Incompetent Design

In yesterday's Washington Post, fellow traveler Dan Froomkin posed the worthwhile, if not after-the-fact question, "What has Bush done to the government?"

His point being that various failures of the last seven years -- Katrina, Iraq, political appointments, et al -- have been the result of government incompetence. It's a logical and totally correct assertion, but it fundamentally misses the point.

It's not about whether the government is incompetent, broken, fucked up-- and it's not even about how. We know the answers to both of those questions. It's about why.

With this Administration, it boils down to this: as bad as you think it is, you haven't even scratched the surface.

That's because their nefarity is almost beyond the scope of rational thinking. To understand what the modern-day Republicans are doing and why, one must contemplate conspiratorial scenarios. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean it isn't true.

Why has the government become so incompetent so quickly and so thoroughly? Because that's exactly what the Bush corporatists and the Cheney neocon-men want. It isn't an accident or bad execution or the passive dumbing down of America over centuries. This is premeditated, partner.

Over the last seven years, government incompetence has been an intentional objective of this administration, to be used as leverage to drive people into the waiting arms of private industry (as well as to consolidate executive power, but that's a story for another day). That's where the profit's at, and that's what it's all it about. That's the only thing that matters. That's what is driving US policy -- all of it -- immigration policy, foreign policy, health care policy, environmental policy, energy policy . . .

Remember Bush's privatization kick for social security (it's baa-ack), health care, and even education? These are all federal government-level issues that Bush's handlers want to hand over to the profit-producting private sector, and they're using broader policy goals like tax deductions, the War in Iraq, and intentional government impotence to force the issue.

This whole incompetence strategy has been about redistributing the wealth and power of the federal government into the hands of C-level executives, board members, and the private corporations they control and which in turn control American policy. The whole ownership society and privatization of social security schemes are about tricking the American population into thinking that they can get inside the velvet ropes with the real fat-cats. It is about getting us to invest in individual securities, mutual funds, and sketchy mortgages so that we will be compelled to support the corrupt policy decisions of our profitocracy by voting for candidates who support corporate largesse at all costs. But the reality is trickle-down theory. The general public might get a few copecks that fall through the fingers of the rich and powerful, but the rich and powerful are the ones making all the money, as well as all the decisions.

The conservatives, who've been chewing on the welfare state since the New Deal, used to advocate small government based on libertarian principles of privacy and rugged individualism. Now their small government rhetoric is just talking points from the Chamber of Commerce. Modern conservatives, such as Grover "the bathtub" Norquist, see the federal government as a foolish annoyance blocking their access to the gold mines of the US Treasury.

The war in Iraq is about oil, revenge, power, and delusions of grandeur, but it's mostly about looting the US Treasury -- and so is the conservative incompetence campaign of the last seven years.

A dysfunctional government serves as confirmation of the corporatists argument that private industry is more efficient and innovative -- not to mention profitable. It's a beautiful self-fulfilling prophecy the conservatives have set in motion. Set horribly short-sighted, greed-driven policies that intentionally benefit the rich while at the same time destroying the very structure of the government, then turn around and point to the crumbling government as justification for passing more intentionally destructive legislation. Then just repeat, re-elect, and repeat

Money is like matter: it is neither created nor destroyed, it simply changes hands. The conservatives want it to change hands from the public coffers (where it benefits everybody) to the private sector (where it benefits primarily the elite). Figure it out America.

The war in Iraq is costing about $12 billion a month. Where do you think all that money is going? Why are there more mercenaries making $1,000 a day in Iraq than there are US government soldiers making $1,000 a month? Why can't the federal government or the US military account for millions of dollars in cash and weapons that purportedly went to Iraq? Why was there zero oversight of war spending from 2003 to 2007? Why haven't the Bush warmongers ever given any clear idea of how much they envision spending on Iraq and the War on Terra'?

The conservatives have been working on their redistribution of wealth strategy since the Reagan years. Trickle-down economics, supply-side economics, tax cuts upon tax cuts that benefit primarily the wealthy while starving the federal government of the very funds that would make it vibrant and consequential, massive deficits (who holds those notes and who profits from that debt? Who has a concerted interest in seeing crushing deficits and who are their enablers?), systematic incompetence.

It's all come to a head in the Dumbya administration, which is the perfect conservative storm. Wielding all three branches of government and the battle ax of 9/11 above the heads of a cowed and disinterested American public, the conservatives have spent the last seven years in an intentional, targeted, selfish, and greed-driven effort to destroy the federal government. It has been orchestrated by the conservatives who have ingeniously used a defenseless federal government as the patsy in its own assasination. (Playing the role of the Warren Commission: the Democrats.)

Bush bears some responsibility, but mostly for being lazy. The confident, resolute, sure-as-shooting, happy idiot has been the perfect front man for the conservatives' incompetence ruse. It makes perfect sense. Bush is an idiot. He barely speaks English, surrounds himself with unqualified yes men, and can't find his way out of a paper bag. While the corporatists that really pull the strings of the Republican party are anonymously counting their money, the poor hayseed American public, who just realized that the Music Man made off with their monorail money, is bumbling along behind Bush with pitchforks and torches babbling about incompetence.

In his piece, Froomkin references author Jonathon Chait, who writes in his book, The Big Con, "lying has become a systematic necssity . . . integral to the Republican economic agenda." Exactly. Yet still, legitimate seekers of truth and accountability like Froomkin are unable to think outside of the box and realize that the incomptence is just an act, a shiny object, a red herring, misdirection intended to disguise the real enterprise.

Until journalists expand their minds and start questioning current events in the three-dimensional universe of ulterior motives, greed, and conspiracy, until they realize that Hilary and Dan Rather are right -- that there is a vast right-wing conspiracy -- the "news" will continue to be nothing more than a propaganda vehicle for those who have the power and conviction to use it for their own dark agendas.