[Ibby]

Reporter Jeff Gannon created a short-lived controversy when he pitched Bush a “softball” question – a ridiculously easy question – at a press conference in early 2005.
But that was nothing compared to the scandal that erupted when it came to light that not only was he not a real reporter – with no journalistic experience more refined than being the editor of his high-school newspaper – had been repeatedly granted ‘daily’ press passes to the White House (which normally take weeks to apply for and receive) at the door for two years, assumedly from the Administration, after being denied a yearly pass on the grounds that, well, he wasn’t a real reporter. And not only was he not a real reporter – he was also a gay escort known as the “Bulldog”.

National security is important by any means; but when it becomes an obsession, it’s yet another red flag. Bush’s two Patriot acts, extensive erosion of freedom for the sake of security, wiretapping program, extension of intelligence agency power, and extreme willingness to go to war for (supposed) security all point to this obsession that was evident in too many dictators. The Republican agenda in general is, in essence, an authoritarian one; all their pet issues call for a limit on freedom for (what they call) the security of the nation, be that security moral, ethical, or militaristic.

The dubious intertwinement of church and state is the most blatant and complete of George Bush’s transgressions. Bush does nothing to hide the fact that he rules with a completely Christian agenda, going so far as to say “I believe that God wants me to be president” and, even more scarily, “God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did…” (Beliefnet). This, coupled with his willingness to ignore the Constitution or the Supreme Court or even Congress to push a religious, conservative-Christian based agenda (like the banning of abortion or gay marriage, the push to remove education on birth control/safe sex from schools, the pushing of faith-based initiatives…) , is a threat to the religious and political freedom of all Americans.

The protection of corporations has always been a major point for conservatives in general – however, the Bush regime has taken it a step further with personal protection for individual companies – most notably, Halliburton. In June 2005, the House of Representatives’ Committee on Government Reform released a report on examples of preferential treatment for Halliburton, which has a list of 8 points on which the government is giving undue support to the company, even after Pentagon auditors advised that Halliburton was getting millions more dollars than it needed for contracts in the Middle East, and that all government funding to Halliburton should be cut and no new contracts signed with the company. The auditors were ignored, and Halliburton is still being awarded contract after contract – contracts the company neither bids on nor cuts costs on. The government regularly awards Halliburton contracts in secret, closed, no-bid decisions, and agencies such as the Government Accountability Office and the Defense Contract Audit Agency regularly reprimand the administration and the military for engaging in these corrupt contracts.

To the credit of the Bush administration, points ten and eleven are hardly evinced at all by the government at this point. The power of labor is not suppressed; if anything it’s simply ignored, as the middle class service-sector economy usurps the throne of
American economics and the working class shrinks and shrinks. Disdain for intellectuals is also not very commonly shown by the regime. However, if a parallel can be drawn between intellectuals and scientists, it can be said that the regime does fall under point 11 to an extent; the Bush regime has little appreciation or respect for scientists that contradict their conservative, religion-influenced beliefs on things like abortion or evolution.

An obsession with crime and punishment is not merely a facet of the Bush administration – it is a key point. From the PATRIOT acts to the “War on Drugs”, from the death penalty to Guantanamo Bay Prison, crime and punishment has been a key issue for the Republican party in general and the Bush Regime in particular. In the draconian drug laws rides an extreme right-wing authoritarian bent, the presumption that the government has the right to tell people what they can and can’t do to themselves in the privacy of their own homes. In the PATRIOT acts, the presumption that privacy is second to security and that no cost is too great for stopping terrorists (H.R.3162). Also, disturbingly, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said, before a Senate Judiciary Committee, “There is no expressed grant of habeas [corpus] in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,” implying that many other rights crucial to the US legal system (and, for that matter, rights crucial to freedom in general) are not expressly granted by the constitution because they are defined in the negative (Parry).
But even this is a breach of constitutional legality, as defined in the Ninth amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Without the right of habeas corpus, the American legal system can become little more than a Gulag (and has, in places like Guantanamo Bay), where people are held without charge or crime at the behest of only the government.

Corruption and cronyism is a recurring theme within the Bush administration. The entire administration is loyal not to America, not to the People, only to Bush and the Republican Party. In the first term of the Presidency, Secretary of State Colin Powell was, according to sources inside the administration, one of the only people who would stand up to the President on many issues – and was, in the early stages of the Iraq invasion planning, very opposed to it. When re-election came around, he was duly replaced. Even more obvious is the way that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales regularly and completely supports the administration, to the point of corruption, as in the case of the firing of many attorneys alleged deemed ‘too liberal’, and the subsequent complete denial of all knowledge of the incident during a congressional investigation, contradicting himself repeatedly and simply claiming no knowledge (“I do not recall” being repeated 42 times in one day).

Lastly, the election of George W. Bush was controversial from the very start. Dr. Britt’s paper describes “turning to a judiciary beholden to the power elite” as one of the methods used by fascist leaders to gain or hold power – and turning to the Supreme Court is exactly what Bush did in the 2000 election, after failing to gain the popular vote and during the hotly contested Florida election. The Supreme Court declared an end to all recounts in Florida, essentially insuring a Bush victory. But it is what happened after Bush gained power that holds the greatest threat; under the Bush regime, voting has been ‘reformed’ to use electronic voting machines – voting machines made by the Diebold company, which has not only been repeatedly prosecuted for corruption (like putting ‘back-door’ programs into their software) but is also owned/managed by several regular and loyal contributors to President Bush and the Republican Party. (Black Box). The security has also been proven to be very lax on the voting machines; independent ‘hackers’ have test-hacked the machines innumerable times, showing a serious weakness in the machines’ security.

So is George W. Bush a fascist? Of course not. America is still among the freest countries in the world, with one of the highest standards of living, and is still a model of freedom to the world. But if President Bush can get away with all this – what will a future president do? If we allow our President to display such authoritarian, anti-freedom qualities, it only sets a precedent for future presidents who may not be as (relatively) harmless as President Bush. Lastly, always remember this: Adolf Hitler was elected. As Huey Long once said, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag."