Zaid Hassan, un amigo que vive en Londres y ocasional bloguero en Worldchanging escribió un artículo muy bueno sobre qué pasaría después de la posible derrota de Bush este noviembre: nada. El "sistema" sigue igual... le pueden contestar a zaid@pioneersofchange.net
A Lament on Life After Bush
So the elections are over and Bush has been ousted from the Oval Office. Life is good right? Wrong. The troops are still in Iraq, a Hummer still does 8 miles to the gallon and no one knows what to do. What's changed? What has really, really changed? Well, the one thing that's changed is that many of those who turned political in the dying days of the Bush Presidency have gone back to their day jobs safe in the knowledge that they defeated the world from the greatest threat to middle class apathy since 9-11. It’s as if all is now jake with the world, as if Bush were the problem and not the system. The self-congratulatory mood seemed somewhat narcissistic and shallow well before our Messiah Michael Moore claimed it was a great day for both democracy and America. What's going on here?I find it disturbing that so many people have pegged Bush as Global Public Enemy Number One given that he's not an original or the first of a breed. It's disturbing because he's not all that different from a long line of Public Enemies to hold Public Office. Anyone remember his father? What's different about Bush is the fact is that he decided, either out of laziness or design, to call it like it is rather than hide the truth behind a series of badly acted television moments. He’s boring, he doesn't know how to entertain us and so we're forced to examine the substance of his actions. We're forced, in other words, to confront the fact that his actions are political and miracle of miracles they impact all of us. I wonder if all it will take is a version of Bush who's a better actor to make us, once again, forget the reality of our political systems? The more Bush is demonized, the further away we get from the truth. The more he's treated as if he's something new, a demon like no other, the more we ensure that he will happen again.It's almost as if a mass, self-inflicted delusion is being perpetrated here: "If we get rid of Bush the System will work." Little, if any, attention is being given to the fact that George Bush Jnr. is a Son of the System if ever there was one. He's not an aberration, but rather someone entirely congruent with the system. He's a true blooded American President, with the genetic constitution of a Systemic Winner. Bush is the product of a political system, the political system is not a product of Bush.The current energy around ousting Bush from office stinks of mass hysteria. It’s reactionary in the worst possible way. It makes no sense to divorce Bush from the system that he so clearly belongs to. If Bush is a mosquito than the stagnant pond that he comes from is doing pretty damned well. In the coming years it will hatch scores of others, entire armies of the bastards. We'll keep flailing our arms in a futile attempt to swat them and wonder where the hell they came from. They, of course, will come from the same place that George Bush Jnr. came from - a stagnant, infested pond that we refer to as "democracy". I sit witness to indignant conversations in shrill voices that delight into pointing out what an idiot Bush is. I'm baffled at such comments because it seems to me that we're the idiots, we're the dupes who have bought into a corrupt and rotten political system. Bush and his progeny cannot lose this game as long as we keep playing. How is it that we continue to play a game that is so clearly rigged that only a fool would play it? If I were Bush I'd be shaking my head at the stupidity of an activist movement, an entire population, that thinks it can win by the current rules. The movement around getting Bush out of office is one that lacks both courage and imagination. It lacks courage because it does not really believe that the political system can be changed. It's actions are saying that the man can be changed but changing the system is beyond us. It's operating thus, not on a set of higher values but on primordial fear. It's operating not on higher human aspirations but on animal instincts. It lacks imagination because it does not see political choices beyond getting Bush out of office. It cannot fathom that there are other routes to political change beyond the ballot box. This lack of courage and imagination means that this movement will fade. All the energy and awareness that have been generated around ousting Bush from office will revert back to political amnesia and apathy – celebrations of Ronald Reagan if you will. I don't see a movement that has the capacity to generate the deep changes that we so desperately need. As such it doesn't really matter if Bush wins or loses in November. I'm sure many of you will object to the harshness of my judgments. I won't apologise for them, even as I'm deeply saddened by them. Rather, my hope is that we will start a conversation about how the heck this happened. My hope is that we begin to learn how to work with the source of our problems. My hope is that we will awaken from our collective state of delusion to change the rules of the game. Finally, my prayer is for us to be granted the courage and the imagination to do this.
A Lament on Life After Bush
So the elections are over and Bush has been ousted from the Oval Office. Life is good right? Wrong. The troops are still in Iraq, a Hummer still does 8 miles to the gallon and no one knows what to do. What's changed? What has really, really changed? Well, the one thing that's changed is that many of those who turned political in the dying days of the Bush Presidency have gone back to their day jobs safe in the knowledge that they defeated the world from the greatest threat to middle class apathy since 9-11. It’s as if all is now jake with the world, as if Bush were the problem and not the system. The self-congratulatory mood seemed somewhat narcissistic and shallow well before our Messiah Michael Moore claimed it was a great day for both democracy and America. What's going on here?I find it disturbing that so many people have pegged Bush as Global Public Enemy Number One given that he's not an original or the first of a breed. It's disturbing because he's not all that different from a long line of Public Enemies to hold Public Office. Anyone remember his father? What's different about Bush is the fact is that he decided, either out of laziness or design, to call it like it is rather than hide the truth behind a series of badly acted television moments. He’s boring, he doesn't know how to entertain us and so we're forced to examine the substance of his actions. We're forced, in other words, to confront the fact that his actions are political and miracle of miracles they impact all of us. I wonder if all it will take is a version of Bush who's a better actor to make us, once again, forget the reality of our political systems? The more Bush is demonized, the further away we get from the truth. The more he's treated as if he's something new, a demon like no other, the more we ensure that he will happen again.It's almost as if a mass, self-inflicted delusion is being perpetrated here: "If we get rid of Bush the System will work." Little, if any, attention is being given to the fact that George Bush Jnr. is a Son of the System if ever there was one. He's not an aberration, but rather someone entirely congruent with the system. He's a true blooded American President, with the genetic constitution of a Systemic Winner. Bush is the product of a political system, the political system is not a product of Bush.The current energy around ousting Bush from office stinks of mass hysteria. It’s reactionary in the worst possible way. It makes no sense to divorce Bush from the system that he so clearly belongs to. If Bush is a mosquito than the stagnant pond that he comes from is doing pretty damned well. In the coming years it will hatch scores of others, entire armies of the bastards. We'll keep flailing our arms in a futile attempt to swat them and wonder where the hell they came from. They, of course, will come from the same place that George Bush Jnr. came from - a stagnant, infested pond that we refer to as "democracy". I sit witness to indignant conversations in shrill voices that delight into pointing out what an idiot Bush is. I'm baffled at such comments because it seems to me that we're the idiots, we're the dupes who have bought into a corrupt and rotten political system. Bush and his progeny cannot lose this game as long as we keep playing. How is it that we continue to play a game that is so clearly rigged that only a fool would play it? If I were Bush I'd be shaking my head at the stupidity of an activist movement, an entire population, that thinks it can win by the current rules. The movement around getting Bush out of office is one that lacks both courage and imagination. It lacks courage because it does not really believe that the political system can be changed. It's actions are saying that the man can be changed but changing the system is beyond us. It's operating thus, not on a set of higher values but on primordial fear. It's operating not on higher human aspirations but on animal instincts. It lacks imagination because it does not see political choices beyond getting Bush out of office. It cannot fathom that there are other routes to political change beyond the ballot box. This lack of courage and imagination means that this movement will fade. All the energy and awareness that have been generated around ousting Bush from office will revert back to political amnesia and apathy – celebrations of Ronald Reagan if you will. I don't see a movement that has the capacity to generate the deep changes that we so desperately need. As such it doesn't really matter if Bush wins or loses in November. I'm sure many of you will object to the harshness of my judgments. I won't apologise for them, even as I'm deeply saddened by them. Rather, my hope is that we will start a conversation about how the heck this happened. My hope is that we begin to learn how to work with the source of our problems. My hope is that we will awaken from our collective state of delusion to change the rules of the game. Finally, my prayer is for us to be granted the courage and the imagination to do this.
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