Posted on Tue, May. 27, 2003

ROBERT STEINBACK
Where did the feisty Americans go?

It will be a question historians will debate perhaps for centuries to come.

How did a president remain solidly popular with the American people, even though:

• The economy stagnated during his watch;

• He turned a projected federal surplus of $5.7 trillion over the next decade into a projected $2 trillion deficit, fueled by huge tax cuts that enriched the wealthy and failed to stimulate the economy;

• He proposed and won more tax cuts, though most economists warned that they wouldn't likely create many jobs;

• His administration trimmed basic domestic civil rights, including the right to privacy, counsel and habeas corpus;

• He openly scorned relations with traditional allies and potential friends worldwide;

• He launched a war against a sovereign nation without establishing why it was urgent and necessary, and without achieving any of his stated goals for attacking, except regime change;

• The company once headed by his vice president landed a no-bid contract in Iraq far more lucrative than originally revealed?

There has never been anything like this in American political history. Despite a record of budget irresponsibility, international discord, warmongering and even scandal, the Bush veneer is hardly scuffed.

It isn't anything about Bush; it's about us. We've changed, and not for the better.

It seems only yesterday that the typical American took a delicious pride in holding the feet of political leaders -- even the ones we admired -- to the fire. Whether it was Nixon or Carter or Reagan or Clinton, presidents have had to endure the relentless heat of popular scrutiny. Until now.

Bush exists in a dimension far beyond having to fend off criticism. It's as if critical evaluation itself has gone into hibernation. Virtually nobody questions Bush -- not the opposition Democrats, not the bulk of the media, and by all reckoning, not the public.

There can be only one explanation: Sept. 11. That terrible day in 2001 transformed us in many ways, but the most subtle and insidious change was how it sapped our national confidence.

The terrorist attacks provoked in us not courage, but fear -- fear of being victimized again, as we were that day. We've reacted like the rape victim whose faith in human nature is crushed by anxiety and suspicion, rather than the one who fights back spiritually, refusing to be degraded by a degrading act.

Bush told us that we needed to attack Iraq for our security, and we accepted it. He told us that we needed to compromise certain civil rights to help catch terrorists, and we accepted it. He told us that our security required us to detain suspects without charges or access to lawyers, and we accepted it.

It's as if the American people, shivering with fear, are huddling around Bush as if he were a shepherd. Do whatever you must, dear shepherd; just protect us. Consequently:

• We won't even question economic policies that have created a weak dollar, a soft stock market and creeping unemployment.

• We won't explore the logic of disarming the newly freed Iraqi people, while backing a resumption of sales of assault-style weapons at home.

• We won't evaluate the ludicrous notion that Haitian asylum seekers must be imprisoned as a matter of national security, even as migrants from communist Cuba are allowed to swim ashore and go free.

When I press Bush supporters on his record, they invariably respond with general references to faith and trust: He has good reasons for what he has done. Time will prove him right. He's a good man.

That's no America I recognize. Some amount of faith is fine and healthy. But aren't we Americans supposed to be feisty, indomitable, demanding, assertive, skeptical?

Sept. 11 rightly made us more cautious and more vigilant. But it also diminished us. We're less tolerant of dissent; less thoughtful about world issues; less concerned with principles of justice, fairness and equity; and -- to the apparent benefit of Bush's poll numbers -- less demanding of our political leaders.

It made us intellectually passive -- which frightens me much more than a hijacked airliner.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/robert_steinback/5949241...

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I'll sum it up this way......CONSPIRACY!

Wake up America, your being ruled by a fascist dictator.
Hitler part 2 is unleashed upon the world. This time they have high tech at their disposal.

Lapis