Bush Is Not An Idiot

One thing which makes a crisis difficult to get through is that at its start almost no one has the political vocabulary needed to get through it.

This one is no different. Because this era began with a land war in Asia (Vietnam), right-wingers (and many Democrats) cling to the idea that the Netroots are some sort of neo-McGovern movement. They willfully ignore the fact that, during the era leading to McGovern, most extremism was on the left, with people like Ramparts editor David Horowitz. Now it’s on the right, with people like, uh, Frontline editor David Horowitz. (Once a nutjob, always a nutjob.)

Just as those supporting the Iraq project keep believing it’s about Vietnam, so Democrats like Rahm Emmanuel fear they’re right. In fact both sides are wrong.

Iraq is irrelevant.

Accepting the premise that neither the war nor the war against the war are relevant is the key to understanding. Bush is not an idiot.
He is a hostage to the past. As is Cindy Sheehan. As is Rahm Emmanuel.
As are we all, until we step back and look at 2006 with fresh eyes.

Republicans today are just as disgusted by Bush as Democrats were
40 years ago with Lyndon Johnson. They are looking hard for new
stories, for an explanation of the past that will jibe with their
instincts. When they find such an explanation, what I call a Political
Thesis, with stories or Myths which impart Values, they will give those
people power.

These people, most of them baby boomers who have followed the Nixon
Myth of Conflict all their lives, will then turn permanently toward
this new Thesis. They will realign, for the rest of their lives, and they will teach
their children this new Myth, as my generation taught its children the
Nixon Myth, that conflict is necessary, that enemies are among us, that
strength is the only answer, that failure to confront an enemy is
weakness, that you can’t trust the "liberal media" or the "liberal
academics" or any other liberal.

The new Myth, the new Thesis, as I’ve asserted, is based on the values
and story of this medium. I call it the Open Source Thesis because open
source is a big tent, taking in those who believe in free software as
well as those who believe in new business models, and including in it
all the growth in the intellectual commons which the Internet has created.

Today’s politicians, on both sides, are distrustful of this Thesis.
They shy away from it. They are deathly afraid of the Internet. Idiot
laws against the Internet arise from both sides of the aisle, because
the place where the Open Source Thesis really confronts the outgoing
era is in the nature of information.

To the present era information is property. Intellectual Property, they
call it. To the new era, to the Internet, information is raw material.
What we do with that information is called the economy. And what we
need to do with that information, with this economy, is to save this
planet from the fever of Global Warming before it’s too late.

That’s how this story ends. You’re just in the first chapter. Think of
Lyndon Johnson with his beagles, Johnson with his gall bladder scar in
the shape of Vietnam, Johnson seemingly detached, robotic. An idiot, in
other words, because he had nothing in his political vocabulary to
explain the era he was in. All he had to fall back on was the FDR
story, of unity and victory, and the whole world was falling down
around his ears.

But Johnson was not an idiot. He was many things, but not an idiot. He was, in the end, a tragic figure. His whole term was a great tragedy. But the end of an era is always a great
tragedy. From tragedies the Thesis of a new future rises, phoenix-like.

As this new era is rising.