As you no doubt know, Phillips is one of the fathers of the Southern Strategy, the coiner of the term 'sunbelt', the author of the book The Emergent Republican Majority, and the like. Despite this odious history, Phillips, being a Very Smart Guy, saw the light at some point, and has since been issuing regular, very well-researched, and historically synoptic broadsides against the dreadful GOP coalition. I'm a huge fan of his '02 book Wealth and Democracy, which points to distressing simliarities between the present US economy and those of Spain, the Netherlands, and Britain at their historic heights. His '04 American Dynasty sets out in painstaking detail the tendrils by which the Bush family has served for decades as bagman and fixer to international arms dealers, spies, and oilmen. Both are required reading on the big syllabus in the sky.
Anyway, Phillips has come just come out with another book, American Theocracy, which details the fundamental links between the modern GOP and theocrats, oil-merchants, and money-lenders. Although I plan to read it, anticipating lots of great detail work, I doubt there will be much in the broad outline not present in earlier books or familiar to readers of this site. Indeed, I echo the sentiments of this Kossack, commenting on the NYTBR take:
he long ago abandoned his enthusiasm for the Republican coalition he helped to build......No longer does he see Republican government as a source of stability and order. Instead, he presents a nightmarish vision of ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed and dangerous shortsightedness.
Nightmarish vision? Extremism? Fiscal Irresponsibility? Not greed...RAMPANT greed? Shortsightedness. Hmmm. Who among us has had similar misgivings? Maybe Mr. Phillips is a closet dKos afficianado.
Instead, he identifies three broad and related trends -- none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration's policies -- that together threaten the future of the United States and the world. One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of debt -- current and prospective -- that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating.
No shit huh? Maybe Kevin should be enlisted to inform OUR leadership as to what the fuck is going on in this country. They have obviously decided that we (the grunts who combat the lies, find the truth, document the scandals, tally the Congressional votes, monitor the polls) don't mean a fuck to them. Maybe a former Nixon staffer can speak dumbanese well enough to make them hear the words.
The American press in the first days of the Iraq war reported extensively on the Pentagon's failure to post American troops in front of the National Museum in Baghdad, which, as a result, was looted of many of its great archaeological treasures. Less widely reported, but to Phillips far more meaningful, was the immediate posting of troops around the Iraqi Oil Ministry, which held the maps and charts that were the key to effective oil production.
How come when we say it the press ignores us? But when a politico of any measure raises his or her voice the press comes a runnin? It is sickening how lazy and ineffectual our "liberal" press has become. Think the boys and girls of Watergate press hounds would have turned away from illegal spying on Americans, illegal searches and seizures, faulty intelligence that led to our loss of some 2500 American soldiers? Think Tom Delay would have been laughing while getting his mugshot taken? You think every one of Abramoff's secrets wouldn't be a matter of public record by now? Bernstein and that other guy took down an administration with, in my opinion, less credible evidence than today's journalists are armed with. They had Deepthroat. We have Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson, Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham etc etc etfuckingcetera. A dedicated press would be having a field day interviewing, corroborating, writing and exposing every dirty secret these people had to tell. Today? We have Hannity instead of Cronkite. We have Tweety instead of Murrow. We have Brian Williams and not Dan Rather. (I like Brian Williams ok but I loved the Dan Rather that drove Nixon insane.)
that the pursuit of oil has for at least 30 years been one of the defining elements of American policy in the world; and that the Bush administration -- unusually dominated by oilmen -- has taken what the president deplored recently as the nation's addiction to oil to new and terrifying levels.
I'm just shocked, as I am sure all of you are too.
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