|
is something he should be thinking very long and very seriously about. I suspect if he does think about it he'll begin to work very hard to avoid that day. It doesn't matter who wins. It won't matter who loses. His replacement can be a republican or a democrat, a progressive or a neoconservative. His replacement can be a theocrat or an atheist, man or woman.
None of it will make a difference, because on that day Bush will become irrelevant. Worse, he will become a liability. Not just to the country and the world, but to his own movement. He will have no power, no skills, no particular insight, and especially no influence worth preserving.
To the left he will be vilified as evil incarnate. All of his actions will be brought up again and again in an attempt to bring justice for his crimes. 1/3 of the country will seek indictments and justice. It is doubtful it will be gained, but there is always some hope that the courts will rule and the replacement won't pardon. More than likely though he will wander back to his ranch with a slap on his hands and a few bucks in his pocket while we howl in the wilderness.
The middle/ambivalent/apathetic center will mostly want to forget him. They are suffering but inattentive and inactive and will simply want him to go away. They will exile him to the forgotten dung heap of history. That soft and chewy center of our culture that has the attention span of a fruit fly will move on to their next sparkly politician and their whole world will begin again.
At this point the cowardly journalists who thrive on the easy shot will finally re-emerge proclaiming their Objectivity. Historians, who have waited till the post-event to comment, will start to lend ink to a more enduring and less colored account of this time. Where before there was hesitancy to speak truth because of retribution, even if the Straussian nightmare of a movement he spearheaded is in power, Bush will no longer have their protection. That movement protects power, and Bush will have none. He will be alone, cast out into the light, and those who were too fearful to judge him now will judge him then. The papers will have no reason to try elevating him to Reagan status; there is no profit from it. Even if it were attempted, the people would find that absurd. The MSM and TV idiots will have new and bigger fish to fry, and Bush will be an easy target of cheap (if well earned) shots having no means of retribution. The talking heads love an easy mark and feed like buzzards on the weak and Bush will be both.
And that remaining 1/3 that has so ardently supported him through crime and corruption, through hypocrisy and vileness, they will be the ultimate betrayers. What? Why? Because having no power he will no longer be that to which they aspire. They do not respect anything except force and he will lack that. They worship at the alter of short-term satisfaction and intolerant superiority he will have the means to deliver neither.
He will be of no use to them except one...he will be the ultimate sacrificial goat. Things are screwed up and someone needs to take a BIG fall to distract from the bulk of the guilty. Bush himself may have a bizarre notion of loyalty to those souls of nobility he brought with him from Texas, but the neoncon movement has no loyalty except to power. And Power is the one thing, which Bush will have none of. They will have no sympathy, no comfort to give, no power to share...they will suck the juice from him and then discard the husk in order to preserve themselves. They will be far to busy (and uncaring) trying to carry off their ill gotten gains from eight years of pillaging, to stop and lend a hand to a puppet leader who has outlived his usefulness.
So I say George should sleep well while he can. I fear he will have a lot of sleepless nights ahead. I suppose it won't profit him much to think about that last day in office when all he has worked for, believing it was about HIM, falls right down onto his head. He won't really have to fear us peace-loving liberals. Sure we'd prosecute him for his crimes, but we would do it fairly and most of us would still try to have some compassion about it, even if that was something he never had for others.
No, he doesn't need to fear us here on the left. He wants immortality, and we, at least, will give it to him in our memories and nightmares of 8 terrible years where much that we cared about was poisoned and shredded. We will not forget George, even though it is doubtful we could ever bring him what he merits. No, instead he would do well to fear those in the middle who he manipulated and terrorized. They will abandon and forget him.
And he should fear even more those who he called friends and allies, those who he has served heaping piles of profits and power. They won't treat him half so good as Rome’s Senate treated Caesar. There was, at the least, some respect at the end for Caesar. Today's neocons will have none for the boy from Crawford. Perhaps he can take comfort in the story of Icarus, at least he would know that he is not the first to fall in such a way.
I suppose though thinking and worrying about will do him little good. I almost pity him, because I believe that no matter what he does, this fate is written on the day he steps down.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
