LETTERS from CRICKET SONG

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

CornDancer & Company

 

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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