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Tomgram: Will the Bush Administration Implode?

Implosion?
Bush's October Surprise
By Tom Engelhardt

Those in the anti-fascist struggle of the 1930s who went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War were later termed "premature antifascists." Perhaps, in the same spirit, I might be considered a premature Bush-administration implodist.

On February 1, 2004, reviewing the week just passed, I imagined us trapped in "some new reality show in which we were all to be locked in with an odd group of [administration] jokesters," and then wrote:


"When we finally emerge will there be a prize for the survivors? Will we discover, for instance, that our President and his administration have headed down a path of slow-motion implosion…?"

On February 18, 2004, my optimism briefly surging, I imagined the future as a movie trailer (inviting readers back for the main attraction that spring or summer) and offered this synopsis of the future film -- the wild fowl references being to Dick Cheney's hunting habits, then in the news -- with:


"a wall-to-wall cast of characters. Far too many to absorb in a split second including our President, Vice President, CIA officials, a supreme court justice, spooks and unnamed sources galore, FBI agents, prosecutors, military men, congressional representatives and their committees, grand juries, fuming columnists, an ex-ambassador, journalists and bloggers, sundry politicians, rafts of neocons…, oil tycoons, and of course assorted wild fowl (this being the Bush administration). If the director were Oliver Stone, it might immediately be titled: The Bush Follies… And the first scene would open -- like that old Jean Luc Goddard movie Weekend -- with a giant traffic jam. It would be epic. All of political Washington in potential scandal gridlock. And (as with Weekend) horns would be blaring, drivers and passengers arguing. It would be obvious that the norms of civilization were falling fast and people were threatening to cannibalize each other."!

Sounds a bit like Washington awaiting the Fitzgerald indictments this week, doesn't it? For good measure, I added, "The Bush administration has been in trouble ever since its arrogance met its incompetence at Intelligence Pass last summer; ever since Plame Gate began…"


Click here to read more of this dispatch.


Tomdispatch.com

** Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War. His novel, The Last Days of Publishing, has just come out in paperback. Both books make wonderful, interesting reading. Check them out, and with the holidays coming for some of us, they make excellent, thoughtful gifts, after you've purchased your own, of course! --- Annamarie

posted by Annamarie at 7:31 PM