1-10-06, 8:59 am

Following current events these days is very much like watching old movies, sitcoms, action adventure shows, and soap operas on television, except that the plots are more fantastic and there are very serious consequences.

First there is the Iraq occupation, which Bush and his buddies treat like the old John Wayne pro-Vietnam war movie, The Green Berets. Released in 1968, that rightwing propaganda film saw Wayne, Bruce Cabot (whom some in the audience remembered from his role in the original King Kong in the early 1930s), Aldo Ray, and other middle-aged and elderly actors, dressed in poorly fitting special forces fatigues, leading young men in the defense of freedom and democracy against the evil 'Viet Cong.' Besides the Cong, who were less sympathetic than Kong was, the main villain was a misguided liberal reporter who wrote critical articles about the war until the Cong's brutality led him to see the light.

Democracy was advancing in The Green Berets; victory was at hand, if only the American people saw it that way and got totally behind the troops. In Iraq, middle-aged and elderly men, Cheney and Rumsfeld, with fewer dramatic skills than Bruce Cabot and Aldo Ray, visit the troops, cheer them on, and tell them they are building democracy.

Elections, in which lists of candidates are put together by political and religious bosses, are seen as evidence for democracy's triumph. The escalation of the bombings and the killings is reported but not analyzed. And of course the administration repeats its steady commercial message that the occupation is working and winning, while the fact that thirty people were killed yesterday, one hundred and twenty today, are merely examples of the enemy's desperation.

Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, tribal leaders, and centuries of ethnic and religious divisions in both the Ottoman and British colonial empires, have no meaning for our Masters of War, as Vietnam, its civilization and its people, had no meaning in The Green Berets, except as bit players in a bad movie.

There are good people, as Bush likes to say about his friends, in this case the U.S. troops and the good Iraqis who are grateful to them, and bad people, the insurgents and the people in the U.S. who are helping them by opposing the occupation, and that is the story, to be run and rerun over and over again, along with commercials for the administration's domestic policies and candidates in the 2006 Congressional elections, added when viewers are most susceptible.

What this administration learns from the Vietnam War (besides baiting John Kerry in the last election and covering up its own leader's draft dodging) is not to talk about body counts and kill ratios, because that only gets people thinking about what war is.

For those who want some wholesome entertainment after Iraq, there is the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito, a nice guy and excellent student who happens to be an extreme right-wing Republican with a very, very bad record on civil rights and women's rights, particularly as they concern practical questions of affirmative action and reproductive rights policies, and the central constitutional principle of the separation of church and state as it has been understood since the early days of the Republic.

But, Judge Alito is a wonderful man, and that is what is really important about him. His fellow judges are brought to Washington to testify about his character and personality. On C-SPAN, I saw his old Latin teacher, coaches, and high school classmates being interviewed at length about what a splendid, listening, caring, human being he was, and by implication still is.

All of this may be true, but it is entirely irrelevant to the choice of a Supreme Court justice, a candidate for membership in the most powerful court on earth, with a clear record on issues that put him one hundred percent on the side of the ultra-right trio of Scalia, Thomas, and the new Chief Justice John Roberts. It is as relevant as Richard Nixon's famous 1952 'Checkers' speech, where he responded to charges concerning his use of illegal funds provided by supporters by providing a 'record' of his middle class respectability, mentioning that his wife wore a 'good Republican cloth coat,' and appealing to the people not to let the Democrats force him to return a cocker spaniel (Checkers) that a man in Texas had sent his family as a gift!

There are many nice guys with outstanding academic records. Actually, I was thinking about myself as I watched the Alito family values show. I am on the left, a Marxist and a communist with a big and small c, with a clear record of supporting the establishment of a socialist society that would abolish the class privileges of the wealthy, dismantle the military-industrial complex, and make employment, education, health care, and housing inalienable human rights for all.

But I am also a very nice guy who was a very good student in high school, college, and graduate school. I have scholarships, fellowships and even membership in Phi Beta Kappa (I lost the key decades ago) to prove that.

I have some old teachers and fellow students from 40-plus years ago who would probably go on TV and say nice things about me. I am also an 'outsider' who has never had anything to do with the Washington legal establishment, or any establishment that in the words of the great Groucho would have anything to do with me, but I would bring a fresh new way of looking at the law to the Supreme Court. I see the law as an expression of class power in a class-divided society, and would interpret it the interest of the working class.

If I could somehow convince Bush that a Marxist on the Supreme Court would be good for the corporations, the rich, and the Republican Party, I might be where Alito is today. Maybe I could convince him that if the ruling class were actively challenged by the Left in government, the competition would through natural selection produce a more intelligent 'species' of conservative, more articulate, persuasive, and flexible in the use of tactics and strategy. But such conservatives might end up looking at Bush, Cheney, et al, the way Homo sapiens probably looked at Neanderthals.

But let's get to the primetime sleazy soap opera. Even though Alito and I are both from New Jersey and arguably nice guys, Tom DeLay is from Texas and would never be confused with a nice guy. DeLay, who, if justice somehow prevails, will in all likelihood spend the last years of the Bush administration in a minimum-security prison, has magnanimously given up his leadership role in the GOP as he awaits trial. Meanwhile, Jack Abramoff, a character like so many in this administration out of the old primetime soap opera 'Dallas', is cutting deals with prosecutors to limit his jail time, and those who follow politics are speculating about how many Republicans will be indicted in the end and betting pools may develop along with the scandal.

American history is replete with bribery scandals. My personal favorites are from the nineteenth century – such as Jay Gould bribing President Grant's brother-in-law to get inside stock market information and Gould and Cornelius Vanderbilt meeting in Albany, New York to create a money cap on the bribing of state legislators. Then there was Teapot Dome under Harding, a famous vicuna coat under Eisenhower, and a cast of characters straight out of the 'Maltese Falcon' under Nixon (who can forget Bebe Rebozo?).

But no one ever offered to hand over the ill-gotten gains to charity, as Bush and others at the top of the administration are now doing with the large sums that Abramoff raised for them. I know the administration believes that charity is the solution to social problems rather than government-sponsored social programs, but using charity to circulate tainted money is new. Al Capone had the largest and best-stocked soup kitchen at the beginning of the depression (a practical form of charity at the time), but that didn't stop the Hoover administration from sending him to prison.

Perhaps Bush might contemplate a posthumous pardon for Al, who, Republican economists might contend today, offered through his soup kitchen a worthy alternative to New Deal social programs.

But instead of simply donating the tainted money to established charities, the administration might use it to establish a special fund to help those who can't pay their oil and natural gas heating bills. Or they might at least use the money to provide refunds on the phone bills of those citizens who have had their phones tapped without warrants, since they are actively engaged in that practice, which crudely violates the most elemental interpretation provisions of the Bill of Rights.

To summarize, the more death and destruction there is in Iraq, the more democracy is advancing, nice guys who did well in school belong on the Supreme Court even if they would act to repeal the advances that labor, minorities and women have made over the last hundred years (at least), and leaders can purge themselves of any corruption charges by donations to charity.

Soon Bush will be presenting the State of the Union address. I will close my eyes when he speaks and hear a line from an old 1940s movie, 'The Senator Was Indiscreet,' where a corrupt politician dreams he is president and addresses the people with these words: 'My friends. We have nothing to fear but me.'

Maybe its time to shut off the set, pull the plug, and get real. Getting real is ending the Iraq occupation and working with and through the United Nations to heal rather than hurt the battered people of Iraq. Getting real is opposing Alito because of his record and opposing every Senator who votes for him, which is the only lesson that politicians can ever learn. Getting real is not only going after DeLay and his congressional cronies, but also Bush and those around him. Although the mass media is not taking it seriously and the Democrats have not yet had the courage to take a stand on it, there is a growing movement in the U.S., championed by Ramsey Clark and supported by Representative John Conyers, to impeach this president.

Based on his record, George W. Bush deserves impeachment as much as Andrew Johnson after the Civil War or Richard Nixon in the 1970s, whose actions clearly violated their oath of office on key questions. Defeating the Republicans in 2006 will be a major step in that direction.



--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.