The man who would be king
"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier -- so long as I'm the dictator." --
George W. Bush, Dec. 19, 2000
Rudyard Kipling wrote very effectively the story of how the lust for power and wealth can be the undoing of those who desire it insatiably.
It seems to me that George Bush, and those closest to him, are among the finest examples of men who would be king, and I eagerly await the day that they drag themselves down.
There's been an awful lot of talk about Vietnam lately, and Richard Nixon. And it's no small wonder. Sweet Jesus ... welcome to the early '70s.
An unconscionable lying, war-mongering, two-faced **** in the White House, lawmen bearing down on freedom seekers and average people, American soldiers halfway around the world getting killed by guerilla warriors in a country we've invaded ostensibly to liberate and "protect" and campaign financing issues coming to the fore.
Dirty tricks, talk of the draft, civil rights. Our entire White House spitting venomous lies through its
clenched teeth, desperately trying to hold on for another term.
The main difference, though, between the Nixon and Bush presidencies, is that the American people of today are fortunate enough to know about the president's misdeeds before voting him in
a second time.
The struggle to get this man removed from office will be far easier than it was for Nixon -- that is, if
Americans can be trusted at the booth come November, and if the booth itself can be trusted,
which are not things I would count too heavily on.
Bush's presidency has been strangely like "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" since its inception. With every word from Bush or his people, we are magically transported with the help of Trolley to the land of make believe.
And everyone knows that in the land of make believe, the Puppet King reigns supreme. He is the puppet in the cardboard castle, the benevolent ruler waving his scepter and sporting a crown, and in the magical land of make believe, everything is always fine and there's lots of laughing.
With just a small change of scenery, everything assumes a happy new meaning. Socks and buttons are no longer mundane household objects, but kings and queens and postmen and such.
In Bushland it's the same way. Disgracefully damaging policies that threaten the citizens and the environment are draped in pretty new names and suddenly they are full of magical goodness for
all of us.
Bush is not a president. He is a completely manufactured image. He's a prefab politician with no
more credentials for presidential office in his favor than I have.
And that's the main difference between him and Nixon, who actually was a legitimate political figure, although one of the worst ever. But I'll not harp on that too long. After all, the man said it best himself.
"You know I could run for governor but I'm basically a media creation. I've never done anything. I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business. But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office." -- George W. Bush, 1989
But he is president ... somehow. And he is being compared to Nixon in the more liberal media.
Nobody ever spoke of Nixon more eloquently than Hunter S. Thompson, so I'll let him do the talking here. In his obituary for Nixon, Thompson wrote that "If the right people had been in charge
of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals
that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles ... His body should have been burned in a
trash bin."
This is the man Bush is being compared to. But does he deserve the comparison to Nixon's White House?
Why not? Bush's team has shown itself to be just as sneaky and reprehensible as the best of them.
From war profiteering, to leaking the identity of a CIA operative as retaliation, to their slick little plot to bug UN phones so they could get enough dirt to influence the vote on the Iraqi war, there seems to be a camaraderie in spirit with Nixon, who once claimed that "if the president does it, it can't be illegal," and certainly if any man ever walked his talk, it was he.
What's coming in the near future for the American people is up to us. We can choose this November to either renew this evil ****'s contract for another four agonizing years with full knowledge of what he is capable of, or we can choose to elect anything else that draws breath. If enough of us are so brain-dead as to get Bush re-elected, then we are doomed.
The president's National Security Strategy Policy will not alter its doctrine of preemptive wars, and we don't have the military in place to keep it up.
Experts are already saying that we are stretched dangerously thin as it is, and that we may have
to be in Iraq for quite a little while yet.
Dennis Kucinich notes that we already have a de facto draft in place. "The Army's refusal to release tens of thousands of soldiers who have completed their terms of service amounts to drafting them on the very day they fulfill their obligations."
Of course, the official word on the draft is a vehement "no," but I think we have all learned by now
just how trustworthy this administration is, and how vicious.
Good news, though, with some people strongly in favor of mandatory draft registration for 18-year-old women as well as men, there may be a much more complete cross section of American youth getting killed in the very near future.
