Bush Becomes a Dictator

According to the Associated Press, on December 18, 2000 President Bush , faced with a closely divided Congress, remarked to Congressional leaders, “There are going to be some times when we don't agree with each other. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier," he said, pausing and then joking, "just so long as I'm the dictator."

Perhaps he wasn’t joking.

On May 9, President Bush signed a directive granting extraordinary powers to the office of the president in the event of a declared national emergency. So what is the problem?

The directive establishes under the office of the president a new national continuity coordinator whose job is to make plans for "National Essential Functions" of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments, as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president's directives in the event of a national emergency. Guess who the “new national continuity coordinator” is?

None other than George W. Bush. In 1804, Napoleon crowned himself as “Emperor of France.” On May 9, 2007, George W. Bush crowned himself as “Emperor of the United States.”

"Catastrophic emergency" is loosely defined as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions." The president can assume the power to direct ANY AND ALL GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS ACTIVITIES until the emergency is declared over.

The problem is that the directive makes no attempt to reconcile the powers created for the national continuity coordinator with the National Emergency Act, which requires that such proclamation "shall immediately be transmitted to the Congress and published in the Federal Register."

A Congressional Research Service study notes the National Emergency Act had set up Congress as a balance empowered to "modify, rescind, or render dormant" such emergency authority if Congress believes the president has acted inappropriately. This directive signed by the President takes away the ability of Congress to oversee the powers the President has granted to himself. In other words, President Bush can become a virtual dictator in an emergency situation. He alone can decide when he can assume the powers the directive gives him, and he alone can decide when the emergency is over.

The founders of our nation had lived under the rule of the King of England and found that the King abused his powers over the people. That government was too strong. Fearing a strong central government for our new nation, the Founding Fathers established a weak central government under the Articles of Confederation. That central government proved to be too weak. The result was the U.S. Constitution which divided the powers of government into three branches, so that each branch could check that the other branches were not abusing the powers granted to them by the Constitution.

The problem then is that the President is once again reducing the ability of another branch of government to act as a check on the authority granted him by the Constitution. And that is not good for the future of our nation. The Constitution was not established to make governing our nation easier and more efficient; it was established to make those who govern our nation more accountable to the people.

Jack’s Dilemma

They had dated almost a year before they decided to get married. Jack and Jill were madly in love with each other. Jack knew that Jill was the woman with whom he desired to spend the rest of his life. She had all the qualities that he desired in a woman. She was young, physically attractive, intelligent, vivacious, and witty.

The wedding was to take place six weeks later. The invitations had been sent out, the reception had been planned, and the florist, the photographer, and the caterers had all been notified. The bride had selected her wedding gown, and the future seemed assured.

Then a problem developed. Jack went to a fitness center to get buffed up for the wedding. The first night there he met a woman named Nicky - young, physically attractive, intelligent, vivacious, and witty. He knew it almost immediately - those special vibrations that one gets, perhaps only once in a lifetime if one is lucky. He suddenly felt an attraction he could not overcome. It was love at first sight.

The first night they just conversed a lot at the fitness center, but the next night Jack asked Nicky if she would like to go to dinner. She accepted with great enthusiasm, and they went to a small cafe where they lingered for the whole evening, engaging in lively conversation. Both Jack and Nicky knew by this time that they were soul mates. As they continued to see each over the next three weeks, their love for each other only grew deeper. Now Jack knew that this was the only woman he really wanted to marry.

I mentioned earlier that there was a problem. The problem was that Jack now wanted to get out of the wedding with Jill, but he didn’t look forward to facing the embarrassment, disappointment, financial loss, and tears that he knew surely awaited him.

Now you finish the story.

Checking Cheating Chucky’s Choices

When Chucky was fourteen years old, he often lied about his age to get into a movie theater for a child’s admission price. Later, when he was in college, he often cheated on tests. Which transgressions do you think did the most harm and why?

Extra Credit: Tongue Twister

Say "Checking Cheating Chucky's Choices" seven times in rapid succession without hesitation and without error. Were you successful?

Moral Dilemma: The Promise

Your best friend confides to you that he has embezzled over $100,000 from his company after you give him your solemn promise that you will keep that information confidential. Later, discovering that an innocent co-worker of his has been convicted and sentenced for the crime, you plead with your friend to give himself up. He refuses and reminds you that he trusted you because of your long-term friendship and your solemn promise of confidentiality. What should you do? What moral justification would you use for your decision?

There’s Show Business Like News Business

When I turned to a news channel on TV last night, a Special Newsbreak had just concluded. A woman in Los Angeles had led several police cars on a lengthy chase over freeways and city streets. A news helicopter had followed the chase, bringing to untold numbers of viewers the excitement of the chase, which finally ended when a police car rammed the fleeing car and turned it around where it was trapped by other police cars. The police exited their cars with guns drawn and pulled the woman out of her car, wrestled her to the ground, and handcuffed her. While all of this was going on, a newscaster was telling the viewers how fortunate the woman was not to have met deadly force by the police because she had used her car as a weapon.

In 1976, almost a third of a century ago, Hollywood produced an Academy-Award winning satirical film titled “Network.” The story was about a fictional network named Union Broadcasting System (UBS) and its struggle with poor TV ratings. When the film came out, many people thought it was outlandish, inconceivable, impossible. A network news variety show hosted by a "Mad Prophet of the Airwaves"? Never happen. Who would watch such things?

The film opens with long-time UBS Evening News anchor Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) being fired due to low ratings. His termination would be effective in two weeks. The following night, Beale announces on the air that he will commit suicide by getting a gun and "blowing his brains out" during an upcoming live broadcast. Beale is fired after this incident; but after he promises to apologize for his outburst, he is allowed to continue with the program. But once he is on the air again, Beale starts a rant about how life is “bullshit.” Suddenly, the program’s ratings ratchet up and the executives at UBS decide to exploit Beale and his antics on the air.

Here is the scene in which Howard Beale delivers his famous rant:

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy.

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.

You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

"I'm as mad as hell,

and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

Soon Beale is hosting a new program called The Howard Beale Show, top-billed as the "Mad Prophet of the Airways." Ultimately, the show becomes the highest rated on television, and Beale finds new celebrity preaching his angry message in front of a live audience that, on cue, repeats the Beale's marketed catchphrase en masse. His new set is lit by blue spotlights and an enormous stained-glass window, supplanted with segments featuring polls and astrology.

In 1985, Neil Postman wrote a book titled “Amusing Ourselves to Death” in which he portrayed people so sated by pleasure, from hedonistic pursuits to the ingestion of the drug Soma, that they failed to question the flaws and brutalities of a centrally run society. Postman was worried that our society, with its constant search for distraction, was losing its ability to question, to wonder, to think, and that it was being overwhelmed by images and dazzled by facade. And he placed most of the blame for this condition on television.

Even in 1976, the local news was already dominated by the "if it bleeds, it leads" philosophy. And TV news executives knew that humans had once gathered for public executions and lynch mobs -- and still gathered for circuses and car crashes. Oh, they'd watch such programs with great enthusiasm.

In the 31 years since "Network" was released, the world has become a different place than it was when the film first appeared; but much of the world is still the same, still full of war and violence and corruption and missing puppies. But the packaging has gotten better, and sometimes it's hard to tell real life from "reality," the version that's presented on television and on the internet. News is showbiz; showbiz is news.

In retrospect, perhaps “Network” ultimately proved to be more of a documentary than a satire on the showbiz of news.