Views » April 8, 2005

The Vultures of Life

By Brian Cook

It’s apparently not enough for George W. Bush to have taken the words “freedom,” “liberty,” and “democracy,” and perverted their meanings beyond any recognizable definition. His latest lexical transformation targets nothing less than “life” itself.

The president has been on the stump touting the “culture of life” and we can cheerily look forward to being saturated by the term for the indefinite future. The death of Pope John Paul II provided Bush both an occasion to hail the phrase’s progenitor and a political opportunity to “stay on message.”

What is that message? According to Bush, it is a culture “in which the strong protect the weak.” It’s tempting to suggest that “protect” here means something akin to “feast on the vanquished flesh of.” But perhaps it’s wiser to take Bush’s meaning at face value, and note that his usage precludes the possibility of empowering the weak. The unspoken assumption is that the strong must continue to be strong and, more significant, that the weak must continue to be kept weak.

The administration’s proposed budget spelled the logic out clearly. Strengthen the strong—tax cuts for the rich and budget increases for their military “protectors.” Weaken the weak—budget cuts to education, housing subsidies and other social services.

It should be no surprise then that a “culture of the-opposite-of-life” surrounds us. For example, take a look at our schools. March brought another school shooting, this time on an Indian reservation where 39 percent of the population live below the poverty line. That the tragedy was widely reported, and duly catalogued, as “the worst school shooting since Columbine,” speaks volumes about how adept we’ve become in normalizing such violent outbursts.

As for our military protectors, on March 25, the ACLU released 1,200 pages of documents obtained from the Pentagon revealing the widespread use of torture in Iraq. Disobeying a court order, the Bush administration delayed the documents’ release until late on a Friday night—the better to bury the sordid story in the Saturday news hole. The documents included such life-affirming revelations as the breaking of a teenage detainee’s jaw and superior officers ordering soldiers to “beat the fuck out of” prisoners.

But, surely our statesmen spouting the “culture of life” must be exemplars of that value? Men like Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who recently pondered the “connection” between the recent “spate of courthouse violence” and “unaccountable” judges “making political decisions.” Granted, Cornyn didn’t know for certain “if there is a cause-and-effect connection.” He was just positing the notion, tentatively, in a spirit of free and nitwitted inquiry.

Such examples, however, are somewhat disingenuous. Proponents of a “culture of life” have one main concern (aside from homosexuals) in both culture and life: babies. Not the ones that are actually born, mind you. Advocates of “life” say nothing about the fact that the United States now ranks 42nd in the world in infant mortality, two spots below Cuba.

The reason for their silence is simple. To change the U.S. infant mortality rate would require granting the right to universal healthcare to the already born who actually can (and rightfully do) assert that right. It’s no coincidence that the only subjects to whom the Republicans willingly grant rights are those whose voices they can ventriloquize—fetuses and the unfortunate Terri Schiavo.

In both cases, the concerned parties—respectively, pregnant women and Michael Schiavo—who actually can claim rights, such as the right not to have their bodies legislated or the right of the spouse as next-of-kin to honor a loved one’s wishes, are dismissed by Republicans.

Thus, in the name of protecting the helpless, Republican policies seek to make nearly everyone helpless. Those of us who still have a voice must strongly protest: When we’re told they’re giving us liberty, what they’re really giving us is death.

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• Reader Comments

  Your last line “When we’re told they’re giving us liberty, what they’re really giving us is death”, says it all. 

  I’m not sure which is most disgusting to me,
  George Bush redefining words to make them the exact opposite of what they have meant all my life  
  OR

  The general populace just rolling over and accepting whatever this phony Christian tells them.

  I think Bush and his gang of thugs are beyond evil.

  Posted by Maggie Richards on Apr 8, 2005 at 10:22 PM

  Mr Cook’s article exposes the hypocrisy of Bush’s ethic of ‘life’ in the political (and therefore real life) arena.
  The granting of proper healthcare to all would be a big step to Bush putting his money where his mouth is when it comes to all Americans including babies.
  Bush’s statement about the strong protecting the weak relates to abortion and I am sure he does not in the least see the irony or hypocrisy of his statement with regard to those ‘weak’ who are in the light of day as it were.
  I am not pro abortion partly because it is an attack on the weak. This seems to me to be obvious and if Mr. Cook were consistent in his desire to see the weak not just protected but empowered then it seems reasonable to me to argue the same for the unborn. The law which enables abortion ‘empowers’ those who want it but disempowers the very one who is not capable of power. In other words if Mr. Cook seriously is interested in the weak being empowered (which Bush and his ilk are not interested in when it comes to those out of the womb, unless it is to their advantage e.g. the number of people from low socio-economic backgrounds in the armed forces)then why is he not interested in the same for the unborn? Unless he holds some spurious notion about life a la Peter Singer. He uses the word fetus on one occasion in the article so maybe he holds the view that an unborn something or other, let’s call it a ‘fetus’, which of course begs the question ‘a fetus of what?’, is not living or a ‘person’.
  Also, if we really were to build a culture in which life is valued then I think empowerment is not enough. Life needs to be valued for itself based on concepts like the preciousness of life.  Political actions need to reflect and promote and build this as do individual actions. This is very diffcult for the individual of course if she is in survival mode or being ground down by poverty, and despair and an extremism of individual reponsibility (a favourite of the Bush ideologues I believe supported by the loonies on the Christian right).

  Posted by eugene moreau on Apr 8, 2005 at 10:28 PM

  Recently, “The Frank Luntz Republican Playbook” has become available to us Democrats. And what a revelation it is. In it Luntz describes in detail how to frame the current issues and tells what words to say, and not say, for best effect. Written primarily for Republican politicians in their public debates, you hear his advise from the enablers (O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, ad nauseum,) as well. Even the MSM pick up and parrot the themes of the neocon pseudofascists.
  Probably due to the exposure of the book recently on left blogs, Luntz tried to nullify the “negative” effect with an op-ed article in the LA Times recently. It was a weak and unbelievable defense, if you read the Playbook.
  His counterpart on the left, George Lakoff, has a wonderful take on the psychology of the Right and Left in “Moral Politics.” Really explains what is going on in a simple way.

  Posted by Merlin on Apr 8, 2005 at 11:10 PM

  I’m tired of surrendering the definition of terms to the Repugs, and I’m tired of reading articles giving them credit for cleverness, brilliance in setting up their incestuous think tank/lobbyist/media plant empire. I do not want to hear any admiration for any of their manipulation of media, people, funds, etc. Bushco is evil, and if you can think of any other appropriate terms to use please do, but do not ask me to respect or admire them in any way. To do so is to participate in turning words on their heads. Diabolical,heinous, vile, sly, prevaricating (okay, lying), without conscience, Machiavellian—there are a lot better words we could use that should not flatter them. They need to learn the meaning of the word SHAME.

  To see the kind of evil I’m talking about, the deliberate destruction of a culture and all its underpinnings, and perhaps 200,000 lives lost not counting the wounded, see dailykos story today from The Guardian about Saddam’s offer of surrender.

  But of course if we had not invaded, we couldn’t demolish their infrastructure and angered everyone and then Halliburton and the other corrupt contractors could not have seen their $$$ glory. I want to see arrests, impeachments, imprisonment, AND restitution. I guess that’s a pipe dream.

  P.S. I’m new at this so I apologize if my manners are a little rough.

  Posted by marina on Apr 9, 2005 at 8:17 PM

  Cook has once again hit the proverbial nail on the head.  My only question is this:  We are by now too, too painfully aware and atuned to the Bush regime’s distortions and outright lies on just about every issue this country faces today.  Why do they continue to get away with it?  Sure, a vice-tight grip on the media is part of the answer; but only part of it.  Neoliberal capitalism run amok is another part; but, again, only another part.  The answer runs a lot deeper than that. 

  Recall the question just after the November “election”:  Why did so many people vote against their own interests?  That is to say that it is obviously not in the “interests” of poor or middle class white folks to have an oil and gas junta (as Gore Vidal calls them) running things.  Yet since 1980 these folks have increasingly sided with the Reagans and Bushes to the point now that an arguable majority of them actually out number the rest of us. 

  The answer is race.  Racial animus and not-so-subtle and concealed racial animosity toward the aparently endless increase of Hisrpanics and the ever disgruntled, dissatisfied, distrustful and downtrodden blacks is openly express by “secret ballots” for Bush and Bush clones.  The one thing these people know about Bush; the one thing they admire most about him and his “ideas”, is that he will be sure to keep “those people” in their proper places.  That is enough.  Tax cuts for the rich don’t matter.  Increasing prescription drug prices for the elderly….doesn’t matter.  Public schools on the verge of collapse don’t count either…And the list goes on.  Besides, most of these and similare measures tend to have a dispropotionate negative effect on blacks and browns.  Therefore, they may actually be a net positive as far as most whites are concerned.

  Posted by Herb Dyer on Apr 9, 2005 at 10:55 PM

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