My anger, revulsion and loathing of George W. Bush have been overtaken with pity, sympathy and perhaps even compassion. My visceral hatred of the man has evaporated into thin air as a revelation of understanding has swept over my cynical psyche like a warm Caribbean wave upon a white sand beach. My compulsion to rant and rave about the most dangerous, inept and malevolent President in the history of our nation has vanished, Natalee Holloway like; without a trace.
How did it happen? What dramatic change of Biblical proportion could George Bush have undergone to take the wind out of my sails, and the venom from my bite? How was a rabid, left wing ideologue whose spite for the man knew no bounds reduced to a puddle of bleeding heart, tender loving care commiseration?
Simply, my friends, it's because I have realized in the blink of an eye; in the blaze of epiphany, the President, George W. Bush, has ceased to exist.
The flash of lightning struck me today while I watched in horror, the unbearably painful exercise of Mr. President's news conference.
The spectacle of defending Harriet Miers as his SCOTUS choice; his perverted, pathetic attempts to catapult the truth of her inexperience and total lack of qualification was like watching a matador without a cape. The man was gored by the bull repeatedly; the blood of his inarticulate logic pouring onto the bullring earth like torrential tropical rain.
The tragedy that has befallen the President may never be seen again in our lifetimes. It's not a time for ridicule and scorn; but for a discreet turning away as the orderlies, nurses and doctors take him back to his room from which he has temporarily escaped.
The pitiable man's deluded, dead-on-arrival belief that New Orleans and the Gulf would be rebuilt on the backs of the poor through spending cuts in entitlement programs is almost as sad and twisted as his belief we are making progress in Iraq. His embarrassed, circular refusal to answer irrefutable charges of his administration's corruption and cronyism is more wretched than watching a dog scratch himself to death for the infestation of fleas.
As the bird flu wings its ways across the globe, slowly migrating toward America, the President has no plan but military quarantine and the rule of arms to protect the nation's citizenry. Science is beyond him; logic escapes him and his reason is nothing more than a flight of fancy.
Some have speculated he's taken to drink again or smoking crack or abusing the meds, but I want no part of vicious and idle speculation. I believe the disintegration of the man's demeanor, spirit and bravado is because of a much simpler, yet much graver reason. He has sold his soul to the devil; and the payment has come due.
The man still clings to his delusions of grandeur and his memories of the glory days when he truly was King of the World. He believes he is still in charge and running the ship of state. But the ship is in dry-dock and a new crew has been summoned for the next leg of the voyage. The President still sneers, smirks and proffers his sophistry like pearls before swine, but his words fall of deaf ears and his melodramatic, withering looks beget incredulous rolls of the eyes.
His despicable lying; his irresponsible posturing and his immoral charade of Pax Americana will be relegated to the dustbin of ignoble and infamous history. He will die an empty suit within a broken shell of the man he imagined himself to be in front of fawning sycophants and funhouse mirrors.
The man has become less than nothing in a twinkling of a hurricane's eye. It is over. He is not even a lame duck. He is like Tinker's bell. You can hear a tinny chime, but the source of the sound is invisible, ephemeral and fantastical.
And yes, there are political hacks and crony foot soldiers who continue to defend the inconsequential and irrelevant. Yes, the Bush Administration still pursues insanity, cruelty and folly. People die and will continue to die until the process runs its course.
But there will be no Bush legacy, except shame. His name will go down in history as a blundering failure and a petty tyrant.
They say pride cometh before the fall and before it is over no one will have fallen as far as George W. Bush.
Some may say it is justice. Some may dance in the streets at the karmic comeuppance. Some may want to dance atop his political grave.
But for me; it's a time of melancholy; a time of somber reflection. No man can escape the corrupting influence of power and the absolute corruption of the all-powerful.
And in the end, all we are faced with is the frailty of a man and the fragility of the mind. George W. Bush is a man after all. Not something to be despised or hated. Yes it is true; evil is as evil does. But all of us are in danger of self-delusion, self-righteousness and weakness of the spirit.
So I don't hate George Bush for the man he was. I pity him for the ever shrinking, diminished, self-loathing and irrelevant creature he has become.
And I thank my stars because, there, but for the grace of God, go I.