Our nation lies at our feet, veritably bleeding. The current President Bush will, at last, soon be gone. What have we to say to him? For this author's part, it would most assuredly fill a book!
George has fulfilled our worst fears as a nuke-you-luhr Commander in Chief! For these past eight years, the man with his finger on the proverbial button hasn't even been able to properly pronounce the word "nuclear!"
A president should be a "Healer in Chief," as well. But what healing is to be found at Guantanamo, and Abu Graeb? Afghanistan, Iraq, or Pakistan? Bumbling his way across the world's stage, George has become the quintessential figure of Shakespeare's speech in "Macbeth." His tale has been one "told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!"
It's difficult to find any waters around this earth of ours this man has not muddied. It is full of "Inconvenient Truth." His has been, ever truly, "The" ignorant, willful, and arrogant "Assault on Reason." His learning curve throughout both terms resembles that of the nearly crashing stock market he is leaving in the surly foam of his wake.
I should, actually, like to throw the man not a farewell party, but a wake in traditional Irish style! He inspires limerick to go with the event:
"There once was a fellow named George,
"who callously settled a score,
" with old Sadam Hussein,
"he went to great pains,
"and led us e'er onward to war!"
Yes, to war we have been led, and our soldiers filing back home in flag-draped coffins, like sheep returned from slaughter. Their unmatched and heroic acts elicit support - but not blind trust of Bush policies.
Those same ethics lost the great respect once garnered by the United States in its long history of noble and justified wars: the Revolutionary War to gain our independence; the war of 1812 in which the English burned our first Presidential residence; the first World War - to end all wars; the second World War - in which Jews burned in Holocaust while the Allies fiddled, while the purported "Anti-Christ" Hitler of Nostradamus had his demoniacal way with Europe; while Japan attempted fearless and ferocious dominance of the Pacific, threatenting our own western shores; and then the very questionable Viet Nam war that sparked such immense protest in my youth.
In every case, the politics of fear were evoked, though FDR had told us that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Monarchical rule, fascism, and dictatorship caused us ever vigilantly, to take up arms. But dear Mr. Bush has, with the Patriot Act, raised yet once more the dark specter of fascism with suspension of the Bill of Rights in addled details of the Patriot Act.
Not good enough for George, that he could pick up the phone and receive permission for wire-tapping. NO, with Carl Rove advising him, and Cheney in the midst of it all, he acted at will to invade the homes and rights of Americans of Arabic descent, and arranged the torture of suspects by foreign powers. Parsed and slick words were offered to justify "water-boarding" and the burning of the Koran.
Thus it was that the very same U.S.A. that invaded the former Yugoslavia for the sake of human rights and to prevent ethnic cleansing, came to spread itself so thinly that in Georgia, Croatia, Mogadishu and Darfur, one can only shudder at the images seen on the television screens. George claimed he looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and saw the man's soul! Really?
Did he, in fact, see the man who'd headed the K.G.B.? Did Americans at the polls, in the election of his father, George Bush Sr., not realize they were electing the former head of the C.I.A.? On one occasion, the elder Bush claimed never to have met Manuel Noriega. The following day's newspapers all over the country showed him side by side with Noriega, comfortably chatting upon an ornate sofa!
My apologies. For I feel we should forgive, but within reason, and wisely, never forget the mistakes of the past - lest we repeat them in undue haste! The soon-to-be past President Bush has amply demonstrated that he has little or no aptitude for historical insight.
In previous articles this author has compared both Bush and the economy to Humpty Dumpty. So, okay: it's in chips all around us. All broken, so, dammit - fix it! Yet it seems that, like the little Dutch boy, we cannot even get our national finger into the crack of the damn dyke!
While the poor and the working-poor have languished, George saw to it that those making millions - even billions of dollars - would pay little or no taxes. I find myself so sickened by the "trickle-down theory" of economics, that when I fall asleep at night, the ringing in my ears seems like a Rocky Mountain waterfall, as though I'm hearing our economy were flowing down the drain!
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