Bush’s ‘Gaffe’ Isn’t Merely a Laughing Matter
It’s time we start taking the opportunity to hold hypocrites on “our” side to account so we really can Build Back Better
It’s time we start taking the opportunity to hold hypocrites on “our” side to account so we really can Build Back Better
One of the main reasons I struggle to take many of the so-called “leaders of the free world” seriously on their opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the lack of self-awareness and self-reflection regarding the unjustified, illegal war against Iraq.
I remember when the Ukraine invasion began I had a brief ponder wander through my head, “Will this be cause for self-reflection about Iraq?” But it quickly wandered out, as the past several years have repeatedly shown me that the vast majority of Western power players and their cheerleaders seem to lack this quality. The hubris is, at times, laughable.
So in wanders our ol’ pal George Bush, with this “gaffe,” stating in a talk at his George W. Bush Institute, “In contrast Russian elections are rigged, political opponents are imprisoned or otherwise eliminated from participating in the electoral process. The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq…I mean, of Ukraine (ha ha)…Iraq…anyway…ah…I’m 75.” (you can watch him say this in the first minute of the video below).
I assume the “contrast” is with the United States so let’s run down those one-by-one.
1) “Russian elections are rigged” — In 2016’s Democratic Primary, we learned from Hillary Clinton insiders as well as the Wikileaks Democratic National Committee’s email leaks that the Clinton campaign basically controlled the pocketbook of the supposedly independent Democratic National Committee and also that these parties worked with with the likes of CNN to give Hillary debate questions before her debates with Bernie Sanders, among many other back-room dealings that titled that contest in Hillary’s favor. Brazille may be uncomfortable with the word “rig,” preferring “cancer,” but that seems to be semantics. No matter how you cut it, the fix was in in 2016 and, well, 2020’s Democratic Primary wasn’t without its share of shady back-room practices. Unfortunately these days, rigged elections are the norm, not the exception, in US presidential politics.
2) “Political opponents are imprisoned or otherwise eliminated…” — let’s just stop Dubya there and put Julian Assange or Edward Snowden on the phone and ask them how this one landed for them.
3) “The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq” — -well, he said it, but let’s not forget that despite much opposition from the people of the world with the largest pre-war protest marches in human history in early 2003 before the invasion of Iraq and despite member countries of the UN Security Council saying they would vote against an invasion (those so-called checks and balances), George W. Bush went ahead and started that war in Iraq which unleashed a human tragedy on the people of that country and which, as many of us were screaming as loudly as we could in those protests, was based on a lie, using the trauma of 9/11 to execute a plan that the neoconservatives had put into writing in the late 1990s with their Project for a New American Century.
A Bit of Mundane Astrology To Tie this Together
Since 2008, we’ve been living in the Pluto in Capricorn transit. In early 2024, Pluto will finish this transit. In astrology, when an outer planet like Pluto is finishing its transit through a sign, it often does some of its most serious work. The main significance of this is for Pluto, the Draino of the heavens, to root deep into our social and political structures and reveal where they lack integrity. One of the most entertaining ways this process works is through so-called gaffes by people who led (or still lead) said institutions.
However, once the person says something like this, the key is for us not to simply laugh and carry on. One of the gifts of learning the language of astrology is that it invites us to co-create with the energies of the Universe. Thus, we can witness something like Bush’s comment and immediately recognize it as an opportunity to point out that he’s following the Pluto in Capricorn script, revealing hypocrisy and inviting us to restore integrity to the System. A clip like this is easy to laugh about — I’m all about encouraging laughs! — but we can’t let our default cynicism cause us to let it slide by. Instead, this is an opportunity to recognize that this is not a gaffe, that this is George W. Bush having the truth come out of his own mouth when he least wants it to.
What is The Truth?
The truth is the United States government has been the world leader in wars that brutalize the human spirit over the past several decades and the war in Ukraine is just as much about continuing the feeding frenzy of the military-industrial complex on US taxpayer money as it is anything else. Just as with US forces in Iraq, cheerleaders for Ukraine will dress their language up in humanitarian pleas, but underneath those pleas are dreams of dollar signs as the US Congress dutifully signs away another $40 billion to the War Machine while American mothers are unable to find baby formula on supermarket shelves.
The truth is that the current US president is a member of the so-called opposition party to Bush, yet he was one of the biggest cheerleaders for going to war with Iraq, joining 76 other US senators to authorize the move and being one of the biggest cheerleaders to “take Saddam down” even before 9/11.
The truth is, this is not a government or a System that cares about its people, which is why so many of us who have seen through its propaganda over the years (or worse, experienced the impact of the callousness of this System) were quick to question the line promoted during the COVID-19 Era that this government cares about us, even when it meant some of our friends and allies called us “conspiracy theorists.”
The truth is, Bush — and those in attendance — were able to laugh about his gaffe because Bush and his supporters don’t feel they will be held to account because that’s been their experience so far.
Conclusion: Time To Grow Up and Take Ownership of Our Social Systems
So my question is: how do we move forward? How can we hold people like Bush to account? One way is to spread awareness. Share this clip far and wide and say how you’re sick and tired of people like him getting away with atrocities like Iraq and that it’s disgusting that he gives moralistic, hypocritical speeches like this one. Don’t allow Bush or anyone like him to be rehabilitated unless they show some serious remorse by calling out their side when they commit the same mistakes they made, rather than pointing the finger at the Putin’s of the world.
If we are going to make the most of these few remaining years of Pluto in Capricorn, we’re all going to have to grow up and take a look at the structures and institutions in our societies that lack integrity, promoting true reformation. Only if we do that can we then be taken seriously when we call out similar flaws in the structures and institutions in societies outside of ours.
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