The 2005 Presidential Inauguration

The 2005 Presidential Inauguration
Bill Tenuto
I wrote The Vision (below) on July 20, 2003, under the working title, "Future News #32".
The original date was recorded via e-mail.

The following is a description of a portion of the vision I had on July 20, 2003.

The Vision
I see President George Bush on a stage, walking up to a podium. Symbolically, he has long, pointy ears and straight, bristly, dark hair that sticks up on his head. Now his face is transforming into a donkey's face, reminding me of the story of Pinocchio. President Bush has told lies and more lies and more lies after that until finally he has told so many lies that he, like Pinocchio, has turned into a donkey.

Now President Bush takes a fake silver halo. One end of a silver rod is attached to the halo. The President takes the other end of the rod and fastens it to the back his shirt, so that the halo hangs over his head. All of this is for appearances. He now will seem to all who see him to be angelic and righteous.

Some people have put protective barriers around the President at the podium on his left and on his right. He now addresses the audience. The audience is made up of animals--mules, donkeys, horses and pigs. All of the animals are salivating over what they are hearing. They cannot wait to get their piece of the pie, their share of the spoils. They just can't wait.

Now the President lays out a deck of cards on the podium. He selects a card and turns it over. The picture on the card is a sheep. This sheep will be led to the slaughter. This sheep represents the American people who are asleep and easily led. They do not understand what is about to happen to them. They will not comprehend these unconscionable, self-serving acts that their own leaders are about to perform. It is inconceivable. This behavior does not fit the American experience. The American people do not realize that their country has changed.

The 2005 Inaugural Address: Bush Polishes His Halo
The political base of George Bush and his Vice-President, Dick Cheney, consists of the wealthiest stratum of American society and includes individuals and corporations with a major stake in oil. They have interests in finding oil, owning oil reserves and refining oil. They know that whoever controls the oil reserves in the Middle East also controls the world's major energy resources. Before the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003, the price of oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange remained fairly steady, around $28 a barrel. Now, since the invasion of Iraq, the price of oil has hovered around $50 a barrel. This is good for the oil people--the Saudi Royal family, the Bushes and the Cheneys and their wealthy associates and supporters.

In his Inaugural Address, George Bush eloquently told the American people what he wanted us to hear. As my Vision predicted, Bush's lofty words made him seem "angelic and righteous." Yet my vision also said that with all of his lofty words, George Bush would not talk straight to the American people.

During his first term, Bush lied to us about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, and he lied to us about his reasons for cutting taxes. American soldiers are now dying in Iraq and the United States budget deficit has reached a record high of 4.3 trillion dollars under Bush (according to Senator Harry Reid, [D] Nevada, in a nationally televised statement, February 2, 2005). George Bush has pushed through tax cuts while the U.S. has been at war, even though the high costs of America's wars in the past have always required tax increases, not tax cuts. George Bush's tax cuts benefit primarily the wealthy few, while it's the average wage earner who will foot the bill and carry the burden for this record high deficit, brought on by Bush's upside-down tax-cut initiatives.

George Bush did not talk straight to us during his first term; and, as my Vision foresaw, on the first day of his second term, on Inauguration Day 2005, George Bush fastened his fake "halo" over his head for "appearances," making himself "seem to all who [saw] him to be angelic and righteous." In his Inaugural Address, George Bush said, "The survival of liberty in our land depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world." (From the Transcript of President Bush's Inaugural Address, The New York Times, January 21, 2005) These words seem to express the praiseworthy goal of spreading America's deeply valued ideals of liberty and freedom around the globe. Thus far, however, George Bush's real goal has not been the expansion of "freedom in all the world," but rather the expansion of America's dominance "in all the world." George Bush has repeated to the American people, day after day, over and over again, what he wanted us hear, while he simultaneously has pushed his hidden agenda of extremism, with the exclusive and real goal of acquiring wealth and power, regardless of the costs to the majority, the average American.

In Bush's 2005 Inaugural Address, he also told us, in words echoing the ideals of America's founding, "Across the generations, we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government because no one is fit to be a master and no one deserves to be a slave." (From the Transcript, The New York Times) These words are based on the values of liberty, justice and equality for all, which are time honored principles of American democracy; so of course these words ring with a "righteous" sound. In truth, however, the unrestricted ambition of George Bush and his associates is not only leaning America towards the tyranny of a one party system but also restructuring America's democracy into a plutocracy. A plutocracy is a government controlled by a group of people exercising power because of the advantage of their wealth. Unlike a democracy, which is a government controlled by all the people exercising equal power, a plutocracy is characterized by the rule over the many by the few; and, in this case, it is the rule over the average American wage earner by a small number of the wealthiest Americans.

A group of self-serving extremists now occupies the White House and holds a majority in both houses of Congress. And they inevitably will pack the Supreme Court with other extremists who think as they do. The Republican majority in the Senate can be expected to rally sufficient support to confirm almost anyone whom Bush nominates to fill the Supreme Court vacancies anticipated during Bush's second term.

In his Inaugural Address, Bush stated, "In America's ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence." (From the Transcript, The New York Times) These, again, are words with a righteous ring to them, professing Bush's apparent concern for our "freedom", "dignity" and "security of economic independence." But average Americans have been forced to dig deeper into their pockets to keep the family auto filled with gas for the commute to work, while Vice President Dick Cheney has had ties to Halliburton, the largest government contractor in Iraq. Our young men and women in uniform, America's young "citizens", continue to be kept in harm's way, with almost 1500 of them killed in Iraq, while George Bush during one of the several inaugural balls he attended was telling reporters, "We're havin' the time of our life." (CNN, January 20, 2005.)

In my Vision, I said, "Some people have put protective barriers around the President at the podium on his left and on his right. He now addresses the audience." A visual confirmation of this, a New York Times photo (The New York Times, January 21, 2005, p. A13) shows these actual barriers (made of a thick, transparent plastic) around the president's podium. The same edition of The New York Times says this about security on Inauguration Day: "Washington was fortified for the inauguration in a show of force unseen in previous years. More than 100 blocks of downtown were closed to traffic. An additional security perimeter was set up around the White House and the inaugural parade route on Pennsylvania Avenue, requiring people to pass through metal detectors." ("A Presidency Altered by 9/11 and Words Shaped by That History," The New York Times, January 21, 2005)

The "security perimeter" around the White House and the parade route was in fact another protective barrier around the President. Not only did my Vision of July 20, 2003 predict that "people" would "put protective barriers around the President," but my Vision also exposed in advance, eighteen months before Inauguration Day, the disguised truth about the 2005 Presidential Inauguration. The reality of it, what we were not told in Bush's Inaugural Address, is expressed well here:

"The numbers of protestors along Pennsylvania Avenue might have been greater, but the swarm of people trying to pass through security checkpoints made it hard to reach the parade route quickly."

"...a protestor said he waited in line an hour to get in. 'It's overkill to the extreme', he said about the procedure. 'I think it was designed specifically to suppress dissent and keep out protestors. They want to control the visual image as part of an effort to mislead the American people about the level of opposition to this administration. They're trying to make it a coronation, and it's not.'" ("Demonstrators Revel in Opposition on Big Day for President," The New York Times, January 21, 2005.)

(Click here for Washington Post.com photos of Inauguration Day 2005. Included are photos of the podium, in front of the Capitol Building, with the protective barriers I had seen in my Vision; Bush shaking hands with Cheney in front of the same podium; and a crowd of protestors waiting at the entrance to the parade route: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/administration/inauguration05/blog/day_8.html)


The Europeans Comment on Bush's Inauguration
On January 22, 2005, The New York Times printed excerpts from newspaper commentaries in Europe after the inauguration of President Bush. ("From Europe, Opinions on the Inaugural," The New York Times, January 22, 2005):

Franfurter Rundschau (Germany)
"So which way now, Mr. President? Words alone do not give us much of a clue; this much we have learned from Bush.
"In his first term, he declared the war on terror--and along the way massively cut down on civil liberties in the U.S.A. and demolished the relations with many allies.
"He promised peace and democracy for Iraq--who would have wanted to oppose this--and turned the bloody dictatorship of Saddam into an anarchic stronghold of terror, paying with the lives of many thousands, also American deaths.... Idealism, freedom and reform of the social welfare system; the most powerful man in the world has found big words for his second term. But once again he will be judged by his actions."

La Repubblica (Rome)
"[Mr. Bush] finally feels at peace with himself, is satisfied with himself and thus is even more disturbing.... There is a sense of a man who considers the entire world his parish."

Le Monde (Paris)
"We can fear that, in the eyes of Mr. Bush, the criteria for tyranny would essentially be hostility toward the United States and that he would be inclined to close his eyes to the democratic failings of regimes that show cooperativeness.... Bush 1 changed the foreign policy of the United States. Bush 2 wants to change the American social contract. The outcome of his activism abroad makes us fear similar traumas at home."

Liberation (Paris)
"It's on a cloud that George W. Bush went through these three days of ceremonies, galas, candlelight dinners and balls. Flushed pink with happiness, blinking from the emotion, his face was everywhere on television. The fireworks feted him. The onlookers cheered him. Sixty million dollars went up in festive smoke. The Texan, who generally likes to present himself as an average guy, gave in to the pleasure of majesty."

El Mundo (Madrid)
"The president has charged himself with nothing less than 'ending tyranny in the world.' If Bush decided to fully apply this maxim to the letter, he should immediately cut off relations with countries like China and Saudi Arabia, which are not exactly models of liberty."

Copyright 2005 by William L. Tenuto