How has George W. Bush affected your life?

[obtheatre]

It has been nearly eight years since George W. Bush took office and in that time much has changed across the American landscape. How has your life changed since George W. Bush became President? Have you been directly affected by the tragedies of 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina? Have you or a loved one served in Iraq or Afghanistan? Has the housing foreclosure crisis hit too close to your home? How are you coping with $4 a gallon gasoline and rising food costs? How are you surviving?
How is your America 2008 different from your America 2001? Are you better or worse off? Do you blame/credit the President?

We are small theater outside of Pittsburgh, PA, assembling stories from real people to tell the story of where America is today. These stories will be worked into monologues to be presented as an evening of live political theater.

We are looking for your TRUE personal story – a one to two page monologue of how your life has been affected or changed by the past eight years under the Bush administration – told in the first person. And we are not just interested in the negative – if your situation has improved or you have been changed for the better, we’d like to hear those stories as well.

Be bold, be brave, be honest. Let your voice be heard. Although there is no monetary compensation for chosen monologues, authors will be credited in the program (i.e. John Smith of Tulsa, OK) and a copy of the program will be mailed to them.

Send your submission in the body of the email (no attachments) to [e-mail] by August 15. Thank you for your submission. If we choose to use your story, you will be notified by the end of August.

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[marmar]

2. .......

:argh: :mad: :wtf: :cry: :grr: :( :scared: :thumbsdown: :hurts: :crazy: :eyes: :puke: x( :nuke:



There. I feel much better now. K&R!

[ThatsMyBarack]

6. That says it....

For me, too.

[GreenEyedLefty]

3. What a great question...

I don't have a monologue's worth to say, but hope people will publish their stories here.

ETA: Recommended!

[hlthe2b]

4. In a short post, I can only offer the Southern Adage:

If you have nothing 'nice' to say, say nothing at all.... **CRICKETS**






but still a K&R

[patrice]

5. The national telecommunications company that my husband helped to start

laid him off and is now struggling to stay alive. He was part of their legal team that did the intellectual property and patent work for PCS before Sprint bought it. He was supervising some of their marketing issues when they laid him off in 2002. He was approaching 60 at the time, so getting back into the job market was iffy at best and ultimately impossible, though he did, just last month, finally get a part-time job teaching para-legals.

My IRAs lost lots of money when Bush came into office and they're losing lots of money again as Bush leaves office. I will run out of financial resources before I die.

I was also laid off by Sprint, out of work for 3 years, back into a good job with a company that was doing real well, so it got bought out by another company and repurposed, so I was out the door there after only a year. Un-employed again for about another year. I have something good now, doesn't pay as much as I'm supposed to be worth (with my seriously productive resume). I LOVE what I'm doing, but there's this BIG financial hole in our lives now, from our own miscalculations of what was going on and from just simply not having the money for things like exterior maintenance on our house.

BUT MORE, OH SO MUCH WAY WAY MORE THAN ANY OF THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Every moment of my life is pervaded by profound sadness and SHAME over what we did and are continuing to do to IRAQ! This is not an exaggeration. I started worrying about it in 2002 during the buildup to the Invasion. I called and called and called Congressional members, trying to get them to see reason. I have been with Friends in the Streets ever since, nearly every Sunday. We make our own signs and stand on a certain busy corner in a popular part of town. We've been through several phases down there, from frequent verbal assaults to, now, frequent honking, waving, or, as in many cases, simple smiles and nods from people in passing cars. Sometimes Fundamentalists come up to us and try to tell us about The Bible says everything is okay and the Rapture is coming. It's been a real education for the 20 or so people in our impromptu group.

Though it helps to hear the honks and see the smiles and peace-signs, the basic experience of being absolutely continuously aware of the KILLING, in my name, is still my dominant perception of life now. I no longer go to church. It's hard to believe that my fellow humans are even debating anything about the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. I CANNOT understand the way that what WE have done is being accepted by people I thought I SHARED something important with. I feel like a stranger, now, in a part of the country that I grew up in and still have an abiding and deep affection for the land and the individual persons who are Us, but I feel like the aggregate, the thing that we are supposed to feel patriotic about, is a self-absorbed, blind, greedy, irresponsible, hypocritical, profoundly materialistic, mean, onanistic, quintessentially violent MONSTER. I'm working hard on not hating (and thus becoming) that monster, by focusing on individual persons, but I know how I really feel about what we've done to INNOCENT people in Iraq is like a poison there inside me. I don't want that feeling to be there, but there ARE some things about one's self that ARE beyond one's own control (and that's a huge thing for this daughter of German Lutheran immigrants to say), so I guess I have two effects from George Bush: how much I hate Killing people who didn't need killing AND the loss of the control over my own feelings about who "we" are. That's not only the loss of who I thought other Americans are, but also of who I thought I was/am.

[samsingh]

7. in incalculable ways - immense sorrow at all the people who have died because

of him, lack of confidence in the country's instituations, direct job losses because of 911, and so on.

[midnight]

8. That's a great idea. Mine is way to complicated to put into two

pages though, so I thought I would write a book.

[Stinky The Clown]

9. Just as a barometer ............

My wife got a very small inheritance from a relative in early 2001. It was $17,000 when she put it into a brokerage account. It has, under the Bush policy of enriching the rich by raping the little guy, "grown" to just a few pennies over $5,000.

"One for you, two for me ...... one for you, two for me ............ "

[lonestarnot]

12. Crap. Why didn't she just put it under the matress? Didn't she realize who was in charge?

[bluesmail]

10. Besides the obvious: turning up to down, black to white

making war like peace, oh you know.

[PLE]

11. personally?

I miss the Constitution.

[SaveAmerica]

13. I have TMJ - it all started with nightmares about our soldiers...thanks a heap George

[unblock]

14. before shrub, i did not know anger

i am calm and easy going.
stress rolls off me like water off a duck's back.

but when i think of how i got a few thousand off my tax bill in exchange for a much higher mortgage (due to insanely high deficits), lower bonuses (due to sucky economy), loss of freedoms (due to shrub's war on american values), the complete loss of rational policy discourse, the rise of the fascists, and on and on and on.

i now know what ANGER is!

:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

[wvbygod]

15. Price of gas and smokes

That's all I have that is concrete. Not sure if it's his fault but I will blame him.

Other than differences in beliefs, that is really all I have.

[treestar]

16. My believe that this country would never fail to apply the rule of law

to be just, to never stoop to methods like torture and warrantless searches, or anythng that even remotely violated the concepts in the Bill of Rights.

[longship]

17. Unemployed, broke, on relief. Is that enough?

Thanks to NCLB, I can no longer teach. It doesn't matter that I was the only uncredentialled mathematics teacher who knew enough math in my district to pass the very difficult cert exams. It didn't matter that I was working towards school of education credits. It didn't matter that I have decades of experience in life and work including over a decade of teaching experience in college and lower grades. I am no longer employable in my field because my degree (with honors) does not include the necessary education school credits.

I am sixty years old, unemployed, and unemployable. I am on food stamps and the state has been picking up my electric bills. I thank goodness that I own my house. However, if I do not keep up with tax payments, this too may change. To make matters worse, I live in rural Michigan, the state with the worse employment rate in the nation.

And I'm in that convenient doughnut hole between employability and social security. Can't wait to get to my 62nd birthday.

Fuck you, George W. Bush. You and all your kind utterly suck.

[Riddler]

18. He's risen the degree of hatred I feel towards another human to a level I never thought possible.

[Hippo_Tron]

19. My good friends are having trouble finding jobs doing scientific research

Because the Republicans are constantly slashing their funding. Fortunately, science isn't my field.

[ColbertWatcher]

20. Kick, rec, bookmarked, and eagerly awaiting the debut. n/t

[BeHereNow]

21. Welcome to DU and I LOVE your project.

I will start working on my submission tonight!
BHN

[MrSlayer]

22. Other than serving to irritate me to distraction, he hasn't affected me at all.

My concern is how he's affected other people. The massive amount of people that have been killed, maimed, displaced and run down by the direct actions of the man's administration is beyond disgusting, beyond criminal. And the worst part of it is that he and his cabal are going to walk away scott free because of a complicit congress and non-existent "opposition" party. What he's really done is bring into full view the fact that the government we thought we had doesn't really exist. We are a corporate fascist state, not a Republic and there is no representative government. American politics are a joke, a farce with very few members than genuinely care about the people.

[Solly Mack]

23. ...

...

[AzDar]

24. I curse. A LOT. I also am filled with contempt for anything 'Republican' or 'Conservative'; whereas

pre-Chimpolini, I would've just been dismissive of their stupidity, these brands now ENRAGE me.:mad: