"The richest and militarily most
powerful nation is on its knees at the end of Bush's reign. Even the most
coherent solution to the current crisis - the injection of capital directly
into banks - came from overseas, from the United Kingdom, and was replicated in
the United States. It's all incredible."
WASHINGTON: Between the
American election on November 4 and the inaugural of a new president, the world
will still have 77 days of George W. Bush.
Thankfully, Bush won't escape
history so easily: thanks to the world of images, or the “culture industry,” as
coined by Horkheimer and Adorno,
Bush will finish by being widely exposed to the public in the excellent W,
a new film by director Oliver Stone (maker of JFK, TheDoors,
among others) - which has a spectacular and moving performance by Josh Brolin in the role of the President [trailer below].
[Editor's Note: 'Culture
industry' is a term coined by Theodor Adorno (1903-1969)
and Max Horkheimer (1895-1973), who argued that
popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods to
manipulate the masses into passivity ].
Even without being unkind to
Bush (on the contrary), the film ends up serving as one more nail in the coffin
of the President and his family, which for 200 years has been pecking around American
power.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
The film is also a slap in
the face of Americans who elected him twice. The second time in 2004, by the
way, Bush and the Republicans gained complete victory: in the popular vote, in
the Electoral College, in the House and the Senate and in a majority of states.
Between the re-election of
Bush and now, the end of his second term, the U.S. passed through the height of
unilateralism, arrogance and the use of force, to make an unprecedented call
for international cooperation. If the United States goes bankrupt, Bush’s
America will be the most spectacular case of collapse in contemporary history.
In four years
[2000-2004], the destiny of the United States and of Bush had turned water into
wine, with the strong negative impulse exuded by the President and his small
and obtuse core of power. In Washington during 2003 and 2004, I had the
privilege of reporting the facts before the Iraq War and, more to the point,
the reelection of Bush. The U.S. was behaving like a different country. The major
newspapers devoutly believed almost
everything the President said. People stocked up on water, food and batteries
in their homes at the smallest sign of a new terrorist catastrophe. The Patriot
Act allowed for the monitoring of millions of phone calls among common
Americans, and the government filled the atmosphere with the most potent fear
they could create.
That's how Bush got
reelected, by cheating the easily-deceived average North American with stories
of terror.
Stone's film is just a sign
of the melancholic end of the Bush era. The once all-powerful advisors to the
president - with the power to record, interrogate and imprison - have now been exposed
in a way that was unimaginable four years ago. To the point of the main gay
(and free) newspaper in Washington, the Blade, asked this week in its
headline: Is Condie Gay? , referencing
nothing less than U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - a spinster similar
to our mayor Kassab [the thought-to-be gay mayor of São
Paulo, Brazil ].
The Bush years have also permitted
an indelible crack to appear in the largest economy in the world. It was
discovered that the U.S. would barely have grown over the past five years if it
hadn't been pushed along by consumption. Surprise: it was financed by unworthy loans
that gyrated into the abyss. The country is broken.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
The richest (?) and militarily
most powerful nation is on its knees at the end of Bush's reign. Even the most
coherent solution to the current crisis - the injection of capital directly
into banks - came from overseas, from the United Kingdom, and was replicated in
the United States. It's all incredible.
But as extraordinary as this may
seem, with his arrogance and ignorance, Bush may have rendered an immense
service.
If U.S. growth is close to
zero over the next two or three years, which is very possible, the size of the
Chinese economy will have increased from one third of the U.S. to more than half.
Several other emerging countries will also gain a larger slice of global activity.
At least in economic terms, it will be a different world.
Perhaps this is Bush’s central
legacy.
Fernando
Canzian, 42, is a special reporter for Folha. He was
the managing editor and editor of Brasil and Painel, and a correspondent in Washington and New York. He
won the PrêmioEsso in
2006. He writes on Mondays.
Fernando
