You Don’t Say

Some days, it must stink to be president. Earlier this week, for example. Barack Obama was in Mexico meeting with President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Kind of a NAFTA meet-and-greet. The three big topics were supposed to be drugs, gangs and immigration.

(The New York Times says Canada has a sudden issue with Mexicans flooding in, “fraudulently” seeking political asylum and therefore wants to require Mexicans to apply for visas before coming to Canada, which has the Mexican government furious. What does a fraudulent claim for political asylum look like? Do some Mexicans have legitimate cause to seek political asylum? Who decides which is fraudulent and which is legitimate? The Times doesn’t tell us. But I digress…)

Mr. Obama showed up and said a US immigration bill will have to be postponed until 2010. Sorry, we’re just too busy with health care and shoveling tax dollars toward Wall Street executives to deal with that this year. Next topic. (So, what was Mr. Harper’s role then? I suppose he brought beer.)

That leaves drugs and gangs, which are connected. Mexico is a narco-state, by which I mean that drug lords control the country, the same way corporate lords control the US. Former Mexican President Carlos Salinas and his brothers (one of whom went to prison for participating in the assassination of a member of his brother’s political party, another who got whacked, supposedly by the federal police) were up to their ears in the drug trade.

Anyhow, Barack Obama, the most powerful man in the world, cannot go down to Mexico and admit what everyone knows – Mexico is a narco-state. Mr. Calderon knows it, the US State Department knows it, the press and police on both sides of the border know it… but Mr. Obama can’t say it.

Let’s say that for some bizarre reason, you and I and President Obama are hanging out at the White House on a summer Friday afternoon. Maybe you and I had an argument and Mr. Obama called another “beer summit” to try and patch things up. Trying to break the ice with a “neutral” topic I blurt out (in my usual awkward way), “So, Mr. President, how’d it go down in Mexico? Must be tough trying to talk about reducing drugs and gangs when you’re sitting in a narco-state.”

Mr. Obama and various aides scattered about the rose garden all fall over themselves to be the first one to say “Hey now, don’t you be saying that…. That’s not true…We all know that’s not true…” (Nervously looking around to see if the press pool overheard.)

Even though they know it’s true, the president not only cannot say, “Mexico is a narco-state,” he can’t be within earshot of someone saying “Mexico is a narco-state” without he and his aides shouting that person down. This is not peculiar to Mr. Obama. Not saying – or hearing – what everyone knows to be true is a long-standing presidential tradition.

In truth, if I read this aloud in Washington, DC, the loudest howls of protest would not have come over the Mexican statement, but over the one five paragraphs back in which I describe America as a corporate-dominated state, a corpo-state.

But it is and we’re not supposed to talk about it and the more things we don’t talk about, the bigger that category grows. This week not in Mexico, but all over the America, people are having shouting matches in congressional town hall meetings. That’s OK, Congress can use some shouting.

What’s not OK is that much of the shouting is a lie. It’s a lie that health care reform will allow the government to order the death of the sick and old or that it equates to socialism or that people without health care now somehow deserve our scorn.

Sure, politics ain’t beanbag and lies are and always have been part of the political process. Sure, many of the angriest people at the town halls are less outraged by health care reform than they are about the fact that the president is black. Sure some of these people are capable of violence.

But it’s also sure that the Republican Party is using these disturbed people for its political advantage and no Republican – politician or pundit – that I’ve heard has stood up to denounce these lies or head off the violence that is quite possibly coming

And for that, they should be deeply ashamed.

© Mark Floegel, 2009

2 Comments

  1. Posted 8/13/2009 at 12:57 pm | Permalink

    Mark, as always, you are right on the mark (no pun intended!)…thank you! Have you heard of the Pink Elephant Project?(http://pinkelephantproject.blogspot.com/)

    You two should get together!

    I have the unfortunate experience of watching my not-so-older (60), medically fragile but mentally and verbally agile mother go off the deep end about all these healthcare reform lies. She voted for Obama (but would have preferred her Primary pick: Hillary). She told me at the top of her lungs the other day that we picked the “wrong guy” and that she was sick of Obama butting into every aspect of her life. She truly thinks that the current legislation will allow “some pencil pusher” to decide she isn’t worth saving since she is getting older AND is poor. Said pencil pusher will then apparently deny coverage of some vital medical procedure, thereby bringing about her demise. And don’t get her started about Obama telling her that I am not allowed to mail her cigarettes from the reservation anymore! And, then there is this cash-for-clunkers business! What about those who can’t buy toilet paper? Who gives a rats behind whether Obama wants her to trade in her clunker!

    Her grumblings are not even her own words! She forwards me emails every day. I read them but gave up sending her evidence refuting their lies. She ignores it. She is a brilliant (literally genius level) writer and personal and beloved mentor to many in her small world in the middle of rural Texas. Yet, she has ingested and regurgitated every lie she has been fed in the last couple of months. And she is OBSESSED about it. Pissed! Spitting nails!

    The entire Boomer generation has been played a FOOL and it sickens me. That’s my mom you’re screwing with there! AND YOURS! Jeez, people.

    (Thanks for the rant space, Mark. I’m done now.)

  2. Masticator
    Posted 9/8/2009 at 2:19 pm | Permalink

    Believe me the shit is about to hit the fan. Theres too much money influencing too much politics on both sides of the border and around the world. The Vatican is furious with how its worshippers are being treated in Mexico under the yoke of the narco’s. Europe is pissed off at how narco dollars are flowing to financials in certain countries only and being used to attack their liberal institutions there and favor certain politicians.
    Like I said the shits about to hit the fan. I think if Democracy in the modern world is going to survive its inevitable that the narcos are going to be taken down hard in Mexico.
    Of course this will all be behind the scenes but I think the election of Obama was the most significant event in the last 40 years.

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