Denial, Delusion and Bush, the dry drunk

profmarcus

19 years ago

[cross-posted at And, yes, I DO take it personally]

denial and delusion are never pretty in the best of circumstances but when they involve the need to maintain feelings of invincibility and absolute control, the ever more complex web of lies and deceit necessary to maintain them becomes increasingly arrogant, hubristic, and, yes, bizarre…

several years ago, i heard bush described as a “dry drunk…” as a veteran of 12-step programs, that term conjures up a very specific image – someone who, even though he or she has given up the substance of choice, still exhibits all of the behaviors of the addiction… i thought at the time it was an apt description… little did i know how it would continue to manifest down the road… the current scenarios playing out on our national stage are pages taken directly from the “diary of a dry drunk…”

Bush knew that U.S. intelligence had no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no links to foreign terrorists, that there was no imminent danger to the U.S. from Iraq. But, since Bush was determined to go to war, “Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy.” “Fixed” means faked, manufactured, conjured, hyped – the product of whole cloth fabrication.

[…]

It was all a lie. Many of us have said for a long time it was a lie. But here it is in black and white [referring to the Downing Street Memo]: Lies from a president who has taken a sacred trust to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

just in the past week, the dysfunctional behavior seems to be popping up everywhere…

the situation in iraq…

While Bush and Vice President Cheney offer optimistic assessments of the situation, a fresh wave of car bombings and other attacks killed 80 U.S. soldiers and more than 700 Iraqis last month alone and prompted Iraqi leaders to appeal to the administration for greater help.

guantanamo…

After the [Amnesty International] issued a report late last month calling the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, “the gulag of our times,” top officials raced to condemn Amnesty.

[…]

“This administration eagerly cites Amnesty International research when we criticize Cuba and extensively quoted our criticism of the violations in Iraq under Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the war,” protested William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA.

as our president and his team are increasingly challenged to face reality, they, and bush in particular, react very much like an addict when faced with the harsh realities of the addiction…

-the level of defensiveness increases dramatically
-the level of denial becomes shrill
-all the stops are pulled out to keep the delusion intact (usually some form of “everything’s ok, don’t worry, everything’s ok”)

generally speaking, the only thing that succeeds in breaking through the denial/delusion wall is, in 12-step terminology, “hitting the wall…”

so, what would “hitting the wall” look like for a president of the united states…? for nixon, it was the white house tapes… for clinton, it was the stain on a dress… i think for bush, because of the intensity of the delusion and the depth of the denial and because it is shared not only by the white house team, it is also mandated behavior for cabinet members, executive appointees, and congressional republicans, the impact of whatever wall is going to be hit must be correspondingly higher…

So, what does it mean? It means that our president and all of his administration are war criminals. It’s as simple as that. They lied to the American people, have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure and poisoned its environment, squandered billions and billions of our tax dollars, made a mockery of American integrity in the world, changed the course of history, tortured Iraqi prisoners, and bound us intractably to an insane situation that they have no idea how to fix because they had no plan, but greed and empire, in the first place.
What does it mean? It means that everyone in this administration should be impeached.

these are harsh words but i don’t believe they are in any way inappropriate… oftentimes, when a loved one is struggling in the depths of an addiction but can’t break through the denial and delusion, friends and family, usually together with a mental health professional, will collectively confront the addict in what is called an “intervention…” we desperately need that intervention now…

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