Inauguration Day 2005: imperial delusions and political reality

[RBHam]

By Barry Grey and David North
20 January 2005

The formal installation of the second-term administration of George W. Bush brings to power the most reactionary government in United States history. There is more than symbolic significance in the fact that the inauguration takes place against the backdrop of a virtual lockdown of the nation’s capital, the real purpose of which is to inspire fear and intimidate domestic political opposition, while, behind the police/military barricades, Bush’s corporate sponsors shamelessly indulge themselves at balls and parties.

It is necessary to make a sober evaluation of the prospects for Bush’s second term. This is a government which, under the mantra of the “war on terror,” seeks to promote a perpetual state of panic and hysteria. Such fear-mongering is the stock in trade of a deeply unstable and crisis-ridden regime.

On the very eve of Inauguration Day 2005, the airwaves were full of reports of a terrorist threat from a band of assassins who had crossed the border from Mexico and were targeting Boston—reports that, by the time of the evening news broadcasts, were being debunked as utterly groundless.

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https://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/bush-j20.shtml