The Boston Phoenix -- December 28, 2001
Can it really be a year since we didn't elect George W. Bush president?
Time sure flies when you're
going straight to hell.
Let's take a look back at our first 12 months with the court-appointed
chief executive.
December 2000
Happy holidays! The Republicans, hell-bent on returning ethics
to Washington, formalized the theft of
the election with an assist from the Supremacist Court, when George
W. Bush was appointed
president of the United States.
The turn of the millennium, which reached a de facto conclusion a year
earlier when marketers
commandeered the calendar, actually expired at midnight, December 31,
2000, outliving the credibility
of America's electoral process by several days.
January 2001
The New Year arrived with the feel of one of those action movies
where a comet's hurtling toward
Earth and, short of a miracle, it's going to hit - hard.
Neither Bruce Willis nor Robert Duvall showed. Bush was inaugurated.
A dazed electorate had been
body-politic slammed into a deep Florida sinkhole. As we scrambled
to clear the cobwebs from our
heads, an ominous groan grew to a large rumble emanating from a fleet
of conveyances set to dump
toxic waste, religious sewage, and corporate effluence upon us. Only
those who could tread slime
stood any chance of crawling back to dry land.
During the Inaugural weekend, the Republicans delivered on their promise
to return dignity to the
capital by tying longhorn steers in the foyers of grand
hotels. Z-list celebrities, such as Dixie Carter and the Statler Brothers,
were the only showbiz types to
soil themselves by attending the festivities. Bush wept as he awaited
his swearing in. Perhaps he was
thinking of all the Texans who gave their lives in the death chamber
so that he could be there.
Laura Bush announced that she would use her position as First Lady to
promote abstinence. No one
wondered why.
February
The F-month was marked by the continuation of ridiculous cabinet
confirmation hearings begun in
January. Even though W.(orst) was appointed president after losing
the popular vote and stealing the
Electoral College, the assemblage of corporate toadies, backroom fixers,
and self-loathing zealots he
nominated would make you think he arrived with a mandate.
What this guy lacked in brains he made up for in audacity. Who else
would even consider Governor
Christy Todd Whitman of New Jersey to head the Environmental Protection
Agency? And who would
foist upon us church-state integrationist John Ashcroft - a man deemed
by Missouri voters less fit for
public office than a corpse - as attorney general?
After becoming treasury secretary, former ALCOA chair Paul O'Neill told
Britain's Financial Times
that he thinks corporate taxes should be abolished, along with Medicare
and Social Security.
Fortunately, O'Neill hasn't yet found time to transfer the Social Security
trust fund into Enron and
Lucent stock certificates.
Bush better be reappointed in '04, or there won't be time for his cabinet
to unpack all the baggage they
brought with them.
The only nominee to go down was Linda Chavez, who withdrew her name
from consideration for
labor secretary when it got out that she had illegal aliens sleeping
in the exact spot under the table
where she paid them. Too bad: she would have worked cheap.
February's highlight came when the teaching of evolution was restored
in Kansas. Kansans celebrated
by walking upright, taking shelter from storms, and communicating through
a series of simple grunts. If
this keeps up, their congressional delegation is in big trouble.
March
In March, Bush announced that taxes on the rich would be replaced
with an honor system under
which the elite would be expected to increase their commitment to private,
faith-based bribery and
slush funds by some 50 percent.
The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was christened and immediately
manned by scab air-traffic
controllers. The vessel is actually larger than Grenada, the site of
Reagan's greatest military victory.
A March earthquake heavily damaged Starbucks' Seattle headquarters.
Within days, the coffee giant
bounced back and replaced it with 60 new headquarters at various places
around the city.
In financial news, the NASDAQ was traded for a 1988 Yugo, high mileage,
needs bodywork and a
new engine. Smith Barney ran a 75% off! everything must go! sale.
April
So far, on W.'s watch, the US
* Accidentally sank a Japanese fishing boat.
* Got into a military incident with the Chinese that any kid in a video
arcade could have avoided with a
few clicks of a joystick. (In fairness, the South China Sea was positively
crawling with Japanese fishing
vessels.)
* Strafed Europe with debris from military aircraft that must have been
built by the same technicians
who found a way to make plastic rust on US cars in the '70s.
* Failed to explain adequately the "Baptists under fire" incident in
Peru, where a Baptist missionary's
plane was shot down under the aegis of narcotics interdiction. Apparently
the War on Drugs
targeted-substance list had been expanded to include "opium of the
masses."
On April 13, I wrote: "If Bush's foreign policy gets any more antiquated,
the Crusades will resume in
July." Okay, I was off by a few months. Oh, and on April 15, wealthy
Americans paid taxes for the
final time.
Although humanity is pretty durable, many began to believe it didn't
have a British cow's chance at
customs of surviving the court-appointed Bush administration.
Aaron Sorkin, creator of the Emmy Award-winning The West Wing, was arrested
for possession of
hallucinogenic mushrooms, which explains Sorkin's vision of a White
House peppered with idealists
fighting good battles.
May
In honor of May Day, American corporations laid off workers by
the thousands just to make sure
they would be ineligible to celebrate the international workers' holiday.
Court-appointed president
Bush finally named his choices for the federal bench in May. The long
delay was due to the travel time
required for the judges to reach Washington from their residences in
the 17th century.
After appearing at the National Rifle Association convention and praising
gun nuts as "America's
unsung conservation heroes," Interior Secretary Gail Norton earned
a new title: secretary of the
ulterior.
May's top story: like any good Vermonter, Senator Jim Jeffords demonstrated
he knows when the sap
runs and when to run from the sap. Jeffords left George W. Bush and
the Republican Party, taking with
him majority control of the Senate. As a result, Trent Lott and the
rest of the GOP Senate leadership
were given a chance to do some of that "downsizing" they like so much.
June
First the court-appointed Bush administration literally takes
office, and then The Producers sweeps
the Tonys. The year 2001 will always be remembered for joke revivals
featuring fascists.
In June, I traveled to Albuquerque to speak at a drug-policy conference
hosted by the stalwart
anti-drug-war warriors of the Lindesmith Center. Federal drug prosecutors
and DEA agents just
happened to schedule their convention in the same town at the same
time. The feds held no seminars
on subtlety.
Speaking of substance-abuse arrests, Jenna Bush was busted in June for
underage drinking.
Considering who her father is, it's a miracle the poor kid isn't walking
around with a morphine drip in
her elbow.
July
Al Giordano, a former Phoenix staff writer who publishes the Web-based
Narco News, and
Mexican journalist Mario Menéndez faced a huge civil suit in
New York City brought by Banamex (a
Mexican bank, since purchased by Citigroup) and its chair, Roberto
Hernández. Hernández was upset
with Al and Mario for printing corroborated facts about his and his
bank's involvement in the drug
trade. The suit was intended to prevent Al from continuing to publish
his independent, highly factual
refutations of the big lie that is the drug war. At a July hearing
in federal court, Giordano and
Menéndez demonstrated that the case had no business in New York,
especially since it had already
been thrown out of Mexican courts for lacking merit. In December, New
York State Supreme Court
judge Paula Omansky threw the case out of court, informing the plaintiff
that Giordano and Menéndez
deserved the same First Amendment protection afforded journals that
publish lies about the War on
Drugs.
August
Unlike most Americans in their first year on a new job, W. took
an extended paid vacation in August.
It's a good thing he got rested up, rather than exhausting himself
with concerns like airport safety and
domestic security.
September 1-10
George W. Bush's vacation ended on Labor Day in Detroit. He'd
been invited there to attend a picnic
by Teamsters president James Hoffa Jr., a man whose integrity is less
likely ever to be discovered than
the whereabouts of his missing father.
John Joslin and Kevin Mackey, two rank-and-file members of the International
Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers, were disturbed by the invitation of such an obvious
enemy of labor to labor's
hometown on Labor Day. So, at the spot where the building-trades portion
of Motown's massive
Labor Day parade formed, Joslin and Mackey put up a stage and sound
system. Then they put me on
the stage. As each union marched in place waiting to round the corner
of Michigan and Trumbull, I
suggested to the workers just how insulting and cynical Bush's visit
was. And then Joslin, Mackey, and
a host of activists handed out signs that articulated the many ways
Bush and his cronies harm working
Americans and their families.
Bush's photo op was co-opted by thousands of real working Americans.
Carrying signs and chanting
insults, union members made it clear that Bush was no more welcome
in Detroit on Labor Day than
they would be at a clambake at Bush's country club. It was the last
wonderful day we would have for a
long time.
September 11 and 12
On September 11, the whole world changed - except for large portions
of Europe, Asia, and Africa,
several island nations, and those parts of the world where terrorism,
whether state-sponsored or
rogue, was already part of everyday life. Okay, on September 11 life
in the US began to resemble, just
slightly, life elsewhere.
The court-appointed prez was addressing elementary-school children in
Florida when the attacks
occurred. (Somehow it's always Florida.) He quickly headed to Louisiana
and then into a game room
in Omaha.
I might have given Bush a pass on going Barney Fife that morning except
for a few things. During a
time when even Rudolph Giuliani rose above venal political considerations
(albeit briefly), the Bush
administration's apparent top priority was to propagate alibis about
why the president headed for the
Grain Belt while the Northeast Corridor burned. This included telling
us about a call to the Secret
Service stating that the president was in imminent danger. Problem
is, no such call was received. Bush
was supposed to be a hard-ass Texas Republican naturally inclined to
fly to DC, climb to the roof of
the White House, and wave pearl-handled revolvers, yelling, "Try me,
motherfuckers!" Instead, the
Incredible President Limpet headed for a bunker in the Central Time
Zone.
On September 12, while people lay trapped and dying under piles of rubble,
several administration
officials spent the morning telling us about the mythical phone threat,
along with other prevarications
that must have taken much of September 11 to prepare.
They also said the assault on the Pentagon was sort of a coincidence
because the terrorists were really
aiming for the White House. They called the Pentagon a "secondary target."
Even if the Pentagon had been a terrorist afterthought (and of course
it wasn't), why bring it up while
people were still dead and dying in its wreckage? Because the cheesy
people who operate the
marionette that occupies the Oval Office value political viability
over human life, that's why. This
episode is important to recall as we watch the Bush administration
seize this crisis to further its entire
agenda. SDI, oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic Wildlife Refuge, destroying
the federal judiciary, and yet
another tax break for the rich - all have suddenly become essential
weapons in the War on Terrorism.
Yeah, and W. will be joining Mensa soon, too.
September 13-30
Within days, even skeptics were convinced that Osama bin Laden
was behind the terrorist attacks.
The US vowed to bring him to justice. All searches should include probes
into the curdled milk of
human kindness - a sure sign he's nearby. If that doesn't work, go
to Jerry Falwell and take a slight
right. If you get to Ann Coulter, you've gone too far.
The nation and the mainstream media universally embraced Junior for
rising to the occasion. Such a
delusion arose from the fact that September 11 created exactly what
everyone feared: a life-and-death
struggle that forced us to look to this rather dim bulb to think on
his feet.
To be fair, after his weak start, Bush did have a good night of being
TelePrompTed before Congress
on September 20. His address promoted his basic dinosaur-brained good-versus-evil
rap in terms
speechwriters sufficiently airbrushed to make him seem almost eloquent.
But once Jimmy Breslin
busted him for recycling his father's dead-cop-badge gambit, we quickly
returned to the frosty truth
that we had a president and Jingo was his name-o.
Bush spoke of "evildoers" and "crusades." They have a jihad; he gave
us a GOPhad. We needed a
president, and the guy who does the voice-overs for Underdog showed
up.
Americans cautiously returned to airports to face many inconveniences.
The new rule of thumb for
airline passengers is to allow yourself as much time as it would take
to walk to your destination.
October
Around October 7, the US "officially" began military action in
Afghanistan. These were tough days for
hungry Afghans who couldn't differentiate between a yellow cluster
bomb and a yellow food packet.
Even if they found a food packet, there was a decent chance it had
landed in the middle of a minefield.
In the meantime, US military action brought legitimate humanitarian
efforts in Afghanistan to a standstill.
Congress rewarded the airline industry for staffing its security checkpoints
with minimum-wage
employees who didn't realize that McDonald's offered better career
options by coughing up a $15
billion bailout package. Damned welfare scofflaws!
øn a classic example of becoming what you resist, the new Office
of Homeland Security, headed by
Pennsylvania's Tom Rigid, opened. Rigid's familiarity with Pennsylvania-Dutch/South
African customs
should be a real plus on the war's domestic front.
The country was by now awash in the kind of demonstrative patriotism
that is best left to used-car
dealerships. Flags were everywhere - particularly in Third World sweatshops
where they couldn't keep
up with the demand for Old Glory. Flag price-gouging was reported across
the country. Now ain't that
America?
Throughout the delayed post-season, by the fourth inning of any baseball
game the entire Irving Berlin
songbook had been exhausted. At around the same time, someone decided
that all motor vehicles
should enter a General-Patton-staff-car look-alike contest. The fiercest
competition was among
sport-utility vehicles. Americans, involved in a war that's in no small
part related to dependence on
Middle Eastern oil, managed to make obscenely fuel-inefficient SUVs
that much worse with the
addition of red, white, and blue wind resistance.
I had no flag at all until a homeless vet sold me a small one, the kind
that goes on Fourth of July
cupcakes. Now I can proudly point to it majestically flapping atop
the bird feeder. It's a nice reminder
that when the veterans of this war come home, feeling destitute and
forgotten, there will always be flags
for them to sell.
Since September 11, the flag has become a perverse and undemocratic
symbol of blind obedience to
the edicts of the unelected son of a former chief of the CIA, an organization
that helped school Osama
bin Laden in terrorism.
Nazi Germany had a lot of flags and no Bill of Rights. That's exactly
where we are headed if we roll
over for the likes of Kaiser Ashcroft and his full frontal attack on
our civil liberties.
Osama bin Laden assaulted our way of life, but John Ashcroft and George
W. Bush are destroying it.
January 20, 2001, may end up much more a Day of Infamy than September
11. This does not make
me proud to be an American.
I am willing to live with the slightly heightened danger of terrorist
attack rather than the guaranteed
oppression of a police state. I am willing to risk my life to remain
free. Are you?
On October 30, the FBI sounded a new terrorism alert just in time for
Halloween - or perhaps just in
time to spook Americans into accepting the idea of carpet-bombing Afghanistan
on October 31.
November-December
It wasn't hard watching the hateful Taliban fall from power. These
crackpots executed "improperly
attired" women. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan became a fashion-police
state. But when they faced
true adversity, the Taliband of Brothers were routed from Afghan cities
in less than two months.
I really can't sort November from December, or December from October,
for that matter, but while
time got fuzzy over the past months, some things came into focus.
W.'s "With us or against us" cant doesn't cut it. Every one of our lives
is at stake, so we all need to get
literate about the world in which we live. Though we'll never cave
in to the barbarous Al Qaeda
network, we must stop making the world fertile ground for its violent
lunacy.
We have to look at certain issues - even if they are found on known
terrorists' lists of grievances -
because we don't want there to be more terrorists. For instance, it's
time to face what over a decade
of sanctions and bombing has done to the poor people of Iraq. And we
must let the people of Israel
know that we cannot truck the direction their nation has taken under
the vicious Ariel Sharon.
Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, the Hamas leader whose November 23 assassination
sparked the recent
terrorist attacks on Israel, was freed from a Palestinian jail under
cover of mayhem caused when Israeli
troops bombed it in a May attempt to kill Hanoud.
We can't afford to celebrate driving a fifth-rate dictatorship from
power in Afghanistan - particularly
when the vacuum it leaves will be filled by the Northern Alliance,
a collection of drug- and
weapons-dealing misogynists with nary a democratic inclination among
them. So far, all that has
happened is the US has driven a bunch of terrorists from the cities
and into the weeds. Terrorists like
weeds and can strike at will from them.
What will America do when that starts happening? Send in Ashcroft to
organize a round-up of all the
people who appear to be Middle Eastern in Afghanistan?
Further, we can't afford to ask with affected naïveté how
anyone in the world could hate us enough to
bomb us when we have bombed unoffending people more often than any
other nation. There is a
reason the US coined the term "collateral damage," and now that we
understand just how profane it is,
we have to speak up against it - here, there, and everywhere.
Another reason we are hated is that we always get so much more than
our share of the worldwide pie.
Only in America would anyone suggest running up credit-card debt as
a way of helping the nation
recover from tragedy.
The other night, after watching a news anchor pull off the amazing
feat of correctly pronouncing
several difficult Afghan names while simultaneously fellating the entire
US military-industrial complex, I
flicked off the TV and reached for Mark Twain's Notebook. In it, Sam
Clemens demonstrates once
again that he was light-years ahead of his - or, apparently, our -
era. Twain wrote:
There are two kinds of patriotism - monarchical patriotism and republican
patriotism. In the
one case, the government and the king may rightfully furnish you
their notions of patriotism: in
the other, neither government nor the entire nation is privileged
to dictate to any individual
what the form of his patriotism shall be. The Gospel of Monarchical
Patriotism is: "The King
can do no wrong." We have adopted it with all its servility, with
an unimportant change in the
wording: "Our country, right or wrong!"
We have thrown away the most valuable asset we have - the individual
right to oppose both
flag and country when he (just he by himself) believes them to be
in the wrong. We have thrown
it all away: and with it, all that was really respectable about
that grotesque and laughable
word, Patriotism.
Were Twain alive today, he could expect a visit from the Office of Homeland Security.
To keep up with Barry Crimmins's thoughts as they occur - and
not just annually - check out
his Web site at http:www.barrycrimmins.com.