- Sep 16, 2000
- 1,652
- 0
- 0
American Prospect
Is this theory absurd? Sure it is. But its no more absurd than cutting taxes at a time of war. No more absurd than the attack on Iraq. No more absurd than supporting a militaristic theocracy in the Middle East. In fact, it seems quite logical compared to those absurdities.
[...]
Now, at last, with the revelation that Ahmad Chalabi has been passing intelligence information to the regime in Iran, the opportunity presents itself to construct just such a unified theory. The truth, hard as it is to accept, is that Bush is an Iranian agent.
Admittedly this theory suffers from a lack of direct empirical evidence. Nevertheless, by presenting this single bold conjecture, we can explain everything in a neat, tidy package. By Occam's razor, then, the theory must be accepted. Hear me out.
The appeal of the Bush social agenda -- restrictions on abortion rights, a gay-marriage ban, abstinence-only sex education, restrictions on international family planning, etc. -- to the mullahs is obvious, and it builds upon a longstanding collaboration between the GOP and Islamist regimes in international women's rights and related issues. Bushian economics, by contrast, has more typically been understood as focusing on efforts to make wealthy Americans even wealthier. Superficially, this class warfare theory has a lot of appeal: Why else would there be all these tax cuts for the rich? On further examination, however, the theory begins to break down. It is understood among development economists that a cleaner environment is a "superior good," demand for which rises in tandem with income. A panderer to the interests of the wealthy, then, would have little reason to advance a Bush-style pro-pollution agenda.
It is hard to see, moreover, how the creation of an unhealthy, ill-educated workforce could possibly serve the interests of corporate America in the long term. Nevertheless, this is precisely the direction in which the Bush agenda points. Most broadly, fiscal policy à la Bush has produced tremendous budget deficits at the very moment when the looming retirement of the baby boomers makes such deficits unsustainable. Were the nation to continue down the road to bankruptcy, the resulting political and economic instability would harm all Americans, but do the rich not have more interest than the rest of us in maintaining the current order? The real beneficiaries of a fiscal crisis would be none other than America's enemies abroad. Clearly, then, Bush is an agent of one of them. But why Iran?
[...]
Is this theory absurd? Sure it is. But its no more absurd than cutting taxes at a time of war. No more absurd than the attack on Iraq. No more absurd than supporting a militaristic theocracy in the Middle East. In fact, it seems quite logical compared to those absurdities.