Missive the Fifth
Game Boy
And Enemy Missiles.
Governor Bush's
Campaign Treatise
Addresses Technology
and the New Economy.
Dateline: Friday, August
4, 2000, at 2300 hours CDT.
Conway, Arkansas, USA
By D. Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles
Governor Bush calls it the "New Economy." (It's the same ole hot economy many of the
people participate in today.) The Son
of George thinks the New Economy is good.
He also thinks government can make it better.
Cherish the thought.
"I thought it was perish
the thought," said Oksob de Opposite, conscience stoker and permanent occupant
of my opposite loft.
Perhaps. I just want to be known as a positive kind of guy. I want to believe. At my age, cynicism is a dangerous thing.
The Republican candidate for
President of the United States "understands that hard-working entrepreneurs
created the New Economy, not government."
He states it clearly in Technology
and the New Economy, his campaign treatise On The Issues Of
High Tech.
The very next word in Governor
Bush's treatise is an eye-stopping "But...."
It is an immediate, confident
"But..."
It's a "But..." of hope
and reform.
But it's a but all the same -- the
kind of but I've heard several bushels of times. It's the set-up but, the but of one-upmanship. It portends another, better idea.
"But," the Bush For
President treatise continues, "... government can create an environment in
which entrepreneurs flourish: an
environment that encourages innovation, rewards risk-taking, and promotes equal
opportunity. Thus, as President, he
will support the growth of the New Economy by cutting taxes, encouraging
investment in R&D, curbing frivolous lawsuits, pursuing free trade and
implementing sensible export controls."
So, we are presented the paradox,
which deepens as one studies the earnest candidate's high-tech platform. This present prosperity in the USA is the
result of private enterprise, not government.
The prosperity is sustained by a New Economy, which works so efficiently
that government, which had nothing to do with its ability to work efficiently,
has to launch new initiatives to make sure it works even more efficiently.
The government must do something,
mustn't it? Even a less-government
Republican government.
"Governor Bush recognizes that
our new economy is driven by the hard work and creativity of men and women in
the private sector -- and not by Government bureaucrats," the
Entrepreneurship paragraph of the campaign treatise states. The fighter pilot from Texas is eager to
have his Washington bureaucrats leap onto the high-tech bandwagon and ride high
in the cyber hay with all the million-dollar nerds. His administration, if elected, wants to "make government an
ally of high technology companies as they work to create jobs and keep our
country competitive in the international market."
Ally indeed! The private citizen's checkbook funds the
campaign's war chest and, eventually, creates a little shoulder room at the
public trough. The blurring of
boundaries between corporate America and federal America continues apace. The elected servant of the people embraces
the captain of industry. The President
is CEO of the New Economy.
One sure bonanza for the private
sector under Mr. Bush's leadership would be research and development dollars --
twenty billion of them -- to help the Pentagon create a new way to wage
war. The son of the Gulf War's
commander-in-chief speaks about the subject with a particular eloquence.
"Last month in South Carolina I
outlined my plans for the transformation of our military. America now has a tremendous opportunity --
given few nations in history -- to extend the current peace into the far realm
of the future," Governor Bush said in "High
Tech Speech," the tagline his campaign website attaches to the
transcript of an address delivered at Phoenix, Arizona, in the autumn of
1999. "This opportunity is created
by a revolution in the technology of war.
Power is increasingly defined, not by mass or size, but by mobility and
swiftness. Influence is measured in
information, safety is gained in stealth, and force is projected on the long
arc of precision-guided weapons."
At last! An opening for the lost gamers of the cyber wilderness to seize
their rightful place in the New Economy and become consultants to the
Pentagon. If DeathMaster77 and his
clanmates can arm a BFG 10,000 (big fu**ing gun) with sufficient firepower to
slay legions of faceless Bots on the battlefields of Quake III, then why not
enable similar feats of prowess on the flesh-and-blood war zones of tomorrow?
"This revolution perfectly
matches the strengths of our country -- the skill of our people and the
superiority of our technology," Mr. Bush continued. "The best way to keep the peace is to
redefine war on our terms."
Even better, technological advances
in war-making machinery will lead to high-tech export opportunities somewhere
down the road. In the finest traditions
of America's deeply rooted military-industrial partnership, these swift and
stealthy technologies of redefined warfare also can be sold to lesser nations
-- but only after they attain legacy status.
Mr. Bush does want to blow away trade barriers, but not at the expense
of national security. Woe be to the
entrepreneur who is caught selling ineligible technology to Cuba, Iran, Sudan,
Iraq, Libya, North Korea, or Syria before pertinent export restrictions expire
(if ever).
"Wherever there is no security
interest at stake, exports will be permitted," Mr. Bush said. "Wherever security is truly at stake,
exports will be barred, with serious penalties for violations. There need not be any conflict between
America's security interests abroad and our economic interests."
Avoidance of such conflict is
predicated on technological discernment.
As diligent guardians of chip-based military secrets, we must as a
people learn to recognize the difference between Game Boy technologies and
Polaris missile guidance systems. Mr.
Bush puts it succinctly: "We just
need to be smart enough and flexible enough to distinguish between the
technologies that guide enemy missiles and the technologies that animate
children's games."
I wanted to explore another aspect
of Mr. Bush's "Comprehensive High Tech Policy," his initiative for
"e-Government." It sounds
intriguing, especially since it will be seeded with a hundred-million dollar
budget and promises to "provide businesses and individuals with one-stop
Internet access for conducting transactions" with government.
But.... I just can't go there now.
I've got to rush over to Hastings, buy CDs of Star Craft and Unreal
Tournament, load 'em on the 30-gig hard drive, and prepare myself to be a good
steward of national security. It's the
least a loyal citizen can do for his country.
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MISSIVE THE SIXTH in your mailbox
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