  Altruism is an illusion. We are all consumers, operating in our own self-interests and the interests of those like us. Without the constructs of "good" and "evil" we will have a better perspective to interpret the media's representation of our world. I am not willing to give up the luxuries and conveniences that we Americans consider unalienable rights more than anyone else. What I consume defines who I am. You are your Master Card statement.
You are your subscription to The New Yorker. You are your European backpacking vacation. You are your $10 bottle of Shiraz. Are you willing to give up cheap prices at Wal-Mart for someone to have a factory job in Cleveland? We are privileged participants in a finite period of concentrated wealth. So now what?
Nihilism isn’t a lot of fun, unless you’re face down in a pile of blow, surrounded by strippers, and waiting to die. And even then it’s not much fun in the morning. So what should we do to rationalize our existence? Create something that will last beyond personal survival. Try to find some sort of truth. Invent reasons to live.
Observe the entropy and reorganization of life. Negative Capacity is the ability to hold contradictory, opposing views in the same mind without the protest of logic or reason; a gift often attributed to William Shakespeare and Walt Whitman. Everyone who has ever doubted existence after death has applied Negative Capacity to get out of bed in the morning. So I might know that I’m just polishing a turd, but I’m going to make that fucker shine. This is the lens through which I examine the world I see. I’m fixated on George Bush.
Watching him in action is like watching an eighteen wheeler drive off an overpass into traffic. It’s horrible, you feel helpless, and you can’t look away. Americans are angry about the war in Iraq for the wrong reasons. The DNC wants us to assume that President’s primary objective for invading was to secure Iraqi oil production and defense contracts for Halliburton. The Bush administration wants us to believe that we invaded Iraq to depose an "evil" dictator and disarm the threat he posed to America. The problem is that neither of these motives make any sense and that the real underlying incentives aren’t being debated or considered.
George W. Bush assumes that he is making decisions in our country’s best interests. I have no doubt about that. But the lack of information makes it impossible to judge whether this man is actually operating in my best interests. We’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars on "Operation Iraqi Freedom". Oil has proven cheaper to buy than it is to steal. Halliburton is one of the only companies in the world that could mobilize and handle the type of reconstruction that is necessary.
Should it be a surprise that they were tapped to undertake the project? Conversely, there were no weapons of mass destruction. The government was in chaos and Saddam Hussein posed no threat to U.S. interests. They had him contained. And if you believe George Bush cares about the Iraqi people you are out of your mind. There are totalitarian regimes all over the world, many of which would more likely justify invasion for humanitarian or security reasons.
Iran and North Korea are both nuclear capable and could possibly reach U.S. interests with a bomb, and yet they have been ignored. It’s a shell game. So why are we in Iraq? That is the question. What is the real reason we are there? The administration assumes that the American people aren’t intelligent enough to know the truth.
Are we positioning ourselves to control access to the Persian Gulf to prevent China from becoming the next world superpower? Is the reason to maintain a presence in the Middle East to improve intelligence, using U.S. troops as terrorist bait? Is it something more subtle? I do know that I don’t want George W. Bush to be making decisions for me, based on information I don’t have. I declare this administration a national emergency. 
