Bush War on the Home Front

President Bush's Social Security proposals raise all sorts of questions: why is he doing this, what are his objectives, which branch of the oligarchy is going to benefit most from these changes, or is this really just the logical conclusion of his ideology, and so on. For the moment, lets focus on his methods.

First, like the run up to the Iraq war, there is the repetition of false assertions and outright lies about Social Security. These are accompanied by the concantenation of Social Security with Medicare/Medicaid in a single breath that proceeds on to the claim that there is a crisis. The, he invokes the religion of the "ownership society" and the wonders of the market. Just as he did in the months before the Iraq invasion, Bush repeats these claims, always in front of hand-picked crowds of carefully vetted supporters, and then repeats them again.

This brings us to the second component of his method, the use of the mass media to spread these assertions, just as they spread the assertions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq was building nuclear weapons, that Iraq was closely linked to Al Quaeda and bin Laden, that Iraq was an immediate danger to the US, the media repeats over and over Bush's assertions about Social Security. Without any critical awareness the media uses words like "reform" or "overhaul" to describe Bush's proposals. They accept and repeat the assertions of "crisis".

Thankfully, unlike the case of the war (Americans love a war), there are quite a few countervailing forces in play, so Bush won't have such a free fire zone for this campaign. Of course, the media could help out. They should preface all reports of Bush's appearances before crowds of Americans, in his "town hall" meetings, with a note that the crowds, like all of his campaign crowds, are hand-picked supporters who have signed a pledge of allegiance to Bush.