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STANDING SMALL
BY PETER KURTH
April 21 2004
Pity poor President Bush, who
as recently as April Fool’s Day imagined he had the leisure to
shuffle off to Crawford and pretend to be a Texan. As the descendant of
Texans – indeed, East Texan farmers who migrated to Dallas
looking for a lump of lard to keep them from starving – I’m allowed
to say that. Capisce?
“President Bush on
Thursday opened his expansive central Texas ranch to sporting aficionados
and conservation groups, including the National Rifle Association, Ducks
Unlimited and Pheasants Forever” – this according to a sappy and
abruptly outdated press release from the lower colon of the White House,
dressed-up as a “Reuters wire report” and published,
unfortunately for Bush, just hours before the “post-invasion”
Iraqi shit hit the “coalition” fan in Fallujah.
“During the private
tour,” Reuters burbled on, “Bush spokeswoman Claire Buchan said
he wanted to discuss his clean air, wetlands and healthy forests
initiatives in addition to showing off the energy conservation features of
his home and the native grasses that have been replanted.” But
apparently there were so many ducks, pheasants and rifles around he never
got to it.
Understand that neither
Reuters nor any but a docile, “embedded” news service is
allowed within 50 miles of the Crawford loony bin, and all this will make
sense to you. Just close your eyes and dream.
“While Bush proposed
increasing the 2005 budget for forest fire programs and protecting
endangered species,” says Reuters, “he has been criticized for
trying to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling and
cutting the Environmental Protection Agency's budget by 7 percent for next
year.” Bush’s record on
the environment is, in fact, the worst of any president in history; even if
we’re lucky enough to see his backside in November, it’ll take decades
to undo the damage he’s done, if it’s possible at all.
Still dreaming? Then dream
about Junior pretending to be a statesman. If you’re a journalist
taking part in this charade, torture yourself and your readers for another
four years while destroying whole forests of trees in the effort to prove
that you haven’t been duped; that Bush has “a vision”
beyond his role as a corporate stooge; that he “makes his own
decisions after careful prayer;” and that his “born-again”
bullshit is any different from the rest of his bullshit. It’s all bullshit, and it’s
been bullshit from the moment Bush was first thrust on a nation so cynical
about politics that it allowed a Republican vendetta against Bill and Hillary
Clinton to waste $60 million of American money looking for semen stains on
a Valley Girl’s dress.
Monica Lewinsky will forgive
me, I hope, for lumping her together with a tired American cliché –
she is, of course, from Beverly Hills.
And my aunt in Shelburne, Claire Collier, undoubtedly understands why I
quote her now, in the interest of distinctions: “I happen to regard
Bill Clinton as the scum of the earth. But I regard George W. Bush as
whatever lies beneath scum.”
Compare l’affaire Lewinsky, if you dare, to Pfc. Keith Maupin,
20, of Batavia, Ohio, kidnapped by Iraqi “insurgents” in a
country – theirs – that he should never have seen in the first
place; or to “four Iraqi children, shot dead” over the weekend
“by US troops firing at random.” Without a craven press to endorse it,
there would be no war in Iraq,
no palaver about “weapons of mass destruction (WMD),” and no
“President Bush,” either. There aren’t that many
dime-store Christians, even in America, gleefully waiting for Armageddon and a
“Rapture” they imagine will sock it to their enemies, to
account for this grotesque fantasy of national leadership.
At his recent surreal, slo-mo
press conference in Washington, a reporter asked Bush why he can’t
testify before a powerless committee, investigating the worst crime
committed on these shores since the end of slavery and the slaughter of the
native population, unless he brings Rasputin with him -- aka Dick
Cheney. Bush answered,
“Because the 9-11 commission wants to ask us questions, that’s
why we’re meeting. And I look forward to meeting with them and
answering their questions.”
“I was asking why
you’re appearing together, rather than separately,” the
reporter continued, “which was their request.”
“Because it’s a
good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9-11 commission is
looking forward to asking us. And I’m looking forward to answering
them.”
If he does, it’ll be a
new act for sure:
Q: “After 9/11, what
would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have you
learned from it?”
A: “I wish you would have
given me this written question ahead of time, so I could plan for
it.”
It doesn’t matter where
it went from there – it’s unthinkable that this conversation
could have taken place before the final debasement of the office of
American President. And who debased it? Not John F. Kennedy, with his daily
(or twice daily) bangs in the closet. Not Jimmy Carter, currently the most
admired international ambassador America
has. Not Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican and a general, whose warnings
about the unchecked power of “the military-industrial complex”
are still unheeded. Not Lyndon Johnson, who took enemas in front of his
staff, or even Richard Nixon, whose impeachable crimes are nothing –
literally, nothing – next to the devastation the Bush machine is wreaking
on the world.
So keep dreaming, everybody,
and when it all comes crashing down around your heads, don’t bother
asking how it happened. Just climb in the Humvee, grab your golf clubs,
your Wal-Mart cards and your “Passion” movies, and run for your
lives. Because you’ll need to.
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