"It don't mean nothing to me for you to show up tomorrow morning with your head blown off." --Frank Lucas, from the movie, 'American Gangster
THIS generation's 'American Gangsters' are imminently more dangerous and pernicious than the pimps, drug dealers, and thieves who roam and rule over our nation's most vulnerable and malleable citizens. This generation's ruling class of gangsters have been elevated to the highest levels of our government by Bush and his corporatist cronies.
No Don or Godfather has ever enjoyed a more effective illusion of clean hands than Bush Cheney, or any of the cabal of military and oil executives who've been allowed to occupy the most influential offices of authority and power in America, or in the world. Operating a nationwide and global protection scheme behind the front of the American presidency, Bush has used our military and our own involuntary contributions to government as enforcers for whatever ambition he or his peeps in crime imagine they're entitled to commit with impunity.
Their standard method of exercising their assumed power and authority is the shakedown; effected in their early diversion of tax dollars to their rich corporate benefactors, to their theocratic opening of the Treasury to 'faith-based' evangelists; from their perpetual feathering of secret Defense accounts and the erection of new 'intelligence' bureaucracies with unaccountable budgets exploiting the 9-11 killings and American fear of another attack, to the hijacking of the bulk of our nation's defenses to support and defend their Iraqi coup.
The Bush administration began their term tearing down the budget surplus the Clinton administration had achieved and talking the nation into a recession. The 'solution' (championed by their Fed chairman Greenspan) was to give the bulk of the surplus money in the Treasury, which was being used to pay down our national debt, to the top 2% of taxpayers, warning the rest of America that their now-stressed lives would get even worse if they didn't allow their wealthy employers and their lackeys to skim their take off of the top of the kitty.
The 9-11 killings were used as cover for the predicted, calculated shortfall in tax revenue as programs and services Americans rely on for survival and well-being were threatened by the Bush administration with extinction or severe reduction to make up the difference as he embarked on his manufactured assault on Iraq. At the same time, he embarked on a dual campaign of fear and intimidation at home, warning Americans of another devastating attack on the nation from terror suspects allowed to escape into the mountains of Afghanistan as Bush used the bulk of the pursuing forces to secure his coup of Kabul.
Throwing out the only effective wedge against Iranian expansion in the Mideast when he overthrew Saddam, Bush destabilized the entire region and inflamed the very forces of opposition to U.S. expansionism he was busy feigning concern about as he expanded the scope of his cynical 'terror war." It was a perfect crime. He let the most pernicious fear of Americans run free for over six years since the 9-11 killings, while he waged predictably and deliberately inflammatory attacks against Iraqis, taunting 'terrorists' to attack our soldiers there.
As he perpetuated the initial wreck of lives and livelihoods in America with his deliberately reckless militarism, Bush unilaterally expanded his assumed authority and influence under the guise of 'protecting' the nation from the explosive effects of his own violent constructions abroad. It's no accident that none of the initiatives or mechanizations of this administration have produced any of the security or insulation from some outside aggression. Bush deliberately ensured that there would be some sort of backlash against any one of the military intimidations he instigated abroad. Americans are to sacrifice their entire lives and livelihoods to defend the nation against the spawns of Bush's calculated violence.
So it was, this week, that the Bush administration set out to shake the country down once more to enable them to continue their discredited, rejected occupation of Iraq without the pesky interruption of democracy. Over 200,000 civilian military workers jobs were threatened with furlough by the Pentagon -- mechanics, support personnel, medical; the most vulnerable Americans among their military enterprise -- as Bush was threatened by Congress with their refusal to continue funding his fiasco.
This is some gangster shit, make no mistake about it. Targeting vulnerable Americans for job cuts right before the holidays as blackmail for their Iraq money is a vicious and ruthless act.
This is from an administration which has had no compunction at all about promoting the taunts and threats of the very terrorists the pretend to be pursuing. This is from an president who, today, said that Pakistani dictator Musharraf hadn't yet "crossed the line" in jailing all of his political opponents before his country's election, citing a threat from "terrorists" as he unilaterally suspended their constitution, unilaterally disbanded and replaced their Supreme Court (all the while campaigning for the presidency in the military garb he's worn since his coup.)
This is from an administration who has repeatedly singled out the most vulnerable of Americans to intimidate into resigned compliance with their anti-democratic shakedowns. Bush and his corporate cabal are today's ultimate American Gangsters. Yea, boi!!
I'll steal a quote from the celebrated American gangster, Frank Lucas, in my reply to Bush's own imperious shakedown. "This is my home (Bush). This is where my business is, my wife, my family. This is my country, I ain't goin' nowhere."
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