Stupid White Men-- and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! - Michael Moore [91]
Listen, before any of you good Democrats start considering at what temperature books burn, let me get this out of the way: George W Bush is worse than Al Gore or Bill Clinton. No question about it.
But what exactly does that mean? If you put any two humans side by side and force someone to choose which one is “worse,” they’ll usually choose the one who’s the bigger jerk. Hitler was “worse” than Mussolini, a Chevy is “worse” than a Ford, I am definitely “worse” than my wife. So what? This is a child’s game. The truth is, the choice between Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” and Clintonism is no more meaningful than the choice between castor oil and cherry-flavored Robitussin.
The Bush II administration began with Junior overturning a number of executive orders issued by President Clinton. Immediately he was made out to be some sort of monster. This was an important moment—symbolically—for the Democrats. They needed the public to believe that Bush was putting arsenic into the water and trying to poison us all. They wanted the people of America to think Bush was going to tear up the national forests, cut off abortion funding, and rape Alaska because he was only concerned with undoing all the good that President Clinton had done.
What’s never mentioned is that Clinton spent eight years doing little or nothing with any of these problems, and then, with hours left in his administration, decided to try to leave office looking good (he was always looking good)—or set up Bush to look like the heavy. Either way, it worked.
Because the truth is, George W. Bush did little more than CONTINUE the policies of the last eight years of the Clinton/Gore administration. For eight long years, Clinton/Gore resisted all efforts and recommendations to reduce carbon dioxide in our air and arsenic in our water. just one month before the 2000 election, Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle and sixteen other Democrats successfully led the way to STOP any reduction of arsenic in the water. Why? Because Clinton and the Democrats were beholden to the rich bastards who had financed their campaigns—and who didn’t want the levels of arsenic in the water changed.
Take the fact that Clinton/Gore was the first administration in twenty-five years NOT to demand higher fuel efficiency standards from Detroit. Under their watch, in other words, millions of barrels of oil were unnecessarily refined and spewed out into our air. Ronald Reagan, that icon of conservatism, had a better environmental record on this front: his administration ordered that cars get more mile’s per gallon. Under his successor, Bush 1, the standards were made even stricter. But under Clinton? Nothing. How many more people will die from cancer, how much faster will global warming proceed, thanks to Bill and Al’s camaraderie with one of their chief patrons, the top lobbyist for the Big Three auto companies—none other than Andrew Card, who, not surprisingly, is currently chief of staff for Clinton’s logical extension, George W. Bush.
So is there a difference between Democrats and Republicans? Sure. The Democrats say one thing (“Save the planet!”) and then do another—quietly holding hands behind the scenes with the bastards who make this world a dirtier, meaner place. The Republicans just come right out and give the bastards a corner office in the West Wing. That’s the difference.
There’s an argument, of course, that it’s more evil to tell someone you’re going to protect them and then rob them than to just go ahead and stick them up. Evil that’s out in the open, not hiding in a liberal sheep’s clothing, can be much easier to confront and eradicate. Which would you rather have, that roach you see running across the floor, or a house full of invisible termites buried in the wall? The roach may carry disease, but at least you know it