To Avoid Our Next Dictatorship: Why America MUST have a Thorough Truth Commission of the Bush-Cheney Crimes, for How Can We Avoid Repeating History if It Is Hidden From Us?

This started out as a commentary on the video I produced and published on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9filoR7cfk), last week titled "8 Years." Since then I was... More »

This started out as a commentary on the video I produced and published on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9filoR7cfk), last week titled "8 Years." Since then I was moved to write a commentary to accompany it, which I did when I added the video to my website www.primalspirit.com (http://www.primalspirit.com/decider-dictator.html). Writing the commentary I began to realize some important and overlooked truths concerning one of the issues that our government is facing right now. As Obama, Pelosi, Leahy, the Republicans, and all the media struggle over the issue of having a truth commission to look into possible illegalities committed by Bush-Cheney, I was flooded with one of those obvious truths, the common sense kind, that gets lost in the complexities of personalities and politics.

Basically, it started with that oft-quoted maxim from philosopher, Santayana: "Those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it." So far, nothing big there. Then it hit me: But if history is not known, how can one help but repeat it? In the current situation, if we DO NOT look into what was done by Bush-Cheney during the 8 years that, as my video points out, numerous scholars have determined was America's first dictatorship, then we will not have a TRUE history of what happened. And if our history is not true, then it is fantasy, speculation, or propaganda. In that situation, which is our current one, unless we have that truth commission, we "are doomed to repeat it." Repeat what? DICTATORSHIP. And the even sadder thing is that when we fail to learn from our past experience, whether as individuals or societies or nations, when it repeats, it repeats in a bigger form, carrying more impact, force, devastation…more dire consequences.

We have numerous historical examples of this pattern in recent history alone - on both sides. When Germany, South Africa, and Japan faced and dealt with the horribles of their recent past (after WWII for Germany and Japan; after the end of apartheid for South Africa), they went forward and prospered tremendously, even phenomenally.

However, the United States refused to acknowledge and face the abominable failure of Reaganomics as applied for 12 years during the terms of Reagan and Bush I, which led to such a recession in the early 90s that it swept Clinton into office, under the slogan "It's the economy, stupid!" Not a peep could be heard putting the blame on Reaganomics then; nor during the following 8 years during which Clinton turned slightly away from it by increasing the tax on the rich by a few percentage points, enough to lead to one of the most prosperous decades in this century, creating the first balanced budget in many decades, and at the end resulting in a budget surplus which economists and pundits gleefully were considering how to spend, envisioning using it to launch America into a new era -- perhaps from switching away from oil to solar; providing health insurance; nationwide wifi, and so on.

But when Bush the W was installed as President by the Supreme Court over the will of the people, his first act was to blow the entire "peace surplus" on another giveaway to the rich -- thus reinstituting in a grand and dramatic manner, you guessed it, REAGONOMICS! The same failed Reaganomics that been proven such a failure a decade earlier.

They say insanity is when you continue applying the same failed approach expecting a different outcome. Well, that is exactly what we did. And it was done without a murmur of outcry from any in the media or our government, when it should have led to an uproar of righteous indignation loud enough to bring people into the streets. Why it didn't has to do with the fact that the Republicans with the help of the media, owned by the wealthy, had managed to thoroughly muddle, during the successful 90s, the obvious lesson we should have been taking in, i.e., that Reaganomics doesn't work; Clintonomics does.

So in not learning from the spanking Am
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Just as on the individual level, as in primal therapy, hidden TRUTH must be uncovered, faced, dealt with, and ONLY THEN put behind oneself; so also must society uncover its... More »

Just as on the individual level, as in primal therapy, hidden TRUTH must be uncovered, faced, dealt with, and ONLY THEN put behind oneself; so also must society uncover its hidden truths or it will be sick. And by sick, I mean the same thing that Santayana meant when he said "A society that does not remember its history is doomed to repeat it." 

Everyone quotes that. How then can no one seem to make the connection that your history has to be TRUE HISTORY not a web of lies hiding deep and festering wrongs. So it is just as important for nations and societies to uncover its repressed truth, in order to heal, as it is for the Individual….

After you look at what happened under Bush, and there are scholars galore putting out books delineating the ways in which our Executive Branch acted as literal traitors, and worse, to America, and list the grounds upon which Bush and Cheney would be tried for murder, for starters, if they were anyone else in America. ...

If these truths are not faced by our country, God help us. For just as voodoo economics returned, with results many, many times worse than the first time; well, what can we imagine would happen if we don't face the truth about the dictatorship of George W. Bush, the loss of rights and freedom and honest elections? 

For one thing, consider how easily this dictator rose to power. Our supposed democracy didn't stop him, like it is assumed democracy will. If we don't take in that lesson, not only are we doomed to repeat these horrible eight years, but we are leaving a door wide open for the next one; and if you think you have to have concentration camps in order to see dictatorship, well, gee, just guess what you are going to get under the next American dictator.

And this will surely happen for it is simple common sense that anyone would understand if it were related to something in their commercial life. You don't see farmers feeding the wrong kind of grain to their livestock more than one time, do you; can you even imagine it? Than why would we think that we can ignore finding out what happened and fixing it in order to keep something worse than it from happening in the future when it comes to politics? 

Is it that we think that as Americans we are immune from something so horrible? Then are we a nation of Pollyannas? And how many Katrinas, Iraqs, Vietnams, Bush-Cheneys, being rated at the bottom in health care among developed nations, having one of the shortest life expectancies among developed nations, having one of the worst educational systems, and having one of the lowest standards of livings among developed nations kinds of events is it going to take before people stop engaging in magical thinking, believing the things that pandering Republicans will tell them to hide these facts, instead of taking their truth from the experiences of their own lives?

I hope all Americans and our representatives will resist the tendency to run away from the unpleasant past and instead find ways, and there are plenty of easy ways, to turn and face the darkness behind us, so that we will not be forced to walk through an even blacker and more horrible darkness before us.
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