Bush/Cheney: As bad as it gets
Wed Jan 10, 2007 at 06:37:42 PM PDT
It is an odd dynamic that the longer you get exposed to a poison or a strain of disease, the more immune you become. Sometimes I think about how these years in the presence of the ever-lengthening Reagan/Bush 1/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush 2 legacy has toughened me up to their particular vile pathogen. I think that if a time machine had somehow spirited me forward from 1973 to the present, I would come to grips with how low we have sunken as a country and somehow just self-destruct like that tape-recorder on Mission Impossible.
I also think about free-thinking progressives of the past who succumb to the physical weight of mortality. I wonder, likewise, if they could bear the weight of the horrid reality that surrounds the current administration, its thoughts, its strategies, its deeds. Would Martin and Bobby survive the shock of the reality that would greet them upon their reviving?
I freely admit to being a very poor diarist. My thoughts are far too scattered to possibly interest many, if any, readers. But I guess I feel obligated to say what is on my mind no matter how cluttered and obscure it may be.
The nut of this diary is that George Bush, the current one (as if one wasn't fucking plenty), is a real asshole. A lying, smiling, freak. Someone who gladly and gleefully leads HIS COUNTRY down a misty garden path to a terrible fate. A guy who is stupidly leading the once proud(er) United States into a dark corner of history.
And yet I find myself almost tongue-tied when faced with the task of describing the magnitude of his baseness. I sometimes think about various firebrands I've known, Dave who died in '82, Mark who died in '83. These are people who hated fascists and assholes with great urgency back in that day, but who passed away in years and at a time when they couldn't have imagined what the years 2000 through 2005 could produce. I just sit here and think how their heads would explode when faced with the harsh reality that Cheney and Bush have wrought in the past 6 years.
So exactly how did I get innoculated to the point that I can even stomach what Cheney and Bush have "accomplished?" It is a mystery and one that I am not very happy to be a part.
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I'll end with this: several years ago I had a great old black lab named Bogey. He was a great old dog. Playful, funny, dumb and smart. And he was fiercely loyal.
One night Bogey was defending the farmhouse and he tangled with the local neighborhhod skunk. Poor Mr. B took a straight shot to the forehead. His eyes were red and stunk like science fiction. My wife gathered up our 2 and 4 year old daughters and wished me the best of luck in my quest to de-stink our beloved pet.
I used the most up-to-date technology available: Skunk-Off, tomato juice, and baking soda. It seemed that I bathed and scrubbed Bogey for hours. It was like yoga. He stood quietly on the back step as I washed and rinsed and washed and perfumed.
But the skunk smell was just . . . incredible. It refused to leave. And the longer I labored, the more in awe I became. The skunk smell basically ceased being a smell, it was almost an electrical impulse that overloaded my nasal passages and indicated to my brain that there was no point in registering the skunk chemicals in the nose area.
So . . . I guess my point it that, even though Cheney and Bush have overloaded our collective sense of propriety, we can still reconstruct our sense of horror, if we harken back to souls from our past. Think of it as an gift from those we loved and respected but are no longer here to urge us on and into action.
Bush and Cheney are bad, bad men. Do not be decieved by your humanitarian impulses, they DO NOT deserve any kind of break.
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