of the Union Address:
"If it feels good, do it." Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: "Let's roll."
He is also quoted as saying this:
"If it feels good, do it, and if you've got a problem, blame somebody else," to a culture in which each of us understands we're responsible for the decisions we make in life. I call it the responsibility era.
I don't think we need to mention that these are the words of man who has spent his whole life apparently doing anything that felt the least bit good.
How do I describe it? I have listened quite extensively to the discussions of conservatives on talk radio and blogs. Sexual licentiousness is a dominant or obsessive subject of the discussions. From never ending discussion of homosexuality to Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction. The "responsibility era", what does this mean to a Republican party that consistently preaches that individuals have absolutely no responsibility to the greater community. Apparently the only time when we have claims made upon us by the greater community is when it is time to take someone or some country out back and kill them.
So I think all this sexual licentiousness and economic jealousy/envy inevitably lead us to the scapegoat. George W. Bush realizes this. "Let's Roll" is a call to community. They have designated the victim who will take responsibility for all our misdeeds. It really doesn't matter if they're guilty of anything. The reasons to go brutally murder these people really don't matter, it's just so much smoke and incense. We were in a frenzy. A sexual and economic frenzy. We hated each other. We were tired of competing of the envy and jealousy. Put all the SUV's and boats and vacation homes, the suburban square-footage comparisons, the sexual competition and frustration, put all that behind us. Take my hand brother and let us all go kill the infidel. Glory, Yes, just like our fathers in WWII, in the big one. Saddam is Hitler, we're going to liberate those people, flowers will reign down on us, people will hug us in the streets.
Conservatism is obsessed with the Other. Resentment which is the driving power of Conservatism is obsession with the Other. With the Good-Looking guy down the street, with the Liberal, with the Homosexual, with the rivalrous Woman, always their eye is on someone else. It hurts, this obsession with other people, obtaining their identity from their neighbor or their television. How someone else always seems to be more authentic and more powerful.
We've wanted to kill for a long time, and suddenly a victim is designated, a country who literally cannot fight back. A country who's people it is safe to brutalize and dismember. Of course to us this was a religious ritual. We were the good guys, the allies in this new World War. We wanted to be able to fight these people, these evil-doers without regret. To brutalize them with our big military guns. We didn't want to be nice. This frenzy we worked ourselves into. These people were evil and we were right to "shock and awe" them. To show them our authenticity, our manliness. We were men. American males had doubted this for too long. This "War", or religious ritual, would restore our authenticity, our maleness, our goodness.
In this religious ritual, which was an atonement ritual, we wanted to, or tried to, place all our jealousies, rivalries, hatreds and sins onto the head of the Iraqi people. This didn't work as well as some of us hoped, well because we are a nation based on Christianity and it was so easy to see that Iraq was being scapegoated, for the our own sins.
The War on Iraq was wrong and evil. Tens of thousands of innocent people were killed and brutalized. Innocent people, children and unborn babies were killed, burnt alive, dismembered by our bombs. All for our self-esteem and the illusion of our own goodness. There still among us people who truly believe that these Iraqi children are guilty of the "crimes" that we accused them.
George W. Bush's words were a call for the lynch mob to form. George W. Bush and the Republican party's sole purpose is to blame someone else for our misdeeds.
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