Enemy Combatant
Sunday, November 07, 2004
The Goat-Song of G. Dubya Bush
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like viewers etherized around Fox cable;
We need to remember that the Crawford Crybaby is not one whit smarter or more in touch with reality today than he was a week ago, and that he's not likely to learn anything from the fact that more people have voted against him in a single election than any sitting president in history.
So he's arrogant -- with less reason to be so, than any human in history. And that arrogance -- coupled with an ignorance of history, and an appalling incompetence at even the fundamentals of government -- might well prove to be his downfall in the next four years.
Remember, Nixon won a *real* landslide in 1972, and was gone in two more years, forced to resign in disgrace. Of course, the Democrats had the Congress at the time, and the American media could actually fog a mirror, so the analogy isn't perfect.
But think of it this way: Is there a single thing this administration hasn't fucked up eight ways from Sunday since they took office? Do you really think this last Tuesday broke the spell of that reverse Midas touch?
For all his efforts to escape his father's fate, Dubya is stuck with, essentially, his father's kind of political support: "A mile wide and an inch deep." I'm not going to say Bush voters last Tuesday were stupid; just that they weren't paying sufficient attention. Well, you know something about supporters who aren't paying attention? They're fickle.
The classic, Greek definition of "tragedy," while always involving an element of fate, required that an unfortunate choice be made by the hero. (Incidentally, the Greek word for "tragedy" meant, literally, "goat-song"; how's that for 9-11 serendipity?) Bush's tragic choice, I think, was to try to extend his misrule for another four years. I think Bush may soon meet his own Appointment in Samarra; by escaping his father's one-term fate, he's fled into the clutches of Nixon's (or, if you'd prefer, Clinton's).
