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| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
According to an article in today's Washington Post, President Bush told Egyptian resistance leader Saad Eddin Ibrahim in June that:
I too am a dissident in Washington. Bureaucracy in the United States does not help change. It seems that Mubarak succeeded in brainwashing them.
If we ignore certain facts, like that Bush is the leader of the most powerful country in the world, has never been imprisoned or tortured for political reasons, and that his administration has been all too willing to cooperate with Mubarak in his utter disregard for civil and human rights, then, yes, our president is a whole lot like Ibrahim.

Bureaucracy, like violence, is a mode of social interaction which has voided itself of humanity or nuance and does not require the entity in power to know anything about or care about the powerless. "Cross this line and I'll shoot you." "Fill out this form or you won't get your medicine." Anthropologist David Graeber has a kick-ass essay on the topic, here: Link