Tuesday, January 23, 2007

George W. Bush Is an Idiot and a Fucking Craven Little Bitch Besides

George W. Bush on "60 Minutes" looked pained, reluctant, tired, all things you might expect. But it took me a while to form any other thoughts about this dreary, obligatory bit of public relations work. The President's vague and halting manner seemed to defy close scrutiny, as though his famous aversion to introspection and his incuriosity form a sort of field around him which similarly dulls our own inquisitiveness.

But with the benefit of a night's sleep a few ideas began to coalesce.

This is a sad, stupid and bumbling man who has real difficulty – and I mean the tragic, pathos-filled difficulty of the semi-functioning adult moron – putting together a coherent sentence. And like idiotic people typically do when they are faced with challenges, Bush has – deftly, even, one might say – developed a series of strategies to deflect questions and thus to appear "normal." For example, there is the "stalling" of questions that are beyond his mental functioning to properly address. Scott Pelley asked something like, "Mr. President, many Americans feel that you're stubborn. Is this true?" Bush replied, "What, that I'm stubborn... or that many Americans think I'm stubborn?" And here Bush produced his slack, shucky grin, like, Whew! OK. I thought of something to say. Pelley repeated, with what appeared to me to be a trace of impatience, of patronization: "Americans feel that way. Is it true?" And then the denial – odd, actually, since he's always tried to play his inflexibility off as strength, as gutsy resolve. This time: "I think I'm a flexible open-minded person. I really do. I really do." A touch of petulance now. And then, "Do you think you owe the Iraqi people an apology for not doing a better job?" Bush's reply: "That we didn't do a better job or they didn't do a better job?" The maddening tactic he employs of answering questions with questions, often idiotically reversed ones, no matter how ill-conceived or inappropriate, in order to deflect attention from his inability to properly consider and respond to such questions, questions that are even the least bit penetrating, is only part of the problem. He also reflexively casts the blame on others. Like a kid at recess: I know you are but what am I? It's a craven gesture, the signature of a petty and immature soul, and he performs it at once, without hesitation.

Why would HE fucking APOLOGIZE for the IRAQIS not doing a better job, anyway, for fuck's sake? My God, if you're going to be weak, if you're going to be a coward, if you're to be a petty little BITCH and you happen to be the President of the United States can't you be the least bit clever about it?

Bush's spin doctors, aides, speechwriters and other Rasputins have jammed a gummy wad of fucking self-serving, disingenuous, sinister, hypocritical EXCUSES for the mayhem and murder in Iraq into his thick, tiny skull and he STILL can't get them right.

And that's the sad truth about Bush. He's Pandora, who opened the box. And just as the box contained that one ghostly glimmer of good to be loosed upon the world, hope, Bush himself is not all bad. He's not evil; he believes he's doing good and in fact doesn't believe he's doing great harm in the service of good. He's far more dangerous than evil people are. Saddam was evil, and our rickety constitutional democracy seems to protect us against actually electing people like that. People like that are recognized and soon enough marginalized in a free, educated society. They'll make their mark, sure, but they won't become president. And if somehow they were to they'd get run out of town sooner or later – Nixon was as close to actual evil (knowing, calculated malfeasance) as any leader we've had and we kicked him around until we didn't have him to kick around any more. Bush is worse: he's both stupid and craven. Let's face it, this emperor's naked as a jaybird. Can we say so finally? He's a low functioning adult, not borderline retarded but frankly much closer to that line than most people are willing to think. By any measure, by any observation, he's hapless, exceedingly inarticulate, lost, halting, bewildered. In addition, he is a moral coward. He's quick to blame others, to hide, to avoid being implicated and to cower from any physical or other danger even when such a risk might be warranted as a rite, or in order to protect others, or as a matter of principle. He has no desire to accept responsibility and to experience the accordant realization of his own weaknesses, shortcomings and errors. In short, to grow. In some, these shortcomings arise out of evil; in Bush they arise out of stupidity. The effect is the same, though more terminal and – because he is not entirely unsympathetic, not a Nixon – more insidious. To bring us back to the playground, he's like that really fucked up dumb kid no one felt sorry for because his reaction to being dumb was being mean. And in the meantime those who are evil, who know how to, and seek to, take advantage of this circumstance, this president's miraculously obstinate idiocy, happily further their own war mongering, war profiteering, insane pseudo-religious fantasies and all manner of other machinations whose toxicity imperils our moral environment just as greenhouse gases imperil our physical one.