The Week That Was

How fitting - Jerry Falwell died the week George Bush's presidency was officially declared finished. 43, with all of his spent political capital, watched as his friends and knees were taken out beneath him. Tony Blair declared the end of his ten-year reign as P.M. of Britain; Paul Wolfowitz bowed out as head of the World Bank and Alberto Gonzales's house of cards received a wolf-sized blow to his Attorney General position. The Democrats, for better or worse, have assumed the upper hand in handling the Iraq debacle, as former generals, current low-ranking officers and international think tanks have all but declared Bush's war of choice a failure. It's only now that in desperation that Bush has created an energy policy that doesn't depend on foreign oil (note the irony) and an immigration policy that's rallied both liberals and conservatives. Liberals are happy because there's something that can be toted in 2008 and yet conservatives are rallying because they believe the plan is too liberal. Looking back at the conservative plan from the last six years...exactly. Conservatives can only play fear on the foreign policy front so long but always know that immigration is a third-rail issue on the domestic front. Want to lose all those states with all those damned voting minorities, press the INS issue. Now, Bush has all but lost credibility on the home front with both liberals and his own party. What's he going to do next, allow those imbicilic tax cuts expire next year?
The Reverend Jerry Falwell passed away this week, leaving a legacy of division and hate in the name of Christ. While he can't be solely named for fathering today's caustic conservative-driven "culture wars" seen on cable t.v. and heard on AM radio, Falwell fanned the flames of bigotry and myopic religion-as-patriotism. As seen by the in- and out-of-context quotes in his obituaries, Falwell often confused or blended devotion to Christ and country, race, region, political party, political leader or national hegemony. Falwell, if nothing else, exuded a regional and historical myopia of worldview that, unfortunately, drove countless millions to the polls, the battlefields, political office or self-appointed cultural messiah/pariah role. Falwell's positions on cartoons, liberals, Democrats, blacks, minorities, free-thinkers, the educated, Northerners and those who chose not to agree with neoconservativism make him, in the light of history, out to be a cultural and national buffoon, someone who no one would want to claim as friend but often as someone who performed the dirty work you'd like to have done. It was Falwell and people of his ilk that helped produce Ronald Reagan, an extension of "white flight", intelligent design, fundamentalism, push neoconservatism and a religious white-Protestant-Southern-fundamentalist-anti-intellectual fascist movement that holds (or claims to) quite a stronghold in the cultural/political arena. Sad and frightening.