-Caveat Lector-
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0303/S00151.htm
Bill Grigsby: With Bush, Every Day Is Opposite Day
Tuesday, 18 March 2003, 3:26 pm
Opinion: Scoop Reader Opinion
With Bush, Every Day Is Opposite Day
By Bill Grigsby
If you have children, and you've been searching desperately for a way to
explain the twisted logic of contemporary U.S. politics to them, you should
document the process when they begin therapy, any notes you might have
will come in handy.
Moreover, if you perchance take John Ashcroft or President Bush at their
words, you might be a candidate therapy yourself. It's not easy pleasing
the thought police. Ashcroft is the answer to the question, "why do you
need civil liberties if you've got nothing to hide?"
But don't assume you've gone off the deep end if it seems the White
House's media strategy is aimed at people with the attention spans and
intellectual sophistication of a toddler.
The strategies of Karl Rove and his PR swat team triggered in me flashbacks
to early parenting, when nap management was a religion, and distraction
and diversion, simplistic reduction, and moral superiority were tools of
convenience.
In fact, Children's games can be useful in translating White House PR swill.
Because children are so important to the White House electoral strategy
(in the sense that white suburban moms tend to have them), it seems
fitting to use a child's game to interpret their policy statements.
While kids don't have much use for contorted grownup logic, they do like
playing the opposite game. If it's "opposite day", everything you say is
backwards.
Kids probably like it because when it's opposite day, logic gets stood on its
head, communication turned into a game, with sudden license to say
things you normally couldn't get away with. Much like White House PR
machine.
Of course, one can't just summarily dismiss everything the White House
says as linguistic backmasking. For instance, when our President says he
wants to squash Saddam Hussein like a scurrying roach, I think he means it.
We can only hope that he's bluffing when it comes to the pre-emptive use
of "nuke- yewler" weapons, and not swigging grain alcohol and rainwater
cocktails in the Oval Office.
In the opposite game, if the president says he's for "Medicare choice", he
really means that he wants to force elderly citizens who need prescription
drug coverage into an HMO.
When he says he wants long-term "Medicaid reform", he really means he
plans to gut Medicaid and dump the fiscal and humanitarian mess
completely onto the states.
When Bush says "compassion", things get tricky. True, he's shown
contempt for the poor, he's trying to cut food stamps, school lunch
programs, surplus commodity programs, he's forcing welfare recipients to
work full-time with reduced benefits (without creating any living wage
jobs), decreasing rent subsidies for the poorest, and denying legal
immigrants public assistance.
No, compassion is reserved for predatory low-wage employers, investors
who've endured the oppressive injustices of double taxation on their stock
dividends, and faith- based organizations run by the likes of Pat Robertson,
who has seen the light and is now praising the virtues of federally
subsidized welfare privatization.
On with opposite day. If the President says that "this White House Doesn't
govern from polls", alluding to the Clinton Administration's obsession with
public opinion polling, guess what he really means?
As Joshua Green has noted, Bush spends as much as Clinton did on polling,
but it's done in secret, probably because instead of using it to formulate
popular policies, it's used to market unpopular ones.
But the opposite game is not as simple as it seems. Karl Rove didn't get to
be Bush's Brain by guessing zodiac signs at the mall.
For instance, when the President calls for more responsibility from welfare
recipients, it doesn't mean he wants them to be less responsible. It could
mean he's diverting attention from his own office's reckless and deceptive
management of the budget.
When the president says Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein has shown "utter
contempt" for U.N. Security Council resolutions, it may mean that Bush is
the one who's shown utter Contempt for international law, multilateral
treaties, indispensable allies, democratic process, the constitutional
separation of powers.
And, perhaps, the truth. When he mentions his "clear skies" program, it
doesn't necessarily mean "dirty skies". It means "clean enough" skies, that
is, dirtier air than we would have under current law.
And your antennae should be on full red alert when you hear the
President preach increasing U.S. "energy independence", since White
House energy policy would make the U.S. increasingly dependent on fossil
fuels, and on stability in a region we seem determined to destabilize.
The $1.2 billion giveaway he promised Detroit to produce a hydrogen fuel
cell car is a tribute to inefficiency, market dysfunction and oil
consumption. One of my favourite opposites is the White House's
"Governing with Accountability" initiative
It has little to do with accountability, and everything to do with
circumventing rules and "competitive sourcing" (translated = privatizing) of
federal jobs, since we know from the last year how efficient and
accountable large private corporations are.
What the White House is of course doing is the opposite of holding itself
accountable, it is shielding itself from any accountability, by making
records secret, resisting requests for information under the Freedom of
Information Act, accusing critics of aiding terrorists, deferring the most
disastrous effects of policy until he is long gone from office, and shielding
the President from risky, unscripted interactions with the press that might
require Ari Fleischer's special brand of expertise.
And there's "the war", which began months ago in the mainstream press.
When the president says we're a peace-loving people, keep in mind he has
threatened daily to massacre a wretchedly poor, but oil-rich, country that
hasn't attacked us, and poses dubious threat to Americans.
He has called Ariel Sharon a "man of peace", which must mean he isn't, a
notion suggested by Sharon's bulldozing of Palestinian communities, and
past misdeeds that define atrocity.
And when you hear someone in the White House talk about reducing the
risks of terrorism, keep in mind that most everyone outside Fox News ("the
Official News Agency of the White House"), conservative think tanks, talk
radio and the White House - including Osama bin Laden, CIA chief George
Tenet and many U.S. military leaders - thinks an attack against Iraq will
greatly increase risk for Americans at home and abroad, will only
perpetuate the so-called war on terrorism, and will intensify anti-
Americanism among Arab and Islamic groups.
This, as sociologist Charles Tilly once wrote in describing the nation-state,
is what racketeers do - increase threats and then offer protection.
These days trusting a press release from the White House is like putting
your faith in TV evangelists. True it is partly a matter of perspective -
Dubyaspeak may well be comforting code for major corporate donors and
conservative Christian groups.
Bush and Rove's short-term personal political victories should be weighed
against the longer-term loss of trust in the institution, both at home and
abroad, and the fouled nest that awaits future administrations.
Perhaps greater mistrust in government is an investment in the future - it
likely means less voters, less scrutiny, lowered expectations, and less
pretense about adhering to democratic principles.
At least until the point when policy begins to choke off the life support
systems of the most vulnerable (which is happening in my state).
Comparisons of Bush with Churchill smell of right wing PR - his
incompetence in the deteriorating domestic arena conjures up
comparisons with Herbert Hoover.
The opposite game isn't perfect, but it does help bridge the gaping chasm
between what the White House says and what it does.
It's a simple trick that will help you understand what Bush, Rove and
Wolfowitz are really up to.
What they do these days is either cloaked in secrecy under a phony
security blanket, or merely ignored by commercial media, whose
embedded correspondents, in between commercial breaks and boot
camps, are eagerly waiting for the rest of us to catch up to their
pronouncements of war.
So let us not disappoint them. Give the President his war. I'm sure he
knows what he is doing. Besides, today is opposite day.
**********
© 2003, Bill Grigsby
Bill Grigsby Assistant Professor of Sociology Eastern Oregon University
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