Mr. Bush and the Federal Budget

Local activist Bill Thompson, a faculty member at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and a clinical psychologist, wrote the following as an e-mail to our local listserv, and said that I could share it here:

Although George W. Bush might not believe in evolution, there is ample evidence that he believes in one of evolution's major corollaries--"survival of the fittest"--at least as defined by Mr. Bush. At the risk of oversimplification, to a professional psychologist like myself, Mr. Bush is alarmingly easy to understand. As I pointed out in a recent psychological evaluation of Mr. Bush which I sent to this list, one of his primary psychological diagnoses is Antisocial Personality Disorder, and two of the major characteristics of APD individuals is a lack of compassion and a lack of remorse for previous behavior. This is amply seen in his budget proposals below.

Secondly, Mr. Bush believes in a world in which there are "rulers" and "those who are ruled." (He would have been right at home in pre-Magna Carta England.) In current American society, as in any in which there is a small upper class and a massive lower class (with perhaps a struggling middle class as well), the existence of the upper class absolutely depends on the lower class to provide it with the labor required to maintain its privileges. Politically, this means taking from the "have-nots" and giving to the "haves", which is the absolute hallmark of this administration. In order to be politically feasible however, this "taking away" comes from the expenditure of huge funds by the government on adventures that are not required (e.g., the Iraq war), thus severely limiting the potential of any government initiative to lift its citizens out of poverty.

This is a despicable ruse, but one that has been politically successful to such a degree that its major effects won't be felt until long after Bush has left office. For Bush, the incomprehensible budget deficits that he has created are a major success in his attempt to prevent any possibility of major changes in the relations between the privileged and those who are not.

One final note--the primary way that Mr. Bush creates the budget deficit is through military expenditures, which are politically palatable to the American public. What the public does not realize, however, is the very real trade-off between military cost and virtually everything else. Today in my relatively affluent hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, we are facing what our mayor calls a "budget crisis". Once again I repeat my mantra, "...the residents and businesses [of Ann Arbor] through income tax payments contribute over $380,000,000 annually to the cost of present and past military-related activities (over $3500 per capita), an amount 25% GREATER THAN THE ANNUAL CITY AND SCHOOL BUDGETS COMBINED. There are priorities at work here, and I would submit, a powerful political argument to be made. It cannot be the case that Ann Arbor is unique in this respect. This argument must be made, and made at the local level!"

Please consider making this "butter vs. bullets" argument in your hometown. Even before Mr. Bush, we were spending almost half of our income tax money on military expenditures (see the War Resisters League for details). How much longer can we continue to behave in this irresponsible fashion before we have a revolution on our hands?