BuzzFlash
presents Southern Style
by Rebecca Knight
July 18, 2002
If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It
by Rebecca Knight
"Fix" is an interesting word. It has many meanings and not all of them good. Most of them apply to current political situations in the United States. For example, the resident of the White House seems to envision himself as Mr. Fix It. Well, George W. perhaps you should leave well enough alone. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
In the southern vernacular the phrase "fixing to" is commonly used to describe a situation when one is on the verge of or preparing to take a particular action. Let me warn my readers that this column is going to be a major rant. So, fair warning given, I am fixing to have a major hissy fit! I am not just angry, I am damn mad!
One definition of "fix" is a difficult situation or predicament. The United States is definitely in a fix. We are in one of the most outrageous predicaments in our history. We have a president who is ill equipped for the job and who sits in his position simply by benefit of who he is, the son of a former president. Nothing in his background provides an illustration of the level of intelligent acumen required to prepare an individual to be leader of the free world. Yet, there he is pontificating from the Oval Office about what America needs to do on issues that are most obviously beyond his intellectual abilities. Sure, he may have brilliant advisers around him, but the man in charge has to make the final decisions. The man in charge has to understand the complicated ramifications of actions taken. There is no question that George W. Bush has risen far beyond his level of incompetence.
"Fix" is also defined as influencing an outcome by improper or unlawful means. During campaign 2000 voters were witness to two major candidates with widely divergent backgrounds. Bush presented a case for his alleged compassionate conservatism. His background represented anything but compassion for the average working American or the impoverished. With the help of the media he was able to dupe many voters into believing that he was just a good ole boy with their interests at heart. All evidence pointed to him being anything but that. He strutted and smirked and gave responses to questions that were so lacking in of depth that they could have been given by any simpleton.
Mark Crispin Miller, who wrote the brilliant book "The Bush Dyslexicon," pointed out that Bush's speech patterns represented his true beliefs. When speaking on certain topics Bush was coherent, but when speaking about the troubles confronting average Americans requiring compassion or understanding Bush mumbled, stumbled, lost his train of thought, and was unable to make a coherent sentence. This pattern is still true today.
Yet, the Bush team's plan of painting him as something he was not worked so well that he managed to end Election Day in a dead heat with Al Gore. Even though Gore was far ahead in the national popular vote count and obviously more Floridians wanted Gore, it did not end with Gore as president. The "fix" was in.
In Florida, The Bush camp made statements and took actions wildly divergent from stated campaign positions regarding allowing more authority to states. When it became advantageous for them to disregard the authority of Florida election laws and the Florida Supreme Court, they pounded the Gore team and the media with lies about the votes being counted, recounted, recounted, and recounted. Then they headed straight to the federal court system. They knew all along the most likely path to the White House for them was through the U.S. Supreme Court. It worked like a charm. The American voters did not choose George W. Bush. The Supreme Court "fixed" a system that had worked for over 200 years and installed Bush in the Oval Office.
The news media is wholly responsible for putting Bush in the White House. They failed to do any in-depth reporting on the Harken insider trading, Bush's AWOL situation, Bush's alcoholism, Bush's cocaine abuse, and the Bush team's misrepresentations of his true record in Texas. When he was strutting around the country, speaking in ridiculous sound bites about topics ranging from the economy to his record in Texas, there was no attempt to present contradictory facts. No, they perceived the juicier story worth reporting the alleged "reinventing" of Al Gore. If anyone was "reinventing," it was George W. Bush.
Many Americans were outraged and are still outraged over the Florida election debacle. Where were the media and where were Americans? Why did we not rise up in protest? We should have! And we still are silent in the face of no investigation on the part of Congress, no meaningful election reform, no uniformity in voting standards, and no actions taken that will protect us from the same situation occurring again. We could very well face another "fixed" election without major reform.
On the day of Bush's inauguration protesters were out in full force, but the media turned their collective backs and barely covered that story. They painted a glowing picture of the ascendancy of Bush 43, son of Bush 41. Bush is still protested everywhere he goes, especially in foreign countries. Yet, we barely see a blip of this in the national media. Is there any wonder how Bush maintains such high poll approval ratings? When the media fails to report the negative aspects of a president, this is the result we get. The American people are so complacent that they get their news from the sixty-second sound bite. They don't even attempt to understand the actions taken on their behalf that slowly lead us into a quagmire of failed policies and result in the destruction of successes achieved by previous administrations.
Upon inauguration Bush immediately began dismantling previously agreed to policies. On his first full day in office, Bush reinstated the "gag rule" preventing international family planning clinics from receiving U.S. funds if they so much as mentioned the word "abortion." He ignored the Hart/Rudman report on terrorism and gave Cheney the responsibility for investigating terrorism. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the intelligence community was restricted in investigating the bin Laden's of the world. Bush turned his back on foreign policy, ignoring the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. He came out against Kyoto, reversed many Clinton environmental policies, reduced funding for women's issues, withdrew from the ABM treaty, pushed for the missile shield, and passed his highly touted tax cut. The first sign of his penchant for secrecy was his executive order reversing the 1978 law on presidential papers. Bush proceeded to take multiple vacations and was on vacation while being warned by other nations and our own intelligence agencies that a major terrorist attack on the U.S. was imminent. You know the story. The disastrous actions or inactions of Bush have put us in this "fix" and it is not a good place to be.
Recently on CNN, Aaron Brown said, "Summer life is going on. It's just different. Everything is." You got that one right, Aaron. Everything is different. Bush has made sure of that. During the campaign, Bush talked down the economy. We went into a recession that we are struggling to recover from. Bush blamed Clinton, even though the Bush tax cut is part of the reason we have no funds available to cover the increase in spending on security and defense. The Bush tax cut was supposed to boost the economy, yet we have used the Social Security Trust Fund, are back into deficit spending, the national debt is going up again, and unemployment has risen. We have multiple corporations revealing corruption resulting in their bankruptcies and the miserable state of a falling stock market. Bush blames Clinton even though he and Cheney are under investigation for their own possible corruption. We have lived through the most horrific attack on our own soil in our history. The Bush administration blames Clinton, even though there is overwhelming evidence of the Clinton administration's actions against terrorism. It wasn't Clinton who had warnings of 9/11 on his desk, it was Bush.
The worst change in America is the Bush-supported reduction in our civil liberties. It started with the Patriot Act immediately following 9/11. Then came the idea of military tribunals and the many actions taken by the Ashcroft Justice Department to round up suspected terrorists and deny them the usual rights to the justice system.
Now Bush and company propose an outrageous scheme to have Americans spying on fellow Americans. The Terrorism and Information Prevention System (TIPS) would recruit a million letter carriers, meter readers, cable technicians, and other access to private homes as informants to report to the Justice Department any actions they think suspicious. A right wing talking head said on television last night that we already take such actions when we are witnesses to a crime. How ridiculous! The difference is that a crime is a defined action against a known law and is not open to interpretation. Determining whether someone's words or deeds are a threat to the security of America cannot be left to the judgment of an average American. If so, the courts will be flooded because millions of Americans speak out against their government's actions every day. It is their right to do so. Americans informing on Americans reeks of fascism and it is the idea of the Bush administration. These are dangerous proposals based in paranoia. Hell will freeze over before I would ever spy on another American. We must resist this!
So, even a cursory look at the "fix" we are in reveals that the Bush administration is responsible. They are attempting to fix problems that are not problems and ignoring the real problems –- sometimes even taking actions to avoid fixing the real problems. Whether their mistakes are made through ignorance, lack of caring, misinterpreting events, or outright attempts to steer America in a direction alien to our way of life, is yet to be determined. This is our dilemma. I have my suspicions and they make me increasingly angrier every day. Please don't report me for them!
Mr. Bush, if you truly want to be a successful president and do what is right for America, fix what needs fixing, but if it ain't broke don't fix it!
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Rebecca Knight is a native Tennessean, who grew up in Nashville, and currently resides in a small town near Nashville. Ms. Knight's political awareness evolved through the civil rights movement, the Vietnam era, the Watergate era, and the cold war. The debacle of the 2000 election increased her sense of responsibility for political activism. You may contact Rebecca Knight via e-mail at tennessee_gal655@yahoo.com.
© 2002 by Rebecca Knight
