Ames Progressive

As the graph below shows, “Afghanistan” is back, “taxes” is big, “terrorism” is bigger, “Iraq” looms biggest, and “Earth” makes a brief appearance, says hi to a couple of people, then takes off. Another popular word in Bush’s final State of the Union Address on January 28 was the word “trust”. Early in his speech he introduced his “trust” theme by telling us that “the most reliable guide for our country is the collective wisdom of ordinary citizens.” So that explains why “in all we do, we must trust in the ability of free peoples to make wise decisions, and empower them to improve their lives for their futures.” Later in the speech Bush, in a spontaneous overflow of over-practiced feeling, asserted that “we must trust in the good heart of the American people and empower them to serve their neighbors in need.”

But for such a trusting man leading such a trustworthy nation, George Bush is peculiarly eager to spy on us, listen to our phone conversations, and sneak around behind our backs and out of our sight. Bush urged the Congress both to renew the legislation that has temporarily allowed illegal wiretapping of phone calls in America and also to pass legislation granting immunity to telecommunications companies that have broken the law (that’s why they need the legislation) by complying with the Bush administration and listening to our conversations. Trust the American people, but not any further than you can throw them, we suppose.

According to Bush, we also “must trust people with their own money and empower them to grow our economy.” And, remember, it’s “ordinary citizens” whom we are encouraged to trust. But the empowerment he encouraged has very little to do with ordinary citizens, if being ordinary means belonging to the overwhelming majority. Bush was mainly referring to his notorious tax cuts (he called them “tax relief”) for the extremely wealthy and for large corporations. He trusts THOSE people with their money and glibly believes that by stuffing their pockets with cash he will cause some to trickle down their legs to the ordinary citizens beneath. But cash doesn’t trickle, it congeals and expands and stays in place.

The man so desperate to convince us that he trusts us is the man who cannot be trusted. We know this. We know this for a fact. George Bush has lied to the American people over and over through his disastrous and secretive presidency and his lies have directly caused enormous human suffering in our world. A widely reported study by the Center for Public Integrity cataloged 260 lies told by Bush about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction and connections to al-Qaeda in the two years after September 11. These lies were Bush’s contributions to the staggering total of 935 lies told by top administration officials in the build-up to the war. And it is not as though he lied, admitted it, and did his very best never to do it again. No, the very statements he made in 2002 and 2003 before the invasion of Iraq are being repeated today in an attempt to create support to attack Iran. Was it in his 2003 or 2008 address that he said “come clean about your nuclear intentions and past actions, stop your oppression at home, cease your support for terror abroad”? Is Iraq or Iran the object of these imperatives? How could someone with such an abysmal record expect us to believe him when he says the very same things he has lyingly said so many times before?

With Nancy Pelosi and Dick Cheney chuckling together behind him, a pathetic show of force and conviction on the surface of his face, a stand-clap-stand-clap clusterbot before him, Bush insisted that he trusts us – indeed, that he MUST trust us – but we know what he was saying: trust ME. But we don’t trust the man any more than he trusts us: not at all.