Incompetence, a Byproduct of Something Far More Sinister

By Bob Johnson
DailyKos.com

Monday 15 May 2006

I don't think the Bush administration is incompetent, in the pure sense of the word, as so many pundits have claimed. Everytime I read that charge, it doesn't sit right in my mind.

No, that's not the whole of it, I think. Their particular brand of incompetence is an outgrowth of something else - something far more sinister. If those who populate this administration, along with their co-conspirators in Congress, were simply happy-go-lucky fools, the incompetence tag would hang on them like a too-big suit. They'd wear incompetence like a pair of oversized clown shoes.

Osama's escape, the Iraq Debacle, Katrina, Medicare D... The list of incompetent actions and policies stretches on for miles, as far as the eye can see on a flat, blazing hot desert road.

But "incompetence" lets them off too easily.

Incompetence is an outgrowth - or an end product - of indifference. Cold, callous, cold-hearted, criminal indifference:

Indifference towards the troops they put in harm's way.

Indifference toward the elderly who must cope with the trainwreck that is Medicare D.

Indifference toward the hundreds of thousands of Gulf states residents who lost everything in Katrina.

Indifference toward future generations by giving away national forests and refusing to abide by environmental agreements.
Indifference after indifference after indifference.

Incompetence? Sure. But only because, fundamentally, they do not give a flying fuck about America or its citizens. (Nevermind how little they think of the citizens of the rest of the world.) They care only of themselves - and money. Simple, really.

It is no accident that indifference is a synonym for selfishness. And that selfishness can be synonymous with greed.

When Grover Norquist uttered his famous proclamation that his dream was to "drown the federal government in the bathtub," he was only giving the half of it.

The likes of Rove and Cheney and Rumsfeld quickly figured out that the best way to accomplish Norquist's dream - a dream they avidly shared - was to not only govern indifferently (thus underlying their assertion that government is an inefficent and ineffectual way of operating everything from wars to disaster relief), but that they also could enrich themselves and their corporate sponsors in the process, effectively looting the government as they "drown it in the tub."

"Two birds with one stone" and all that.

The deficit is no accident. It is the ultimate manifestation of Norquist's dream. Cheney and company (through their idiotic puppet and perfect foil, George Bush) paint the government as incompetent while bankrupting the federal treasury and lining the pockets of everyone from Halliburton to the religious right.

The Bush years have been nothing less than a criminal enterprise. Organized crime. Thievery on a scale never before witnessed in the history of humankind. Billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars looted from the national treasury and delivered to the pockets of the well-connected. (Tax relief? For whom?)

The NSA spying program was never about ferreting out terrorist plots. We knew that. It was simply another tool to be used to stop any person or entity which sought to uncover their criminal cabal. And the Patriot Act is more of the same. This crew will stop at nothing to protect their criminal enterprise.

So I wish the Paul Krugmans of the world would stop letting Cheney et. al. off so easy with the "incompetent" tag.

Like Liberace, they are laughing all the way to the bank.

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