Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

W. Isn’t Beelzebub, He’s Just a Corleone—But Michael or Fredo?
Ron Rosenbaum ^ | 11/23/02 | Ron Rosenbaum

Posted on 11/23/2002 5:17:53 AM PST by jalisco555

Remember the way that rabid, self-destructive, paranoid, murder-list Clinton hatred paralyzed the Right (for a time, at least) in the 90’s? When Jerry Falwell peddled videotapes accusing the Clintons of multiple contract murders in Arkansas (after they offed Vince Foster, of course)? When lists of "murdered" witnesses circulated among the idiot faithful? Who could take those frothing, spittle-flecked conspiracy theorists seriously? But by failing to condemn these excrescences of Clinton hatred, much of the Right delegitimized any intellectual credibility it might have had and probably cost Newt Gingrich his job after a dismal showing in the ’98 midterm elections.

And now it’s back, in its mirror-image form on the Left. Dragging itself wet and dripping from what The Times’ liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof recently called the Left’s "cesspool of outraged incoherence" comes the new embodiment, the personification of that same rabid, self-destructive, paranoid rage: Bush Hatred.

Bush Hatred: As a cultural phenomenon, it has suddenly reached the critical mass of the Right’s sicko Clinton hatred. It’s crossed the line from opposition to his policies, from dissent, to an infantile, pathetic substitute for dissent and opposition. How do you define the difference; how do you know the line has been crossed? I think it’s safe to say the line was crossed even before the bitter election defeat turned what Mr. Kristof called incoherent rage to impotent rage.

The line was probably crossed when paranoid murder theories à la Falwell began to whiz through cyberspace immediately after Paul Wellstone’s death: George W. Bush had him killed!

Here’s the key part of the text of an e-mail that was circulated virtually minutes after Wellstone’s death:

" … alert: possible bush/republican coup: sen. wellstone assassinated … u.s. senator paul wellstone killed in mysterious plane crash right before pivotal, ‘too-close-to-call’ election, just like mel carnahan in 2000 ….

"remember how just before congress was going to vote on signing away our constitutional rights to the usa patriot act, how mail laced with anthrax was sent to members of congress ….

"remember how the nazis set the german parliament building (reichstag) on fire ….

"this is it, folks. We need to mobilize *IMMEDIATELY* … against a potenital [sic] republican fascist assault …. "

So let’s see: Bush had Wellstone "assassinated," maybe Carnahan, too; he had anthrax sent to Congress; and he’s planning a Reichstag-fire fascist coup. Unless, as Gore Vidal believes, 9/11 was Bush’s "Hitlerian" coup.

Why aren’t those who railed against paranoid, right-wing, murder-list Clinton-hatred standing up to this "cesspool" of incoherent Left Bush hatred? A few, like David Corn in The Nation, have tried to combat idiot conspiracy theories. But who can take left dissent seriously if it doesn’t separate itself from Bush assassination and anthrax charges? Who can take left dissent seriously if it defends Mr. Vidal’s ludicrous charge that Bush engineered the mass murder of 9/11? If it defends Mr. Vidal’s crackpot conspiracy theory—as a couple of letter writers did in these pages—as dissent. Of course we must take Vidal’s ravings seriously, they said in effect; it’s Bush he’s talking about, and so proof is unnecessary. But let’s face it: In a sense, they’re right. For much of the Left, dissent has degenerated into nothing more than incoherent, impotent Bush hatred.

It’s funny: After I published my recent critique of Left idiocy (Oct. 14, 2002)—no, not the one on Vidal’s particular paranoid brand of Left idiocy (Nov. 11, 2002)—I got some letters saying that I had taken a cheap shot by focusing, in my opening, on a protester at an antiwar rally who was holding a sign that read "BUSH IS A DEVIL … HANDS OFF N. KOREA, IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN …. "

But, in fact, that basically is what Left dissent has come down to: Bush is a devil. Yes, there still is some issue-based dissent, but it’s drowned out by the incoherent rage. So any idiot conspiracy theory Mr. Vidal feels like floating that accuses Bush of arranging the 9/11 mass murder is just fine with today’s Leftists, because it’s Bush, don’t you see: It’s His Satanic Majesty, the Longhorn Lucifer, the Prince of Harkness (Yale reference), George W. Beelzebub.

Sad, self-destructive, but true. Pardon me if I return to that sign: "BUSH IS A DEVIL … HANDS OFF N. KOREA, IRAQ," etc. Pardon me if I ask what might seem like a naïve question, but isn’t the Left supposed to be on the side of oppressed people, rather than on the side of the police states, such as North Korea, or the vicious theocracies, such as Iran, that oppress them? That’s why I used to think of myself as part of the Left. How did it all turn around so that if Mr. Bush opposes a police state, that particular police state is then taken under the nurturing, protective wing of the Left—and those oppressed people don’t count. Police states like Iraq and North Korea must be worth protecting even though they torture their citizens, murder their dissenters, repress women and gays, because—well, because Bush is the devil, and if the devil opposes something, it must have something going for it.

This, by the way, doesn’t make me an uncritical Bush fan. I think it might be appropriate, though, to talk about the evolution of my thinking about my classmate, the Devil. And perhaps the best lens through which to look at that evolution is The Godfather.

I called the White House press office the other day to see if I could get confirmation that the President had seen or read The Godfather, because I believe it is a profound influence on the way he sees the world. I’d seen the Bush family compared to the Corleones before, but I had a different kind of Godfather theory—one that had more to do with the brothers than the father.

The White House was not helpful. "That’s a ridiculous question," White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said of my mild inquiry. Why ridiculous? "We’re dealing with many more important matters," he said. And yet somehow they have time to tell us many less-important details. Somehow we know that Mr. Bush read The Very Hungry Caterpillar. He didn’t quite refuse to answer the question, but he basically told me not to hold my breath waiting for him to get back to me on it. Obviously, he thought I was going to use The Godfather against his boss, but in fact what I was seeking to do was to use The Godfather as a kind of rationale for Bush’s behavior—as a way of explaining his post-9/11 worldview, the new rules for dealing with the likes of Osama and Saddam and the gangland world we find ourselves in.

Basically, I think there are two aspects of The Godfather that help explain George W.

First, there’s the way he’s morphed from Fredo to Sonny to (a little bit of) Michael.

I must admit, I first thought of George W. as basically the Fredo of Skull and Bones: overprivileged, trading on his family’s influence—and ineffectually, too. (By the way, another indication that Bush hatred has crossed the line is the resurgence of Skull and Bones conspiracy theories of the Vidal secret-cabal type. It’s a little dismaying because, while I love having fun at the expense of the overprivileged stiffs of the Bush Secret Society, whenever I’ve written about Skull and Bones, I’ve taken great pains to portray it for what it is: an American equivalent of the British "Old Boy" network of Etonians, an informal network of power and connections, not without importance historically and anthropologically, but one that shamelessly exercises its influence out in the open. And yet the conspiracy theorists insist on making Bones a coven that rules the world in secret through Vidal-style cabal-like conspiracies, that manipulates history Protocols of the Elders of Connecticut–style, you might say.)

Anyway, I didn’t have any strong feelings about the Fredo of Skull and Bones. Or maybe I felt the mixed feelings we all have for Fredo in The Godfather movies: He’s weak and abrasive in a passive-aggressive way, but we kind of forgive him for at least knowing his place, finding his métier working in Vegas and, as Moe Greene puts it, "banging cocktail waitresses two at a time."

But then, when Fredo of Skull and Bones started running for President, I found a lot of things not to like about him, and I published them in these pages. I didn’t like his South Carolina primary campaign, where he exploited the racist sentimentality about the Confederate flag, smeared John McCain and sucked up to Pat Robertson (who would later, like the Left, suggest that the mass murders of 9/11 were a righteous judgment on a sinful America)—the primary campaign that basically won him the nomination.

And I didn’t like him for Florida, and wrote several columns bashing him and his thuggish minions for pickpocketing that election (whatever the conflicting newspaper recounts showed, there’s no doubt that more people went to the polls in Florida seeking to vote Democratic for President than Republican, and only a disgracefully prejudiced, political and hypocritical Supreme Court gave him the Presidency—as Sandra Day O’Connor’s husband indiscreetly made clear).

But there it was: Fredo was the only President we had. I wasn’t happy, but my contempt for Al Gore’s pusillanimous and deceptive posturing before and after the election didn’t make me long for a Gore Presidency. (Gore as the snotty WASP Senator in Godfather II?)

Then came 9/11, and Fredo began to morph into Sonny—and here’s the thing that came as the real surprise to me: began demonstrating some of the sagacity of Michael.

Now if you think of Osama bin Laden as Barzini, and the Taliban as the Tattaglia family, Rummy as Luca Brasi … no, I’m not going that route. Nor will I make any Sopranos comparison to make it seem more au courant. Much as I love The Sopranos—or have until this season—the whole series can be seen as a gloss, a commentary, a Talmudic meditation on the moral questions first raised by The Godfather, questions that extend beyond Little Italy and the Jersey suburbs: Is it possible to live an honorable life in a world that lives by gangland rules? Is there any sustainable code or limitation within gangland rules, or will one eventually be forced to go totally gangland, "get medieval," go all unilateral on gangland in order to survive?

No, this theory—which has to remain a theory, since the White House isn’t racing to get back to me on the question of whether Mr. Bush saw The Godfather (though I hereby bet White House spokesman Ken Lisaius $1,000 that Bush did, since everyone else of his generation did; as I’ve sheepishly disclosed in the past, and probably should again in this context, I was a classmate of George W. at Yale, though I didn’t know him)—this theory, I was saying, doesn’t call for a one-to-one mapping of the plot of The Godfather onto George W. and 9/11. It has more to do with the dynamic of the three Corleone brothers—Fredo, Sonny and Michael—going on within George W.

He wakes up in the White House on Jan. 21, 2001, and he’s still Fredo; he’s let his consigliere and his thugs play Sonny for him to get him there—although every once in a while, when he executes a particularly mean-spirited maneuver, as in the South Carolina primary, you wonder if he’s Sonny masquerading as the harmless Fredo. But that would really make him Michael, and I don’t think we see any real elements of Michael emerge until after 9/11.

But then, suddenly, there’s 9/11, that moment like the one in the first Godfather when Barzini hits the Old Man. Yes, George W. acts like hotheaded Sonny in that he hits the Tattaglia family, the hapless Taliban, right away. But he’s smart enough to realize he’s got to play the Saddam thing differently.

Clearly, he’s made a decision that the old rules don’t apply—only a loser and a sucker finds himself the last one or the only one to obey them. He realizes the time has come to "settle all family business" with terrorists. But in a very shrewd way. Saddam is family business, in the sense that anyone serious about long-term security can’t allow a nutter like him making bombs and handing them off to terrorists with paradise in their eyes. But Saddam has to be handled with a little more finesse than Afghanistan. So George W. gets the world thinking he’s morphed from Fredo to Sonny—the hotheaded unilateralist, so to speak—but it’s really Michael running the show. Bluffing a unilateral move (which he’d do, if necessary, although it has a downside), but bluffing it so compellingly that he gets the multilateralists of the world to join in on the dismantling of Saddam in order to prevent that crazy Sonny from knocking over the beautiful, multilateral house of cards they believe in.

Consider this, the "money graf" from the first installment of Bob Woodward’s new "Bush at War" series in The Washington Post on Nov. 17. It’s Mr. Woodward’s indirect-discourse version of what he thinks is going on in Mr. Bush’s mind:

"Bush believed a preemption strategy might be the only alternative if he were serious about … the realities at the beginning of the 21st century … the possibility of another massive, surprise terrorist attack similar to Sept. 11, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction …. Should the two converge in the hands of terrorists or a rogue state, the United States could be attacked, and tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people could be killed.

"In addition, the president and his team had found that protecting and sealing the U.S. homeland was basically impossible. Even with heightened security and the national terrorist alerts, the country was only marginally safer. The United States had absorbed Pearl Harbor and gone on to win World War II. For the moment, the country had absorbed Sept. 11 and gone on to win the first phase of the war in Afghanistan. What would happen if there were a nuclear attack, killing tens or hundreds of thousands? A free country could become a police state. What would the citizens or history think of a president who had not acted in absolutely the most aggressive way? When did a defense require an active offense?"

The chilling reality here: the possibility of a second strike here and its profound consequences if we just sit and allow those who could make it happen time to do it. It’s time for Michael to co-opt the multilateralists.

A digression here on the Left’s love of the multilateral system, its horror of unilateral pre-emption. Again, it goes back to my puzzlement about what the Left is about: Isn’t it supposed to be on the side of oppressed people? And yet the multilateral system that suddenly is all the rage in Left rhetoric does little more than entrench some of the worst torturing and murdering police states more deeply in power; allows theocracies to execute "blasphemers" with impunity, as Iran is about to do; allows others to commit multiple genocides with impunity; puts Sudan and Syria in charge of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. I mean, come on, who are we kidding? The multilateral system in place now is no more moral than the gangland system of The Godfather.

Wouldn’t it be a victory for the oppressed people of Iraq, of North Korea, of Iran, if their police-state regimes were overthrown? Even by a cowboy unilateralist? Even by The Devil? Even by the nation of Disney and McDonald’s? But, alas, the Left must protect and shield these odious police states and torturing theocracies, in large part because the Left really seems to believe murdering dissidents is not as bad as the globalizing influence of McDonald’s. And because the Left did nothing—but nothing—to challenge the murderous states of Eastern Europe because they were nominally Marxist. And most of the Left opposed even the multilateral intervention to forestall possible genocide in Albania. Where, for instance, are the Left demonstrations in solidarity with the courageous students of Iran protesting capital punishment for "blasphemy"?

I disagree with George Bush on just about every domestic issue you can name, and did so from the moment he named John Ashcroft Attorney General. I think the struggle to maintain the separation of church and state is one of the defining virtues of America. Every stupid, historically ignorant, Constitutionally repellent measure, from God in the Pledge of Allegiance to the Ten Commandments in the courtroom, needs to be vigorously opposed. But the Left has no credibility on this issue, because it’s now the chief American defender of theocracies abroad. It simply amazes me that the Left doesn’t get that the people who attacked us don’t just want God in some pledge; they want to execute "blasphemers," beat women into burqas, stone gays—America was founded by escapees from such theocracies.

How can the Left be so blind to who the real enemy is? How can they have so alienated themselves—not just from the electorate, but from reason itself, dumbing down dissidence to paranoid Vidalian mass-murder conspiracy charges? Because, in effect, they have founded their own religion: Bush hatred. It doesn’t have a God, but it does have a Satan: "Bush is the devil.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; Philosophy; US: New York
KEYWORDS: bush; gorevidal; liberals
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-37 next last
A rambling piece from a recovering Leftist who is slowly, painfully groping his way to the truth.
1 posted on 11/23/2002 5:17:53 AM PST by jalisco555
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: jalisco555
I just have to add this,so please forgive me any who think it is out of line. When the writer mentions Bush having part or something to do with Wellstones death, I say maybe if it were investigated it would lead closer to his leader by the name of Daschle. Not so much an attempt to kill Mr. Wellstone but from the part Daschles wife played in the past with the aviation industry, especially in that area of the country.Democrats and Liberals have a tendacy to be in the middle of things and push the button when getting paranoid hoping their part in mess wont appear.It is funny how Daschle accuses Limbaugh of inciting hatred and violence,yet when Alec Baldwin was advocating the killing of Henry Hyde and family you never heard a word from the Demoncrats.Down South we call this shucking and jiving in front of smoking mirrors. Maybe Bob Woodward should write a book about it.
2 posted on 11/23/2002 5:28:04 AM PST by gunnedah
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jalisco555
God does he ramble! We'll see how long he stays awake when Kerry, Edwards or Hillary challenge Bush.

These people vote on emotion rather than reason. A pretty face and a good line of BS could put them back to sleep.

3 posted on 11/23/2002 5:40:35 AM PST by johnny7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: johnny7
SO LET ME UNDERSTAND........W IS NOT THE DEVIL, HE IS MERELY A BLOODTHIRSTY ITALIAN GANGSTER AND PART OF THE MOB. IT IS SO GOOD TO KNOW THAT THE LEFT IS NO LONGER DEMONIZING OUR PRESIDENT.
4 posted on 11/23/2002 5:53:24 AM PST by stocksthatgoup
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: jalisco555
Frodo Corleone?

Oh, wait, he said Fredo. Darn, I thought this was going to be interesting.
5 posted on 11/23/2002 6:04:47 AM PST by lds23
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jalisco555
Remember the way that rabid, self-destructive, paranoid, murder-list Clinton hatred paralyzed the Right.......

At least we anti-Clinton folks had a great deal of evidence of illegal activities to back up our views, as well as an impeached, fined and disbarred scoundrel still spreading his poison.

The anti-Bush folks have nothing but emotion and worn-out diatribes from GW's past.

6 posted on 11/23/2002 6:05:00 AM PST by jimtorr
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jalisco555
Didn't Maureen Dowd write the same column about a year ago?
7 posted on 11/23/2002 6:08:06 AM PST by RichInOC
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jalisco555
Bingo, Whatever criticisms one can lay at the feet of President Bush (and I can think of more than one or two), the fact remains that any comparison between Krinton and Bush will fail because, fundamentally, Krinton IS a criminal.
8 posted on 11/23/2002 6:08:45 AM PST by WorkingClassFilth
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jalisco555
A rambling piece from a recovering Leftist who is slowly, painfully groping his way to the truth.

Cripes! He likes seeing his own words on the page/screen doesn't he. I'd have to agree with your assessment though.

9 posted on 11/23/2002 6:20:25 AM PST by LoneGOPinCT
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Wouldn’t it be a victory for the oppressed people of Iraq, of North Korea, of Iran, if their police-state regimes were overthrown? Even by a cowboy unilateralist? Even by The Devil? Even by the nation of Disney and McDonald’s?

Why does the Left always revert to "the-ends-justify-the-means" arguement?

10 posted on 11/23/2002 6:21:35 AM PST by DoctorMichael
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: jalisco555
it’s drowned out by the incoherent rage

There's a fellow calling himself Ed or Ted who keeps plaguing Hannity's radio show with calls like that. It's rather amusing...

11 posted on 11/23/2002 6:36:16 AM PST by backhoe
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jalisco555
"
Beelzebub" - Hebrew, literally "The lord of the flies" because of the bloody, unclean altars of this god.
12 posted on 11/23/2002 6:36:41 AM PST by Hack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jalisco555
Rosenbaum has been writing like this for years. It's an intentional style. A rambling monolouge that is usually very readable and interesting. I would imagine most who started reading this probably finished it to see where it all was going.

He was never a fan of Clinton. He will likely never be a fan of Bush's domestic poilicies, but the whole point of the piece is that on the fight against the 9/11 enemies, Bush deserves support, not the typical knee jerk reaction that he is somehow the devil in all this.

13 posted on 11/23/2002 7:03:07 AM PST by Kenyon
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jalisco555
This is a very good article, though it could have been half as long. "Settling family business" is the difference between defeating terrorist movements or succumbing to them.
14 posted on 11/23/2002 7:15:58 AM PST by sinkspur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jalisco555
George W. as Michael Corleone?

I posted this on GlockTalk on 9/3/02. Pardon the vanity, but I like mine better than this guy's take...
With apologies to Mario Puzo...

"Michael said quietly, "Barzini is dead. So is Phillip Tattaglia. I want to square all the Family accounts tonight. So admit what you did."

Hagen and Lampone stared at Michael with astonishment. They were thinking that Michael was not yet the man his father was. Why try to get this traitor to admit guilt? That guilt was already proven as much as such a thing could be proven."

from The Godfather, by Mario Puzo, 1969

So imagine a day in the not too distant future... In the Oval Office, a young man who has assumed the mantle of power formerly held by his father, forced to deal with old family enemies, sits surrounded by trusted advisors. His face is steel as he stares into the eyes of the traitor who has been brought before him.

George W. said quietly, "Saddam is dead. So is Arafat. Assad of Syria and Khamenei of Iran - both dead. I want to square all the Country's accounts tonight. So don't tell me you're innocent. It would be better for you to admit what you did."

Cheney and Rumsfeld stared at George W. with astonishment. They were thinking that W. was not yet the man his father was. Why try to get this traitor to admit guilt? That guilt was already proven as much as such a thing could be proven. The answer was obvious. George W. still was not that confident of his right, still feared being unjust, still worried about that fraction of an uncertainty that only a confession by Bill Clinton could erase.

There was still no answer. W. said almost kindly, "Don't be so frightened. Do you think I'd make a former President stand trial for treason? The American people have suffered your sorry act long enough. No, your punishment will be that you won't be allowed any work within this country. I'm putting you and your wife on a plane to Hollywood to join your phony liberal friends and then I want you to stay there. But don't keep saying you're innocent, don't insult my intelligence and make me angry. Who approached you, Bin Laden or the Chinese?"

William Jefferson Clinton in his anguished hope for life, in the sweet flooding relief that he was not going to stand trial, murmured, "The Chinese."

"Good, good," W. said softly. He beckoned with his right hand. "I want you to leave now. There's a car waiting to take you to the airport."

Clinton went out the door first, the other three men very close to him. It was night now, but the mall as usual was bright with floodlights. A car pulled up. Clinton saw it was his own car. He didn't recognize the driver. There was someone sitting in the back but on the far side. Rumsfeld opened the front door and motioned to Clinton to get in. Michael said, "I'll call Hillary and tell her you're on your way down. Her resignation will be announced after your plane takes off." Clinton got into the car. His silk shirt was soaked with sweat.

The car pulled away, moving swiftly toward the gate. Clinton started to turn his head to see if he knew the man sitting behind him. At that moment, Richard Marcinko, as cunningly and daintly as a little girl slipping a ribbon over the head of a kitten....


__________________

15 posted on 11/23/2002 7:21:45 AM PST by islander-11
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jalisco555
This guy does love to read his own excrement, doesn't he?

I remember hundreds of posts seriously questioning whether Bill Clinton was the Antichrist, and postulating that his appearance heralded the Apocalypse. But, then again, Bill Clinton is truly an evil man. George Bush is pretty tepid by comparison.

16 posted on 11/23/2002 7:23:48 AM PST by IronJack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: stocksthatgoup
Bush is BEELZEBUBBA.
17 posted on 11/23/2002 7:25:20 AM PST by dljordan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: islander-11
Nice. Never looked at it that way, but when I get home, I'll get my copy of the GF out (1st edition no less), and re-read with your slant. Should make for enjoyable reading (yet again!).
18 posted on 11/23/2002 7:33:00 AM PST by AngryOne
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

Comment #19 Removed by Moderator

To: jalisco555
b.s. HAS NEVER BEEN SO DEEP.

Get a life.

Ops4 God Bless America!
20 posted on 11/23/2002 7:40:57 AM PST by OPS4
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-37 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson