Tom Friedman’s Sunday Morning Sermon

In Freidman’s NYT Op/Ed column this morning regarding oil in the middle east, he says, “I believe that combining environmentalism and geopolitics is the most moral and realistic strategy the U.S. could pursue today.” Friedman says he would like for the Bush administration to focus on “sharply lowering energy consumption and embracing a gasoline tax”. Mr. Friedman is a smart man, for the most part. He surely has figured out that the White House is not going to focus on any policy, moral or otherwise that does not put money or power, or money and power in the hands of rich men who already have money and power. Tom Friedman is blowing smoke. He’s talking about what another administration, one which is not beguiled by war, killing, destruction and global supremacy should do. War puts lots of money and power in the hands of The Carlyle Group, which is to say, the GOP. And as long as we are ruled by the GOP, we are going to wage war or at least rattle sabers and threaten to wage war. That always justifies a build-up of weapons and arms. Friedman loves to coin phrases he hopes will be picked up and become household slogans. For awhile now, he’s been using “geo-green”. He’s a geo-green. That is, now that the BushMen have wrecked Iraq, he wants them to start being environmentalists who practice geo-politics. It ain’t gonna happen, Tom. Why? Because it ain’t easy being geo-green, and it doesn’t put money in the pockets of men who are already rich and powerful...as I believe I’ve said before. Right now, when a disenfranchised person looks up out of his lowly state to a position that will bring him money and the clout to make somebody somewhere pay for something, he looks at the GOP and says, Let me in! I want to be rich and powerful and I’ll do anything! How do we counteract that kind of drain on the morals of our nation’s youth, Mr. Friedman? Because I don’t know. If looking at George W. Bush with his mental impairment, drooping face, ideology of war, lies and corruption doesn’t say, “All hope abandon, ye who enter here”, I don’t know what will. If the revelations about Armstrong Williams, Jeff Gannon/James Guckert, and Bernie Kerik don’t make people disgusted with the fascists who recruit them, I don’t know what will. If listening to an apparently decent-enough man like the Bushites’ press secretary Scott McClellan, tell lies and defend the corrupt imperialists in the White House doesn’t make young people vow to go geo-green and work their asses off to make the United States respectable again, what will? At least the last line in Tom Friedman’s column this morning was sharp and true and clear, “The president's priorities are totally nuts.”