Bush's Authoritarianism

[ck4829]

To Bush:

"Give and Take" means "You give and I take"

"Bipartisanship" means "Vote how I want you to vote"

"Unite" means "Unite to support my Administration"

"Partisanship" means "The Democratic Party is trying to assert itself"

Seems like we took the dictatorship out of Iraq and put it in the White House, when did we do that, eh?

[BOSSHOG]

1. Like limbaughs folks

bush's mom and dad totally failed at parenting skills.

[Arkansas Granny]

2. And compromise means to do everything Bush's way.

[Imagevision]

3. Bush needs the world -- the world doesn't need Bush...

[Batgirl]

4. I've often heard someone describe how they felt a deep revulsion

to Bush from the first time they saw him on TV during his first campaign for the presidency. I experienced a similar visceral reaction, just from looking at his face or God forbid, hearing his voice. I believe many people who recoiled were instinctually picking up on the authoritarian nature of Bush and his gang -- in fact I think it was obvious there was something off-putting about him and that's why the TV networks labored tirelessly to convince the populace of his "charm." Then, when these authoritarians used the events of 911 to grab unfettered power for the Executive Branch (under the transparent guise of "protecting" us) they demonstrated just how correct our instincts had been.

Here's a relevant excerpt from Gleen Greenwald's blog from few weeks ago:

"The central tenets of the right wing movement in this country -- which has seized and now defines the term "conservative" -- are easy to see. They're right there in plain sight -- they want to expand government power in pursuit of mindless, bloodthirsty warmongering and empire-building abroad, and the accompanying liberty-infringement at home.

As a result, to be considered "liberal" or "leftist" now means, more than anything else, to oppose that agenda. All of the people now deemed to be on the "left" -- including many who have quite disparate views about the defining political disputes of the 1990s -- have been able to work together with great unity because all energies of those "on the left" have been devoted not to any affirmative policy-making (because they have had, and still have, no power to do that), but merely towards the goal of exposing the corruption and radicalism at the heart of this extremist right-wing movement and to push back -- impose some modest limits -- on what has been this radical movement's virtually unlimited ability to install a political framework that one does not even recognize as "American."

Regardless of what other beliefs one might have, opposition to endless warmongering in the Middle East (and the wonderful tools used to promote it, such as rendition, torture and indefinite detentions) -- combined with a belief in the rule of law, along with basic checks and balances, as a means of modestly limiting the power of the federal government over American citizens -- is now sufficient to render one a "liberal" or "leftist." That's because the political movement that dominates our country is radical and authoritarian -- "security leads to freedom." Our political spectrum is now binary: one is either a loyal follower of that movement or one is opposed to it.

That is the re-alignment of our political landscape brought about by the extremism of the right-wing political movement in our country. Brooks' column (like those of Will and Kagan before it) makes clear just how radical it is, how unmoored it is to any principles which previously defined the political mainstream. The terms "left" and "right" do not mean what they meant even ten years ago, though they still have meaning. At least for now, until this movement is banished to the dustbin, those terms have come to designate whether one is loyal to, or whether one opposes, this government-power-worshipping, profoundly un-American right-wing cultism that has been the dominant political faction in America for many years."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/03/29/brooks/index.html

[Manifestor_of_Light]

5. Total control and violence against children-

Read "The Drama of the Gifted Child" and other books by Alice Miller, a German psychologist. She showed how beating children, breaking their will, and demanding total obedience produces obedient little Nazis.

John Bradshaw took her work and popularized it and simplified it in America.