In trying to understand why Bush and his gang of thugs do so much violence to our institutions, I have developed a theory that I want to run by bootribbers and invite their opinions.
I believe that the anger and insolence one sees displayed by Bush supporters and the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal is a direct outgrowth of their resentment that the 1964 Civil Rights Act gave power to people like blacks, women, minorities and other outcasts who, according to this high exalted elite do not deserve a seat the table equivalent to their own. Over the years, they have tried every known strategy to defeat the intent of the 1964 Act.Having failed at that task,they have latched on to the warmed over theories of Leo Strauss of the Elite born to rule over the Masses and entitled to lie at will to the masses,the Constitution be damned.This is in effect, a disguised form of Jim Crow where the nullification of black votes by any means is seen as a necessary and desirable end to enshrine power in the “right” hands.
The imperative to defeat the votes of the minorities by any means possible coincided with the need to administer a blow to the Arabs in order to show them who is boss.The rest as they say is history.
The only surprise to me is that it has taken everyone this long to realize we have thugs masquerading as our saviors.
I don’t think they are thugs in the usual sense of the word — they are the people who employ thugs but never get their own hands dirty. But I do see what you mean. The people who run “things” always feel that they should continue running things. And their children feel entitled to move into the position of running “things” whether or not they are qualified. I think it goes back further than the 1964 Act however. It goes back to the New Deal when Franklin Roosevelt started to put safety nets in place for those who were the most economically needy. The 1964 Act was a natural offshoot of that movement (well, natural to progressives like me.) But these people don’t just want to roll back the rights of people who were historically oppressed by blatant discriminatory laws (blacks, women, etc). They want to go back to oppressing poor white men too. Hardworking people who wouldn’t have gone to college without a federal student loan program, who wouldn’t be able to afford a house without federal programs, etc. I think they feel a sense of glee that these are the very people that they are fooling the most and getting to vote for them.