Reaction to the State of the Union

By Jack Cross

I watched the Bush speech tonight with a great deal of sadness. While realizing full well that he could not have written a word of it, I saw more intelligent men and women in the Chamber act as
cheering sections, rising and applauding on signal, and I began to wonder just why this charade has become such an essential rite in our democracy. Senator Webb’s (Virginia) response which was carried on PBS--whether the controlled media carried it or not, I don’t at the moment know--and I was deeply impressed with the cogency of his remarks, with the positions he took on major issues almost completely ignored or distorted by Bush in his presentation.

Unquestionably the Union’s business and condition is too complex for any one human being to report on these days. He or she must have help. The Cabinet Officers, each in turn, must have sent Bush’s helpers their suggestions or reports about how things were going in their areas of responsibilty and concern--thus, it was doomed to be a Republican State of the Union Report from the start. The feeble attempts to deal with health care, education, immigration, carried that subterranean threat of “with a lot of privaization” about them.

But the Pentagon got its increase in full time troop increases (over 90,000) and not a whimper from anyone in the chamber.

Bush and Cheney, strangers both to military battlefield service, have set this country on a course of continued militarization without an end in sight.

They have introduced perpetual war and world domination to a docile Congress and the nation.

And they wanted his autographs as he exited the room.