Co-opting Death: Bush and Cheney and Ford and Saddam

With the execution of Saddam during the Hajj, and on the Sabbath, the New Year starts out with the ominous sounds of Death and the Co-opting of Death. ANd then there were the long and ornate funeral services for Ford.

Both Bush and Cheney inserted themselves into the public halo that now surrounds Ford (and while he was an honest man, he was not a saint), almost as if they were part of that halo. Cheney’s comments at one of the commerations were sickening, as is almost every word that drops from his scheming mouth. Bush, no doubt after consulting Manhattan’s best-performing and most expensive PR firms, managed to link himself and all that has touched to the legacy of Ford. Bush is most certinaly trying to take advantage of the Nation's mood, and trying to insert himself into what good Ford did. Designating today as a National Day of Mourning is one example - how great to start out 2007 with a day of mourning. What does that portend for the future?

Bush’s new theme: No matter what a president has done, public opinion about him will soften and upon death he will get his halo.

Message to us: I ain’t so bad; support me. What can you lose? You’ll forgive me in a few years anyway. The Lord says you have to. Forgiveness is in our Christian fabric.

So now Bush & Cheney can claim part of that nimbus and its light as theirs while they start the New Year out touting their great achievement: the hanging of Saddam on a holy day.

The implications of all this will surely be missed by the great majority of American who, still nursing their hangovers and watching the football results, will be more turned into the sordid lives of inexplicably celebrated celebrities and their periodic displays of bodily areas now commonly referred to ask “junk” (how wonderful it is that the female reproductive organs are now referred to as “junk”).

Morally, the last week of December 2006 underscored what the whole year and indeed what the whole Bush administration has always been about: connecting even the most unrelated of events, pushing the most vainglorious of ideas, excusing onself from the most un-Christian of actions. Bush continues to try to convince us that his plans were necessary, wanted and beneficial. He and Cheney have convinced us that we need to lower our moral standards ever closer to Hell, that they will always know better and that in the end the country will benefit.

What we have benefited from is an amoral war, character assassinations, lower standard sof living, prevaricating politicians and their lobbyist camapaign financerss, and of course higher gas prices. While Bush and Cheney cling to Ford’s halo, they must remember that Saddam’s ghost is not far behind.

Tags:   2006, 2007, Bush, Cheney, death of Ford, hajj, hanging of Saddam

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Posted on 1/2/2007 ( Permanent Link )
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