America Is Bushed

Had enough? After six years, seven months and three weeks of George W. Bush's insane mismanagement of the federal government, do you feel the sense of exhaustion that only a person who has been paying close attention all these years could possibly feel? Do you feel (as I do) that the United States cannot possibly continue to endure the 498 days left until January 20, 2009 when (it is expected anyway) this tidal wave of corruption is finally out of power? Are you, perchance, aghast contemplating the fact that Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a tryst with a half-witted intern while the disgusting war criminal now sitting in the oval office is not even considered a candidate for impeachment by the overwhelming majority of lawmakers? Are you appalled at the waste in lives and treasure that is now being expended in the country of Iraq, compounding day after day? Are you depressed and saddened by the fact that a full one third of the American people are so rib-ticklingly out-of-touch with respect to affairs of state, they actually believe that the moron they so foolishly sent to the White House seven years ago is doing a good job? Aren't you tired of all this? Again, the question just begs to be asked: Had enough?

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Quite frankly, I'm Bushed. How 'bout you?

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Honestly, when Poppy Bush's buddies on the Supreme Court installed little Georgie in December of 2000 ("Hey Pop! Can I borrow the keys to the country"?) were you able to foresee see any of this? You would have had you been paying attention. I certainly did! When the decision was finally announced that month, I said on the Kirk Grantham Radio Program (AM 1110 W-TBQ, Florida, NY): "This country has just effectively committed suicide." It was, without question, the easiest call I ever made. Fortunately for posterity (and my own ego) that particular show was recorded. I now have the smug satisfaction of being able to replay it for anyone within earshot while singing to them, like a spoiled little five-year-old, "I told you so! I told you so!" How could so huge a percentage (although certainly not most) of the electorate miss it? Didn't they listen to the guy speak? Couldn't they see the lack of intellect? Didn't they see the arrogance? The incompetence? How could they not have noticed his absolutely comical inability to put two coherent sentences together? What the hell is wrong with the American people? Are you surprised to find out that we are the laughingstock of the planet Earth? You shouldn't be.

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The first time I ever laid eyes on George W. Bush was almost twenty years ago during the 1988 Republican primaries in South Carolina. If you'll remember at that point in time, the crazy preacher Pat Robertson was giving George the elder a run for his money. You see, your average South Carolinian Republican voter is so mind-fuckingly stupid, a lot of them seriously believed that the prospect of a Robertson presidency was a really neat idea! So who could Poppy send down there to appease these assholes? It would have to be someone they could relate to, that's for sure. Let's see....someone like....someone like.... George!....Of course! LET'S SEND GEORGE! The old man must have known, deep in his heart, that his idiotic kid would be the perfect ambassador to deal with those moronic yahoos. It takes one to know one, ya know what I mean? That was where I first saw George W. Bush, in the spring of 1988, being interviewed on NBC News, and I'll never forget my initial reaction:

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"My goodness! The boy's dumber than dog shit, isn't he?"

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Had someone told me right then and there that, within less than a generation, this idiot would be living in the Executive Mansion, I probably would have said to them, "May I have a little toot of what you're smoking, please?"

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But as bad as George W. Bush has been for this country (and he is the worst president in American history - that's a certainty), he is merely a symptom of a much larger and deeply rooted problem. It can no longer be denied that a nationwide corporate media - in the hands of just a small number of ideologically rigid companies - has done possibly irreparable harm to this country and its people. The fact of the matter is that twenty-plus years of a deregulated FCC and the tsunami of porno-tainment cable TV programming and right-wing Hate Radio has only distracted the American people from paying attention to issues that are screaming to be paid attention to. This mass distraction is what made the Bush administration possible.

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Had George W. Bush - and his knucklehead of a father - come down the political pike a mere thirty years ago, they would not have even won a single primary (Well, OK, maybe in South Carolina but nowhere else, I assure you.) Two such shallow, inarticulate men, utterly lacking in "the vision thing" would not have been taken seriously by people of even below average intelligence. The very fact that the obviously incompetent, not-too-bright son of a miserably failed ex-president could be elected to that same office and then re-elected in his own right within a span of a few years is about as good an example as I can come up with as to how dumbed down the American people have become in the past quarter of a century. This is a situation which should no longer be tolerated. Any television or radio station that does not broadcast - at the very least - two and a half hours of objective news and information each and every day should no longer be allowed to go out over the people's airwaves. The FCC needs to be re-regulated - FAST.

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Are we beyond the point of no return? It's a reasonable question. Clearly what the Bush Mob has been trying to do for the last six and a half years is bankrupt the American economy in such a way and to such a degree that it will force them - or the next (Democratic) administration - to do away with the social safety nets that Franklin Delano Roosevelt put in place way back in the 1930s. These are the same programs that the GOP has been trying to obliterate for over seventy years now. That was the real, not-so-secret dream of the so-called "Reagan Revolution". If we are not beyond the point of no return, we've at the very least arrived at that point. The question before us is this: Are we going to be naive enough to cross it? As has been stated more times than I can count, if you are not seriously alarmed by what is now happening to your once-great nation, you're not paying attention.

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Someone once remarked that a people get exactly the type of government they deserve. So true it is. We let this happen. We were asleep at the switch. We are the ones who have mortgaged our children's future. The goal of the right-wing is, has always been - and always will be - to concentrate the largest amount of our national treasure into the smallest percentage of pockets. They told us that the money would "trickle down" to the rest of the population - and most of us foolishly - STUPIDLY - believed their lies. The only way they could possibly achieve those ends were by distracting the people with non-issues like homosexuality, flag burning and "moral values" - and it worked. We've gotten the government we deserve.

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Congratulations, America!

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Tom Degan

Goshen, NY

tomdegan@frontiernet.net