Why isn't Bush more compassionate? WHO CARES?

We’re hearing a lot these days about Bush’s compassion. Where is it? Why did it fail to show up for Katrina's victims as it did after September 11? Is it back? I for one find this line of Bush-bashing to be completely off base. I think demanding that public officials show compassion is just dumb. Who cares?

I’m sick of liberals who expect public officials to weep over people’s hardships. I’m tired of listening to whining complaints that conservatives don’t have compassion for the downtrodden of the world. The truth is I know a lot of conservatives who go around weeping buckets over the poor and underprivileged. They pity and they pray and they volunteer and they send charitable contributions to worthy causes. So this line of criticism is just not justified. But more importantly, who cares?

I don’t care about Bush’s tears or, for that matter, Bill Clinton biting his lower lip and feeling my pain. Hey Bill, did you feel the pain of the men, women, and children who were cutoff from the welfare system under your “reform” plan? Did you weep for the plight of the working families and blue collar communities displaced and ravaged by your corporate-giveaway NAFTA bill? Frankly, I don’t want politicians feeling anything of mine. How about this: Why don’t the Clintons and their ilk quit feeling people’s pain and start using government to share their burden and advance their interests?

So what's this concern for Bush's compassion all about? For those who woke up late and missed the news, we're back to the ideology of Andrew Carnegie and Herbert Hoover. Government power is used to assist corporations and their investors in their ceaseless endeavor to remove regulatory barriers and concentrate wealth and then government leaders are supposed to show compassion and encourage the private sector to "do its share" to meet the needs of the suffering underclass through charity -- the very suffering their corporate welfare and feed-the-rich policies helped to create in the first place. This is the heart of Bush's so-called "compassionate conservatism."

Compassion as a political attribute makes me want to vomit. Compassion is something you get in a get well card. People in trouble and people struggling to cope with life with limited resources need support from those with means, materials, and power, not compassion from onlookers. Compassion from public officials is just repackaged noblesse oblige. First the noblesse class use every available means to appropriate all the wealth and resources of the community, then they feel the oblige to “give something back” out of a sense of compassion. This typically involves a lot of showy fundraising and little actual impact. (And I'm sorry, pop-culture stars from Bono to Nelly donating concert performances to raise money for "relief" isn't any better.)

This is the sorry state of affairs in America after 35 years of the ascendancy of renascent 19th century socioeconomics: Workers whose daily toil and incredible productivity produce all the profits reaped by corporations and their stockholders now have the pathetic additional burden of begging for relief from conditions created by laws which allow all the returns of productivity to go to capital rather than labor. Public officials at best end up running government as a kind of super-charity. Walmart’s workforce on Medicaid is just the most obvious example of this humiliation. In the final humiliation, workers rely on public officials to beg charity from the "private sector" on their behalf. And the rest of us are supposed to miss the obvious cynicism of this slight-of-hand by which democratic government -- the greatest tool ever invented for the use of the people to realize their collective genuine interest -- is turned into a vehicle for the accelerated gilding of the special interests of the plutocracy.

Every once in a while, however, the noblesse class forgets itself and lets its real ideology slip out in public: Nearly equaling Marie Antoinette's "let them eat" cake gaffe was the slip made by Barbara Bush -- poster matron for noblesse oblige -- while visiting evacuees huddled on emergency cots in a sports stadium. But are you really surprised by the vulgarity of the First Matriarch? What do you think dinner table conversation sounds like when Babs, Poppy, and the rest of the imperial family get together?

Some have said the term "compassionate conservative" is oxymoronic. Not so. It is entirely consistent. Compassion has always been the show that the privileged and powerful put on to distract the servants from a recognition of the servants' own power and rights. So, when used by members of the plutocracy the term is not oxymoronic at all. When used by ordinary working people it’s just moronic.

Anyway, compassion is generally useless in real life. Note the passive nature of the words that typically accompany the word compassion: it's something one just has or shows. When it really matters, what we need is care. Mothers and fathers who are worth spit do not "have compassion" for their children. Family members do not "show compassion" to one another. The word is care. Care is something you do, or a tangible good you provide. Compassion is just something for show -- a tear in the eye or a quiver of the chin will do just fine for compassion. But, unless you're a sociopath running a con, you care for a loved one, you provide care to a fellow human being in need, you don't worry about showing them compassion.

More to the point, if you’re an elected official of a democracy your job is to use the power given you by the people to serve their interests, to pursue justice, to empower the powerless, to use the leverage of government power to win comfort and dignity for those who cannot win it for themselves.

Skip the compassion, go directly to democracy.