George W. Bush: a ''Ficeist'' Leader

[Octafish]

Making Il Duce Look Like a Piker

Observations and a new word from a person I respect:

Making Il Duce Look Like a Piker

George W. Bush: a "Ficeist" Leader

By KARYN STRICKLER
CounterPunch June 4, 2007

As we finally enter the cool, breezy era where we are no longer actually living the Bush Presidential nightmare, but contemplating his legacy, you may be wondering how to articulate the tragedy that was America under George W. Bush.

It's tempting to call Bush and his Administration "fascists" as many have. But we should not be tempted to refer to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their crooked cohorts as fascists, because it's not quite historically accurate.

Bush's mix of authoritarianism and militarism -- waging an imperial oil war, torturing prisoners of that war, wasting the lives of young American soldiers on false pretenses -- does not quite add up to fascism.

Nazi's committed mass murder based on race and religion, but the killing of 654,965* Iraqis in the Bush/Cheney quest for corporate domination of the Middle East, is not quite the same as fascism, since it was done under the cover of war, without being explicitly about sect or ethnicity.

Allowing victims of Hurricane Katrina to die and rot in their own waste and neglecting those who survived, doesn't quite rise to the historic level required for the term fascist because it was, historians say, more passive than active.

Rigging elections, corrupting the justice system, spying on and lying to Americans, twisting and falsifying the results of scientific research don't quite add up to the total elimination of elections, civil liberties and intellectual freedom under Hitler.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/strickler06042007.html

No, Bush is not a NAZI.



He is worse. He has nukes.

[kineneb]

1. first pic- cue "Springtime for Hitler" (The Producers)

No, he isn't a Nazi, he is a Corporatist. Everything he has done benefits multinational corporations, not the citizens of this or any other country. The administration does not give a damn about anything but corporate profits. They are the Robber Barons on steroids.

[Octafish]

4. Bush is like a Corporation

The documentary film "The Corporation" examines how corporations are recognized as "persons" under the law in the United States. The filmmakers then chronicled the behavior of many corporations and found they engaged in anti-social practices such as slave labor, pollution, theft -- even homicide.

In short, the film demonstrated how Bush is like a corporation. They are both psychotic.

[unblock]

11. that's not quite it either

in the sense that he doesn't respect the institution of the public corporation any more than he respects the institutions of government. it's all about wileding power and diverting money to cronies. so he appoints people and does things to divert money accordingly.

insider trading didn't bother him, enron was only an image problem, etc. a true "corporatist" actually believes that corporations have a purpose and a role in bettering society. for bush they are just another means to the end of enriching his pals and supporters.

[blogslut]

2. He's a front man

It's his backers that are fascists.

[Octafish]

5. We Now Live in a Fascist State

Bush backers have fallen from 90-percent.

Like you, blogslut, I'm proud to say that I was never among "Them."

On message

We Now Live in a Fascist State

By Lewis H. Lapham
Harper's Magazine, October 2005

"But I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, then Fascism and Communism, aided, unconsciously perhaps, by old-line Tory Republicanism, will grow in strength in our land." -Franklin D. Roosevelt, November 4, 1938

In 1938 the word "fascism" hadn't yet been transferred into an abridged metaphor for all the world's unspeakable evil and monstrous crime, and on coming across President Roosevelt's prescient remark in one of Umberto Eco's essays, I could read it as prose instead of poetry -- a reference not to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or the pit of Hell but to the political theories that regard individual citizens as the property of the government, happy villagers glad to wave the flags and wage the wars, grateful for the good fortune that placed them in the care of a sublime leader. Or, more emphatically, as Benito Mussolini liked to say, "Everything in the state. Nothing outside the state. Nothing against the state."

The theories were popular in Europe in the 1930s (cheering crowds, rousing band music, splendid military uniforms), and in the United States they numbered among their admirers a good many important people who believed that a somewhat modified form of fascism (power vested in the banks and business corporations instead of with the army) would lead the country out of the wilderness of the Great Depression -- put an end to the Pennsylvania labor troubles, silence the voices of socialist heresy and democratic dissent. Roosevelt appreciated the extent of fascism's popularity at the political box office; so does Eco, who takes pains in the essay "Ur-Fascism," published in The New York Review of Books in 1995, to suggest that it's a mistake to translate fascism into a figure of literary speech. By retrieving from our historical memory only the vivid and familiar images of fascist tyranny (Gestapo firing squads, Soviet labor camps, the chimneys at Treblinka), we lose sight of the faith-based initiatives that sustained the tyrant's rise to glory. The several experiments with fascist government, in Russia and Spain as well as in Italy and Germany, didn't depend on a single portfolio of dogma, and so Eco, in search of their common ground, doesn't look for a unifying principle or a standard text. He attempts to describe a way of thinking and a habit of mind, and on sifting through the assortment of fantastic and often contradictory notions -- Nazi paganism, Franco's National Catholicism, Mussolini's corporatism, etc. -- he finds a set of axioms on which all the fascisms agree. Among the most notable:

The truth is revealed once and only once.

Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten because it doesn't represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader.

Doctrine outpoints reason, and science is always suspect.

Critical thought is the province of degenerate intellectuals, who betray the culture and subvert traditional values.

The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies.

Argument is tantamount to treason.

Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear. Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of "the people" in the grand opera that is the state.

Eco published his essay ten years ago, when it wasn't as easy as it has since become to see the hallmarks of fascist sentiment in the character of an American government. Roosevelt probably wouldn't have been surprised.

He'd encountered enough opposition to both the New Deal and to his belief in such a thing as a United Nations to judge the force of America's racist passions and the ferocity of its anti-intellectual prejudice. As he may have guessed, so it happened. The American democracy won the battles for Normandy and Iwo Jima, but the victories abroad didn't stem the retreat of democracy at home, after 1968 no longer moving "forward as a living force, seeking day and night to better the lot" of its own citizens, and now that sixty years have passed since the bomb fell on Hiroshima, it doesn't take much talent for reading a cashier's scale at Wal-Mart to know that it is fascism, not democracy, that won the heart and mind of America's "Greatest Generation," added to its weight and strength on America's shining seas and fruited plains.

CONTINUED...

http://www.mccmedia.com/pipermail/brin-l/Week-of-Mon-20051114/034077.html

ORIGINAL URL: http://www.harpers.org/LewisLapham.html

The above was from 2005.



We've gotten more F'd since then.

[slor]

3. Where did you get that picture?

The Swastika dress? Is it neo-nazi chic?

[Octafish]

6. Nazi-inspired Designers Blitz Runways

Bush and his cronies got inspired, all right.

Nazi-inspired Designers Blitz Runways

Nothing personal.

The Bush Family's War Profiteering

Written by Administrator
DemocracyRising.com
Thursday, 24 February 2005

The extent of Iraq contracts going to corporations which involve members of President George W. Bush's family is widespread and extensive involving hundreds of millions of dollars. Often these firms receive contracts where the corporations have no expertise and certainly the Bush family members have no expertise or experience in these areas. It is a world not of know how but of know who, marinated in campaign contributions. It seems like Bush family and friends are trading on their relationship to the President. The matrix of government contracts and Bush related corporations invites further investigation by the media and Congress - inquiries that are long overdue.

Below are examples of Bush Family members who have profited from the war and occupation of Iraq. These issues have not been examined or reported by the mainstream media.

Neil Mallon Bush the younger brother of the President, infamous for his involvement in the Silverado S and L scandal, has been hired by Crest Investment Company as a consultant for $60,000 per year to assist with their efforts to serve as a middleman to advise other companies that seek taxpayer-financed business in Iraq. Working with Crest puts Neil Bush at the center of multiple organizations profiting from the war and occupation in close alliance with long-term Bush Family allies.

Crest Investment is headed by Jamal Daniel who is a principal partner in New Bridge, a Houston, TX based company with offices in Iraq and Kuwait. The main focus of New Bridge is to advise companies that seek opportunities in the private sector in Iraq, including licenses to market products in Iraq. The company highlights that the Coalition Provisional Authority decision to allow foreign companies to establish 100 percent ownership of businesses in Iraq, an unusual arrangement in the Mideast, has added to the attractiveness of the market. The company describes itself by saying:

“ New Bridge Strategies, LLC is a unique company that was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Its activities will seek to expedite the creation of free and fair markets and new economic growth in Iraq, consistent with the policies of the Bush Administration. The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary skills and experience to be effective both in Washington, D.C. and on the ground in Iraq.” (See: http://www.newbridgestrategies.com/index.asp ) .

New Bridge Strategies , is headed by Joe M. Allbaugh, Mr. Bush's campaign manager in 2000 and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency until March 2003. Earlier he was Chief of Staff to then-Governor Bush of Texas Other directors include Edward M. Rogers, Jr. vice chairman, and Lanny Griffith, lobbyists who were assistants to President George Herbert Walker and now have close ties to the White House."

Also related to this Neil Bush network is Diligence LLC ( http://www.diligencellc.com/index.html ). Diligence shares addresses and many Board members with New Bridge Strategies. It was formed by past members of the CIA and Britain's MI5 Intelligence Services along with experts in international law, journalism and intelligence which enables them to review all sorts of future investment projects and provide security advice. Diligence opened an office in Baghdad in July 2003 where they provided payroll protection and delivery, personnel and facilities security, review of potential Iraqi business ventures, training and management of personal security forces, and intelligence briefs. A subsidiary includes Diligence Middle East, LLC which was created in partnership with New Bridge and the Kuwaiti Coroporation, Al-Mal Investment Company.

William H.T. ("Bucky") Bush, an uncle of George W. Bush, joined the board of directors of the St. Louis based company Engineered Support Systems in March 2000. (See: http://www.engineeredsupport.com/) Bucky Bush was one the Bush “Pioneers,” the campaign contributors who raised more than $100,000 in the 2000 presidential election. Engineered Support Systems has three areas: light military support equipment, heavy military support equipment, and electronics/automation systems. Since 2000, following the presidential election and the 9-11 attacks, the company's federal contracts, revenues and its stock value have all gone up. Engineered Support Systems has been in the top 100 contractors with the DoD since 2001. It’s contracts with the U.S. military have totaled over $1 billion.

CONTINUED...

http://www.democracyrising.us/content/view/57/81/

It's only business.

[Octafish]

7. Kick for Corporate McPravda.

From the original article...

Bush ignored the global warming emergency for six years and now in his unique, Orwellian way, is posturing to change the historical record, as though he's been a leader in finding solutions to the challenges presented by climate change. Global warming may change or destroy life on the planet for most of its inhabitants, still it's not fascism. It may turn out to be worse.

Hitler's brand was a populist sort of fascism where he involved the German people in the killing of their own Jewish countrypeople and other "undesirables." Bush, by contrast, has a more international approach. He has not involved Americans in killing each other directly one-on-one, like old Adolph.

Rather George W. Bush has put us all at the mercy of giant corporations who pollute our air and water and destroy biodiversity, leaving us to deal with the resulting degradation, illness and disease. Those wealthy corporations can now take individual's private property for "economic" development, outsource our jobs, avoid paying Americans a living wage, benefit financially from war, and gouge us at the gas pump.

These corporations reap record-breaking profits, exclusively for the benefit of the very few. Meanwhile the little gal and guy struggle to live, breathe, work, put food and clean water on the table, pay the electric bill, get an education, and find health care.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/strickler06042007.html

It's an important read because it does spell out, in an easy to appreciate way, just what We the People are up against.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

8. Clarity -snip-

So really, if Bush is not a fascist, then there is no term in existence that accurately reflects the despotic-hybrid that is George W. Bush. The term neo-con, just doesn't cut it. Look-up the term "Nazi," in the dictionary and the antonym is "conservative" ­ neo or otherwise. "Neo-con" lets Bush off too easy. "Compassionate conservative?" Every second of his term in office says otherwise.

The spell-check on my computer will not yet allow me license with the term, because I just invented it. The term is Ficeist. Since it's close, but not exact, it sounds like fascist, with an "i" -- Ficeist. It is pronounced: like fish with a long "i" and an "ist" ending.

The term is actually an acronym-turned-word. The pieces of the acronym add up to the unique, crossbreed that Americans have called President for the past 7 years. Fascist (but not exactly) Imperialist Corporatist Elitist -- plus "ist" -- equals Ficeist, equals George W. Bush and his Administration.

...

[Hubert Flottz]

10. That's because spell check don't know everything!

I invented several words just today that it can't spell either.(staythecourseism...staythecourseist...staythecourseists neoKook)

[seemslikeadream]

9. Mike Malloy - Bush Crime Family Support For Hitler

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1402921074744567725&q=bush+hitler&total=1948&start=20&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=5

[GeorgeGist]

12. Private governments ...

are all the rage in for-profit kakistocracies.