In a perverse way, Bush is the perfect president

[DerekG]

When one takes into consideration that our country was founded on the greatest crime in modern history (the genocide of the Native Americans), prospered via slave labor and established and maintained its empire status through barbarous coups and interventions (read Blum's "Killing Hope" for the post-1945 horror show), and ruminate on the men who presided over and administered such ventures, then Bush seems less the aberration than he is the culmination of all that has come before. Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius--they've come and gone. Now, we've finally got our Nero.

I'd say we have the perfect president, blessed with none of the virtues of his forty-two predecessors, and plagued with all their vices. It's a thing of beauty, really. He's an amalgamation: harboring the Christian zeal of McKinley, the bloodlust of Teddy Roosevelt ("No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumph of war"), the foolhardy idealism of Woodrow Wilson (who proved, with our plunge into the cauldron of Europe, that the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions) and the showmanship of Ronald Reagan.

The rightward shift has certainly simplified things for us. No longer need we be conflicted with liberal militarists--just centrist ones. We don't have to expel from our minds the pictures of the scorched children of Japan and Korea, of Indonesia and Vietnam, in order to wax rhapsodic over the benevolent domestic visions of their respective killers: "Give 'em hell" Harry Truman and LBJ. There ain't no Fair Deals or Great Societies coming from the current batch of Vichy Democrats.

Bushco is completely, and entirely maleficent; I'm in awe of the perfect storm we have before us.

[arcane1]

1. the culmination of all that has come before

good point

[murray hill farm]

2. Yep...

and he hasn't a clue!!

[Cleita]

3. I have wondered if Bush's rise to power is karma paying us

a visit to make us suffer as a nation for those crimes committed in the past.

[Speck Tater]

4. A good point.

<<I'm in awe of the perfect storm we have before us.>>

And when faced with a storm of such epic proportions the only sane response is to get yourself to a safe location and then just watch it unfold. It should be an interesting show.

[DerekG]

6. I wish I could

Alas, I care too much. I'm envious of the George Carlins of the world, who find chaos and destruction amusing and/or inspiring. They must be as happy as pigs in shit, right now.

[Eye_on_prize]

5. if you haven't yet, you may want to check out Paul Levy's articles

posted at
http://www.awakeninthedream.com

a sample:
George W. Bush is ill. He has a psycho-spiritual dis-ease of the soul, a sickness that is
endemic to our culture and symptomatic of the times we live in. It's an illness that has
been with us since time immemorial. Because it's an illness that's in the soul of all of
humanity, it pervades the field and is in all of us in potential at any moment, which
makes it especially hard to diagnose. Bush's malady is quite different from
schizophrenia, for example, in which all the different parts of the personality are
fragmented and not connected to each other, resulting in a state of internal chaos. As
compared to the dis-order of the schizophrenic, Bush can sound quite coherent and can
appear like such a "regular," normal guy, which makes the syndrome he is suffering
from very hard to recognize. This is because the healthy parts of his personality have
been co-opted by the pathological aspect, which drafts them into its service. Because of
the way the personality self-organizes an outer display of coherence around a
pathogenic core, I would like to name Bush's illness "malignant egophrenic (as
compared to schizophrenic) disorder," or "ME disorder," for short. If ME disorder goes
unrecognized and is not contained, it can be very destructive, particularly if the person is
in a position of power.
In much the same way that a child's psychology cannot be understood without looking
at the family system he or she is a part of, George Bush does not exist in isolation. We
can view Bush and his entire Administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft, Powell,
Wolfowitz, etc.), as well as the corporate, military industrial complex that they are codependently
enmeshed with, the media that they control, and the voters that support
them, as interconnected parts of a whole system, or a "field." Instead of relating to any
parts of this field as an isolated entity, it's important to contemplate the entire
interdependent field as the "medium" though which malignant egophrenia manifests and
propagates itself. ME disease is a field phenomenon, and needs to be contemplated as
such.
Being a field phenomenon, malignant egophrenia is non-local in nature, which means
that it is not bound by the limitations of time or space. Being non-local, this disease
pervades and underlies the entire field and can therefore manifest anywhere, through
anyone and at any moment. The disease's non-local nature makes the question of who
has the disease irrelevant, as we all have it in potential. It is more a question of whether
or not we are aware of our susceptibility to fall prey to the disease. This awareness itself
serves as an immunization that protects us from the pernicious effects of this insidious
illness, thereby allowing us to be of genuine help to others.

[codswallop]

7. In a perverse way

perfection abounds.