I’m not sure where it is coming from, but I note that here are a series of articles popping up here, with ominous stories about the history of the Bush Family.
I’ll probably piss off almost everyone here, but I can’t help
thinking what a waste of time. While we fret as to whether Prescott Bush (George
HW’s—41-father) “helped Hitler’s rise to power” or not, the idiot grandson (43)
blew a trillion dollars on two wars all while giving bloated tax breaks to fat
pigs who used the f***ing money to buy $30,000 umbrella stands, and (with apologies
to Steve Martin) fur god-d***ed sinks.
Unemployment is stuck at 9%. The dream of home ownership may
pass a generation, and has turned into a nightmare for another left in shambles
by Wall Street river boat gamblers who were neither punished nor re-regulated
with force. Manufacturing jobs are on permanent decline in the US, and the opposing
arguments of the two parties are either based on protectionist measures which
have no record of sustained success or the cruel laissez-faire attitudes of the
right which consider broken lives and constricted hopes the price of
capitalism. Bernie Sanders posted a poll over the weekend that said that 41% of
Americans think the American dream has died. So few? Everywhere we are limited by a decade of corporate greed and personal and professional selfishness that has left the country flat broke. Politicians argue over whether the US should invest $50 billion in green energy, scream to the skies when Solyndra goes bankrupt, and sit quietly as the Chinese pour nearly a trillion of monies gleaned from our economy into green energy programs on the other side of the world, thus making real the possibility that the US for the first time in its history will be a non-factor in a crucial and emerging technology. The president has been too timid by a factor of ten on energy policy. The first term is a near complete loss.
Our entire process has been corrupted. The Koch brothers are
the most obvious example as they buy regulators and politicians across the
country to shield their empire from political or regulatory scrutiny and maximize
exponentially their putrid wealth, but we all know the fix is in. And those
among us who see it honestly know that the corruption of money has soiled both
parties. Chris Dodd both wrote the financial regulatory bill (alongside Barney
Frank) and left office under a “Countrywide” Cloud. Countrywide finance, now
well under way to sinking Bank of America, is the poster child for extreme and
predatory lending practices that lead to the crash.
We only focus on those ugly Koch brothers because they smear
their filth in our faces like Cagney’s grapefruit. The politicians the rich support
give us Neo-Fascism as the face of today’s Republican Party. 400 families have
amassed more wealth than 150 million Americans; most of this amassed in the last
20 years. Make no mistake it went on unabated under Clinton. Difference was
that people at the bottom did a little better then so it seemed less pernicious.
At political rallies the candidates call for abrogating the
Bill of Rights, with nary a peep except from poor ole Ron Paul. They endorse torture
as a practical method of law enforcement, and the audience roars as we announce
how many criminals we killed. The crowd giggles as frat boys call for the death
of the uninsured. We “Support the Troops” so long as they are straight men. Women complaining of harassment and worse, and
gay men even raising their voice are quickly shown the exits by the mob of thugs.
But the real scandal is the American people who in their fear
and anxiety seem willing to buy almost anything that can be portrayed as strength.
In this we are all culpable, even those of us who would call the dialogue we practice malicious and the
condition of our political soul malignant, because we have not managed to
muster the arguments whether of shame or logic or common morality to turn back
the hordes of right thinking zealots. Leave it to the exception of the Occupy
crowd who challenge all Americans to look and to hear, even as some quietly
drum their fingers and roll their eyes as they wait for winter. What passes for
dialogue almost everywhere else (myself included) is the sound of one hand
clapping.
So excuse me, if I don't get the interest here in Presoctt Bush's business in the 1930's. Well, I guess I get it, but the
underlying theme seems nearly hysterical to a point I cannot comprehend. The
stories are layered with innuendo and suggestion about a history 80 years past.
Fair enough the Bush family has a history of profiteering from war, and seems
still to be doing it.
The fact is that
money follows and travels in the same circle as money. It has been crossing oceans
and borders for centuries. This is not news. The dichotomy between East and
West, the US and China, or in earlier years the US & Russia is set up specifically
for the purpose of creating a vacuum through which billions of dollars are siphoned.
The profiteering in the Bush clan cannot go on unless the public buys the narrative
of the other.
So we get the featherweight Romney, trying to
generate his right wing street cred by calling for absurd increases in defense
spending, and free market solutions to 20 million underwater homeowners and millions
of kids drowning in student debt. I don’t give a damn about Prescott Bush, I
want to know what someone is going to come along and point out the utter ethical
hollowness of the entire discourse, the emotional detachment which runs to
dehumanizing behavior. In this climate fascists rise. Can we fight the new
power, or just tsk tsk the rise of 80 years ago?
Wars are about economics and power more than anything else.
Race, religion, and skin color are the common cover for pure hyper grabs for
wealth. It is no doubt true, that industrialists and bankers across the West
including Europe and The Americas did business with their German counterparts. Ford
and GM were already multinationals in the 1930’s and the arms of these
companies in Germany definitely produced materiel for the German war effort,
though there is dispute to what extent the US based companies knew or were complicit
in the activities of their foreign subsidiaries. Historians and lawyers can
sort that out, but we know that both were instrumental in the effort to defeat
the Nazis and turned the production effort of their US factories to the war machinery
once mobilized. In the past 15 to 20 years these companies, Swiss Banks, and others
have scrambled to deny their complicity.
And so what? I think the larger story here is how corrupting
money is, or at least can be. How many businessmen looked the other way as the
pre-ware atrocities flamed across Europe? But as we look back at history as we should,
might we also ask the cost of the corruption at our doorstep? Are we so sure that we would not let a similar
power rise again?
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