Politics > Politics-USA > What causes the fall of empires? Stubborn leaders who speak like toddlers and never admit mistakes
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04 Jun 2005 11:17:52 AM |
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What causes the fall of empires? Stubborn leaders who speak like toddlers and never admit mistakes |
Bush, The Spoiled Man-Child
What causes the fall of empires? Why, stubborn leaders who speak like
toddlers and never admit mistakes
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, June 3, 2005
Know what real men do? They admit their mistakes. Know what real people
do in times of great stress and strife and economic downturn? They seek
help, understand they don't know all the answers, realize they might
not've been asking the right questions in the first place.
Know what great leaders, great nations do at times of war and fracture
and massive bludgeoning debt? All of the above, all the time, with
great intelligence and humility and grace and awareness and shared
humanity. Or they die.
But not BushCo. This is the hilarious thing. This is the appalling
thing, still. How can this man remain so blindly, staggeringly
resolute? How can he be so appallingly ignorant of fact, of truth, of
evidence, of deep thought? In short, what the hell is wrong with George
W. Bush?
Here it is, another bumbling, barely articulate press conference by
Dubya, one of few he ever gives because he clearly hates the things and
is deeply troubled by them, hates reporters who ask complicated
questions and hates people who dare doubt his simple mindset, his
effectiveness, his policies, his lopsided myopic one-way black/white
good/evil worldview.
Bush hates press conferences because can't speak extemporaneously and
can't form a complete sentence without mashing up the language like a
five-year-old and can't express a complex idea to save his life and
somewhere deep down, he knows it, and he knows we know it, and it makes
him mumble and stutter and wish he could be somewhere else, anywhere
else, like sittin' on the back porch in Texas eatin' ribs and dreamin'
'bout baseball. Ahhh, there now. That's better.
But here he is, instead, stuck like a pinned bug in the Rose Garden,
struggling to answer tricky, multisyllabic questions from the
godforsaken press. Go ahead, read the Q&A, linked above. It's sort of
staggering. It's also very impressive, in a soul-stabbing, nauseating
way.
Bush is, to be sure and in a word, unyielding. Determined. Immovable.
Also, deeply confused. Myopic as hell. Frighteningly narrow minded.
Weirdly random. Childish in a way that would make any good parent
seriously question whether it might be time to get their child some
Ritalin and an emetic.
Unlike you or me or any human anywhere who happens to be in possession
of humility or subtlety of mind, Bush, to this day, admits zero
mistakes. He refuses help, rejects suggestions that everything is not
dandy and swell. He is confounded by questions that dare suggest he
might be somewhat inept, or failing. And he absolutely insists that
America exists in some sort of bizarre utopian vacuum, isolated and
virtuous and towering like a mad hobbled king over our enemies and
allies alike.
He is, in other words, our downfall.
Iraq? Going smoothly, Bush says, happy with the progress there, despite
huge surges in insurgent violence and endless uptick of the U.S. death
toll and the utter wasteland we've made of that poor, shredded nation.
Iran, North Korea and Egypt? Just dandy. No serious problems at all.
Gotta talk more with that "North Korean" guy though, sort out the
"nukuler" problem. Sneering thug John Bolton for U.N. ambassador? You
betcha, still on track, a good man, despite what everybody -- and I do
mean everybody -- says.
Overhaul Social Security, despite an enormous lack of support from Dems
and Repubs and the vast majority of the American people? "Just a matter
of time," Bush mutters, completely blinded to the fact that it's an
enormous mistake. His deeply hypocritical stance on stem-cell research
that kow-tows to the deeply ignorant Christian Right? No real answer
there. Doesn't compute. Just shrug that sucker right off.
Notice, when you read: There is no eloquent, deeply felt defense of
ideas. There is no intellectual breakdown of opinion, no multifaceted
explanation, no passionate clarification. And there is certainly no
reference to outside ideas, a confession that we might need help,
input, wisdom from our neighbors, from science, from the wise and the
experienced.
It's a fact we've known all along but which keeps hammering at us like
a drunk gorilla hammers at a dead mouse: Bush is able to speak only at
one level, to one level. The level of a child. The level of a
simpleton. The level of a sweet, bumbling, small-town mayor, addressing
a PTA meeting, everyone in soft plaids and everyone drinking light beer
and everyone wondering about just what the heck to do about the rusty
swing sets and the busted stoplight.
Bush is, of course, not talking to you or me or anyone with a remotely
active imagination when he speaks at press conferences, or at his
staged, pre-screened, sycophant-rich "town hall" meetings, so full of
plain, everyday folk hand-selected for their blind love of Shrub and
lack of ability to ask hard questions (read this transcript of a recent
town hall on Social Security, and come away stupefied at the man's
shocking ability to appear just exactly as gullible and uneducated as
his questioners).
He is not even speaking to conservative Democrats or moderate
Republicans. He's certainly not speaking to highly educated people who
harbor a sincere curiousity for and tenuous understanding of the
complexities of the world.
Bush is, of course, speaking to children. He is speaking to babies. It
is a decidedly shallow and hollow and oddly deflated type of language
that offers not a single nutritious or substantive thought to the
political or cultural dialogue, other than to expand his staggering
collection of embarrassing Bushisms.
It's all merely a crayon drawing, an intellectual wading pool, a big
messy cartoon world populated by manly white good guys and fanged dark
evil guys and we are good and They are evil and that's all there is to
it so please stop asking weird tricky polysyllabic questions.
Maybe this is appropriate. Maybe this is as it should be. After all, we
are, by and large, a nation that refuses to grow up, refuses to take
responsibility for our gluttony and its global effects, refuses to see
the world as it is now, a mad tangle of interconnected humanity, a
global marketplace, a hodgepodge of variegated religions all stemming
from the same source and which therefore all require a nimble and
nuanced and deeply intelligent leadership, to navigate. Qualities which
our current leadership has, well, not at all.
The U.S. still behaves, when all is said and done, like one of those
scared wild monkeys, clinging desperately to a shiny object despite the
trap closing in all around us, unable to let go of this old, silly,
faux-cowboy mentality of boom boom kill kill God is your daddy now sit
down and shut up.
What causes the downfall of empires? What causes the implosion of
leadership, the slide of great nations into the deep muck of recession
and war and mediocrity and numb irrelevance? That's easy. Stagnation.
Refusal to change. Refusal to adapt, to progress. Refusal to grow the
hell up, to take responsibility for our shortcomings and failures, as
well as our successes.
Indeed, George W. Bush would make a great small-town mayor, somewhere
deep in a dusty, forgotten part of Texas. His still-appalling inability
to speak with any depth or resonance, coupled with his brand of
personable, aww-shucks, none-too-bright simpleton worldview is perfect
for some cute, redneck, tiny burg. It really is.
But for a major world power caught in the throes of a desperate need to
change and grow and evolve, he is, of course, imminent death, leading
us deeper into a regressive ideological tar pit from which we may never
emerge.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: What causes the fall of empires? Stubborn leaders who speak like toddlers and never admit mistakes |
05 Jun 2005 05:37:15 PM |
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wrote:
Bush, The Spoiled Man-Child
What causes the fall of empires? Why, stubborn leaders who speak like
toddlers and never admit mistakes
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, June 3, 2005
Know what real men do? They admit their mistakes.
(cut)
What mistakes did the last Democratic presidential contender admit to
making?- A. McIntire
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: What causes the fall of empires? Stubborn leaders who speak like toddlers and never admit mistakes |
04 Jun 2005 12:03:14 PM |
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wrote:
Bush, The Spoiled Man-Child
What causes the fall of empires? Why, stubborn leaders who speak like
toddlers and never admit mistakes
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, June 3, 2005
Know what real men do? They admit their mistakes. Know what real people
do in times of great stress and strife and economic downturn? They seek
help, understand they don't know all the answers, realize they might
not've been asking the right questions in the first place.
What's causes the downfall of Bush's empire is simple to understand.
People from Austin seem to be the only people on Earth who believe
that Russian oil pipelines and Boeing are an empire.
And that China is the solution. Simple China is overwhelmingly
technologically powerful in the making of
overnight guests in Korean Space Stations.
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