Why Do I Detest Karl Rove?

Why Do I Detest Karl Rove?

Yesterday’s blog brought some interesting reactions. Lots of YES! And a bit of puzzled why, so I thought maybe a little explanation was in order.

If I were in Junior High, I’d probably start my essay: I detest Karl Rove because. . .
Well what the heck. When it comes to BushCo and Rove, Jr. High is about the right level so here goes.

I detest Karl Rove because his world view is so narrow that the only thing he cares about is power. This is clearly expressed in his willingness to demean opponents so vilely that the slime covers everything around including himself. What level of personal conscience does it take to run a gubernatorial campaign based on spreading the dis-information that your opponent is a lesbian? Or to lie about finding a wiretap placed in your office by that governor? (Ann Richards, a fine Texas governor whose most famous quote was in reference to W: “He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”) What level of personal ethic must one possess to falsely taint an American war hero as a lying coward to undercut his run for the presidency?

Hmmm. Having asked those questions, I think we’d better lower the level. Junior High students are, on the whole, far too ethically advanced to fall into the Rove category. Maybe a few more questions will help determine the appropriate level.

Bush and Rove gushed yesterday about their pride in the service they have given the country. What kind of civic servility does it take to identify the political potential of a rich, well-connected loser and publicize his path to the whitehouse so that you and your cronies can manipulate the poor smuck to your will? What kind of morality does it take to advise torture and illegal wiretapping as unmonitored executive policy? What kind of loyalty to your country does it take to be a lynchpin in an administration that uses hundreds of signing statements to justify ignoring the laws of the land? What kind of reverence for constitutional law does it take to have as your primary goal the garnering of all federal power in the hands of one political party under an all-powerful executive branch?

I have to conclude that if Rove rises to the heights of Junior High, it is only as the class bully.

Of all those questions, the last one sticks in my craw the most. I reserve my highest level of disrespect for Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich for making single party control the hallmark of today’s governmental operations. I believe that our Founding Fathers, for all their faults, understood at a very deep level the huge value of open discourse and governmental decision-making through compromise. Control by any single political school of thought is dictatorship. Our entire federal government was structured to avoid that potential.

I think Karl Rove believes that the world is full of people too stupid to ask the right questions, and, even worse, that he has the answers. I also believe that if you meet a man who says he met the Buddha on the road, you can be sure that he has not.

To me, Karl Rove and his ilk represent all the very worst attributes of our presently dysfunctional democracy. As a king-maker, he is the best only because he has the ability to completely ignore ethical and humane behavior in favor of his cause, and, to say it kindly, his cause is specious.

Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR