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CounterPunch
February
27, 2003
New Conservatism:
Clinical and Pornographic
Bush
Asks: What If Jesus Was a Gunslinger?
by ANTHONY GANCARSKI
Much has happened since the end of the Cold War
to show that there is merit in old-school conservatism. It's
hard to imagine 1952 Republican Presidential Candidate Robert
Taft going for NAFTA, or thinking it was a good idea to accelerate
defense spending despite the Soviet threat finally being debunked.
Robert Taft wouldn't have allowed Ozzy Osbourne, a documented
whore for both Satan and Pepsico, into White House functions.
If Robert Taft could be exhumed and installed into the Presidency,
one might expect Executive orations to look a little less like
infomercials for real estate scams.
We don't have Robert Taft anymore. We
have the Coca-Cola Cowboy with an MBA. The political lovechild
of Buford Pusser and Dave Del Dotto; a savant that knows enough
to drawl for the rubes but who sounds downright educated when
giving speeches on the other side of the Atlantic. Exhibiting
a keen understanding of both the Christian Gospels and "Getting
To Yes", W conducts foreign policy by asking himself "What
would Jesus do if Jesus were a gunslinger?"
Our foreign policy is conservative in
no tangible sense. Yet the conservative establishment refuses
to point that out. More, more, more, they cry, echoing the recorded
sentiments of porn-star turned disco queen Andrea True Connection.
They are whores for defense contractors, whores for oil companies,
and whores for interests whose exploitation knows no borders
or bounds. Meanwhile, they cloak their intentions in the tawdry
wrapping paper of "National Greatness Conservatism".
May they impale themselves on their flag pins.
Because they do not love America enough
to see that it very well may be irreparably wrecked. The last
two generations of men have seen fit not to raise their children,
and the youth coming up understand a "body count" as
a video game statistic. The aesthetic of the strip club has found
its way into both public schools and church aisles. Everywhere
you look, the value of life is diminished by a relentless barrage
of nihilism cloaked in noxious sentimentality. "Reasonable
people" are discussing using nuclear weapons on a country
we bombed, embargoed, and starved into the Third World over the
course of the last decade. Their language manages that rare feat,
to be at once clinical and pornographic; our policymakers talk
of families they are about to decimate with no more feeling than
auctioneers used when hawking slaves.
Anthony Gancarski is a regular CounterPunch columnist. He can
be reached at: ANTHONY.GANCARSKI@ATTBI.COM
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February 22
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