What I do get, though

There are some of you who figure I'm just another Bush basher. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Sure, he was an awful president, but I can hardly remember a time when we had a good one. It's an impossible job, I suppose. I certainly wouldn't want it, but there are those who do, for any number of reasons. I don't particularly care what they are, because for as long as I can remember, none of them -- at least judging by their actions -- had much to do with me or you or any of us little folk. I can't help but feel that they really don't care all that much.

And for those short-term thinkers who think I'm playing the left-right card, I'll have to disappoint you there too. First of all, the political left and right was a creation of the 19th century, and that's where the idea belongs. We should be beyond that. After all, it is 2014. Even more poignant is the fact that the US doesn't know what left and right is. Politics there, when seen from the outside, where I am, is simply a matter of conservative and even more conservative. To be perfectly honest, America became a one-party system a long time ago: that one party may have two tiny wings, if you will, but truth be told, there's really not a dime's bit of difference between them when you get to looking closer.

No, it's all about power in the end. With Obama, it's not always obvious, only when he starts persecuting whistleblowers or droning innocent civilians. With Bush, it was easier. It was more obvious. His whole crew was about power, and violence, and they didn't hesitate to let everybody know. Clinton was truly slick enough to create enough diversions that we overlooked his deference to Wall Street and his commitment to US hegemony. Bush I was just a weak Reagan, and Reagan was an actor, pretending to be president but really just trampling over little people and waging fake wars for fake reasons, supporting wherever possible macho Central American dictators. Carter got the boot for not acting macho enough; Nixon and his henchman Kissinger were all about secret illegal wars in and around Vietnam. The top priority, in all cases? The common factor amongst them all? Image. An image of power. An image that scares others into doing your bidding. The unfortunate state of affairs is that really starting with Reagan, it has become more direct, more in-your-face, more violent, more aggressive, more intolerant, more ideological, and downright meaner.

And oh, by the way, this is not about government power either. Americans love their limited-government ideology, but oddly enough, those who are truly wielding the power can use that to distract most people from what is really going on. The shredding of the Constitution, the gutting of the Bill of Rights, the pervasive surveillance, are one side of the coin, but it's not because the government per se has something up its sleeve. No, as the old saying goes, "follow the money": the supremacy of property over human rights, the recent Supreme Court rulings on money as speech, the unjust legal system, the for-profit prison system, the privatization of the education system, and all the rest of these moves are put in place not so the government has more control, but rather that certain moneyed interests have more control ... of the government. When you take a step back, you realize quickly that what we normally think of as "the government" is merely a strawman for the real powers that be.

In keeping with theme that started this thread, I can only add, that going with this particular flow strongly reduces the likelihood that what you're doing is honorable.