Bind Faith
by James Glaser
August 4, 2010
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No. I'm not writing about Blind Faith, the British Super group that featured Eric Clapton Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood, and Ric Grech. Although that might be fun. What I am writing about is the blind faith so many Americans have for the politicians of their choice.

It used to drive me crazy when Republicans would run right over the cliff following George W. Bush into war or into debt. After 9/11 Republicans all of a sudden started thinking George had become really smart. George had figured out how we could pay for two wars, and cut taxes at the same time.

Of course George hadn't figured out any thing of the kind. He was just so used to using his daddy's credit card, that our nation's credit card slid right into his hand quite naturally. George, borrowed the money for his wars, and he cut taxes for his friends. For a while there, everybody loved George. It didn't matter if you were a Republican or a Democrat, if you were making a lot of money, George Bush set things up so you got to keep more of it.

After a while a lot of people on both sides of the aisle figured out what was going on, and they lost faith in President Bush, but what is so amazing is that there are a core of Republicans who still believe George W. Bush did everything right. Some people even put up billboards with a picture of smiling George, with the caption, "Miss Me Yet?"

George Bush put us way into debt, and his two wars cost us thousands of American troops killed and tens of thousands wounded, for what? We still occupy Iraq and Afghanistan, and neither country looks any better off than before we attacked. Sure Saddam is gone, but Iraq is a mess, and the war in Afghanistan is going badly. No, we never did find any Weapons of Mass Destruction, nor did we ever find Osama bin Laden either.

So, here we are many trillions of dollars further in debt, still in a recession of Bush's making, with over-crowded VA Hospitals, the world thinking we are a county of war-loving goofballs, and still we have millions of Republicans thinking George Bush was the best president we have had in a long time. That, my friends, is an example of Blind Faith.

Now not to be outdone, we have a group of people on the left side of the aisle who are just as blind. That would be the millions of Democrats who can find no fault in Barack Hussein Obama.

It doesn't matter to them one bit that Obama took hundreds of billions of tax dollars and threw them to the richest banking system the world has ever seen. The banks loved it, and they made billions more with all that free money. It didn't matter to the Democrats that President Obama kept most of George Bush's policies. He kept both wars, he kept the Patriot Act, he kept the secret prisons, and he went one step further than even George Bush would take. President Obama decided that he could have any American citizen killed that he thought needed killing. And you know what? Nobody on the left side of that aisle breathed a word. The Republicans loved it. They were just sorry they hadn't, or I should say George Bush had never thought of that, but the Democrats are supposed to believe in the Rule of Law and all that sort of stuff.

Heck, Barack Obama went to the credit card company (Congress) and got them to raise the credit limit on that card that George had maxed out. Now he is paying for his wars the same way George Bush did, and still millions of Democrats worship the ground Obama walks on. That too, is Blind Faith.

The only difference I can see between George and Barack is the color of their skin. And I know the kind of blind faith we are seeing isn't based on the race of the politician, maybe it's all partisanship. I guess if you are a political party animal, you worship and have faith in your leader no matter what he does. You just close your eyes, and yell Hooray! for your man if he won the election.

Now that we know that blind faith isn't based on skin color, maybe some day we will see if it isn't based on gender.




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