Bush vs. Enlightenment

President Bush continued his all-out media blitz this week, hoping to convince America that he is neither inept nor asleep at the wheel. Unfortunately, “Staying The Course” has come to mean staying the course of mismanagement and failure, and all the sloganeering in the world won’t change that fact in the public mind.

But Iraq isn’t the only damning problem for Bush. Many Katrina victims still live in a financial limbo thanks to the continuing failures of FEMA. In fact, the President has yet to appoint anyone to oversee the massive rebuilding he promised, which may be why little rebuilding is getting done and may never get done. The way things are going, New Orleans will soon cease to exist as we knew it.

Meanwhile, healthcare costs continue to skyrocket, real wages continue to stagnate, interest rates and inflation are rising, and heating oil is going through the roof. So it’s no wonder the average American feels squeezed and fearful. But hey, corporate profits and dividends are up, so at least the rich among us are getting richer. If only some of the fat would trickle down, but it hasn’t yet, not by a long shot.

Another absurd chapter in our national political catastrophe concerns pharmacy workers who refuse to dispense medications (usually birth control) on grounds that the medications violate their personal beliefs. So why did they ever accept jobs at companies known to dispense objectionable medications? Are these pharmacists anything but thoroughly hypocritical?

Imagine exempting certain citizens from paying taxes because their religion deems taxes immoral. Imagine pacifist soldiers being allowed into combat duty. Or imagine a doctor belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ, Scientist. A patient comes into the emergency room with a gaping wound, but the doctor refuses to perform a blood transfusion, claiming the procedure goes against personal religious doctrine. Such doctor would get tossed from the hospital in a hurry, and for good reason.

But some backwards-thinking, convoluted, hypocritical fundamentalist conservatives would rather dispense with reason and side with superstition, myth and magic, screaming that to require pharmacy workers to do their jobs would violate their religious freedom. The freedom to force their superstitions upon others, apparently? If you believe a birth-control prescription is wrong, then don't get one. And stay out of businesses that offend your own values.

Whether it’s on the subject of Iraq, terrorism, the economy, supreme court nominees, social issues or tax legislation, the Radical Right takes every opportunity to yammer on about values as if they have exclusive rights to the word. But a review of their actions, decisions and policies leads to a single conclusion: they care about rich people getting richer and religious extremists gaining greater control of our country. It’s not surprising that these two groups--fundamentalists and the wealthy--had by far the largest impact on the successful re-election of the radical Bush team.

Few things are more bizarre than to hear non-stop rhetoric from our leaders about giving power to the poor people of Iraq and stopping Islamic fundamentalism, while the same leaders continue to push for the opposite here at home. Islam certainly needs an Enlightenment, but so do we.