Here's a standing "O" for Salmon
http://www.bartcop.com/moron-wh.htmMoron in the White House
by Salmon
What would happen if a complete idiot managed to get into the White House? Suppose some big shot’s kid needed a job and the corporate culture and war profiteers needed another Reaganesque puppet to pave the way for obtaining more riches at taxpayer expense. Suppose this kid was a ne’er do well playboy who pissed away years at school, partying and fraternizing with the frat-rats, stacking up cars and smoking pot, no, let’s make it even more sinister: snorting cocaine. Some patrician punk who could afford to piss away 7 years in grad school. Suppose this patrician brat also had a drinking jones and a knack for mischief – an embarrassment to his corporate CEO daddy. No, wait – let’s make him the son of a Senator. Oh, hell – let’s make him the son of a former president, a rich boy who, despite incredible business connections, couldn’t seem to make anything work for him. Someone who couldn’t find oil in Texas or who dabbled in upper-class investments like a baseball team and then traded away the second best home run hitter of the decade.
Let’s imagine this clown worming his way into the White House by managing to finish ridiculously tight in a national election and forcing the issue of recounting the votes into the courts. Let’s say the election hinged on one single state where the voting was purported to be close and there were allegations of fixed ballots and influence by the staunchly partisan governor – hell, let’s make that governor the candidate’s brother. Let’s say the election had to be decided in the courts and the state court decided in favor of the man who garnered more votes than our hypothetical rich-brat playboy. To add outrage to injury in our hypothetical scenario, let’s imagine the federal Supreme Court intervening in the state’s politics and stopping the state-court ordered vote recount. Let’s say the Court’s margin of decision was 5-4 with ALL of the assenting votes cast by judges who were appointed by either the candidate’s father when he was President or by his Republican predecessors under which candidate’s father served as CIA goon or even Vice President. In any event, a man who had fewer popular votes and who is regarded as… humble, perhaps even stupid by most of the educated public manages to procure the top leadership role in the most powerful nation on earth.
Let’s say the country was in good shape when this patrician puppet assumed power; the stock market was roaring, unemployment at record lows, operating on a budget with a surplus, and enjoying relative peace worldwide. What would happen?
Well, one might expect Wall Street to circle their wagons in anticipation of hard times and the stock market would likely plunge. The idiot would likely fill his cabinet and staff with conservative ideologues who offer simplistic solutions to complex problems, perhaps right-wing supporters who had been defeated in their own state elections. He would likely appoint oppressive demagogues to the Judicial Branch. He would probably fill his cabinet with corporate executives from whatever industry supported him and his ilk – let’s say the oil industry for the sake of argument - and liaisons from that industry into other related fields like the auto and defense industries.
What would this perverted version of the executive branch pursue as an agenda? I would expect tax kickbacks for his constituency would highlight all immediate legislative efforts. Rich brats tend to protect their food source. I would expect him to use all powers of the federal propaganda machine to argue support for big tax breaks to those who need it the least. If the dolt inherited a budgetary surplus from his predecessor, he would argue that the surplus should be returned to the rich. If there were a deficit, he would prattle on about how tax cuts would stimulate the economy and provide more tax revenue over the long run. Tax cuts would have to happen, no matter what argument his spin masters would use.
If an idiot were at the helm, our enemies would be emboldened to challenge our readiness or perhaps attack our nation outright. Let’s say this idiot happened to be lazy as well as intellectually challenged and he took a lot of time off. Suppose the moron was on vacation and our enemies attacked the country, killing thousands of civilians. One would hope even a total cretin could manage to tell the war-mongers in charge of the country’s huge and vastly powerful military machine to go get those suckers.
But suppose this moron didn’t care about the welfare of the country as much as he cared about piling on the wealth for his supporters. Suppose he not only attacked those who were responsible for killing our people, but then diverted valuable resources from this effort to invade a different place, obviously a place rich in oil reserves. He might even attack these people even though they had nothing to do with the attack on America and such an invasion would be despised and reviled by the rest of the world. Despite wrecking the economy, let’s say this man uses lies and fabrications to bankrupt the treasury by funding an unnecessary war that benefits only his pals and results in hundreds of G.I. deaths and countless casualties as well as thousands of innocent foreign deaths. The invaded country may dissolve into anarchy and become a hot spot for terrorist recruitment and a shooting gallery for our misplaced soldiers. The invaders would be likely to concentrate their assault and occupation efforts to oil business property while ignoring riotous pillaging of schools, hospitals and national cultural treasures. Such an administration might even lie to the people about the reasons for the war, changing stories and revising their arguments for war, vowing to stand for whatever the people will fall for and insisting that it was all necessary despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
These are possible scenarios that could happen if such a travesty occurred in the United States: economic ruin, budget disasters, domestic oppression and petty crusades against personal vices while terrorists plot against us. Despite going to war over oil, the administration would likely refuse to call for fuel rationing or even conservation – on the contrary! Thanks to their liaison in the auto industry, they would convince people to buy tank-like vehicles that pollute extensively and gobble fuel.
These same corporate cronies would probably work indefatigably to remove environmental protection laws that criminal corporate America decides are expensive or a nuisance. They might even lie to people, telling them that pollution doesn’t matter, or stall saying that more industry-financed studies are needed or that they are proposing solutions that, in actuality, only help the corporations by transferring the costs of clean-ups to the taxpayer instead of the polluters.
When the public began to see what was happening, they would call on their friends in the corporate media, who incidentally benefit extensively from the brat’s tax kickbacks, to distract the national attention span. They might propose sensational goals like sending men to Mars or building a Holiday Inn on the moon to keep our collective attention span away from their outrageous shenanigans.
It’s a good thing the American people aren’t so stupid as to allow such a thing to occur in this day and age.
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