One doesn’t exactly need an Easy Button to figure out how we got to this abysmal point in human history (how we get out of it is a whole ’nother story), but just incase you’ve beenin a catatonic state since November The Big “O” 2000, here’s the short version: “President” George W. Bush. Or the shorter version: the Duh. Actually, there’s a more perfect yet equally succinct explanation that zeroes in on his one character defect, an explanation that summarizes the last seven and a half years so eloquently that it ought to be posted in the Oval Office. It comes in the form of a quote I found, serendipitously, while researching an unrelated article for another publication. It’s attributed to a 19th contradicted it, and never veered from it. Never admitted, much less corrected, a mistake, never even gave an opposing view a second thought, never doubted the surety of his convictions. And never lost a blissfully ignorant moment of sleep over any of it. -century theologian named Tryon Edwards, whose signature work, I found out later, was titled, New Dictionary of Thoughts.
Read ’em and weep: “He that never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.”
Remind you of anybody? How gut-wrenchingly sad it is that we let it get to this point; that this cascading series of events that could have been prevented, corrected, forestalled or at least diverted has now brought us to the brink of economic, environmental, military and social collapse? Lay it all at the feet, brothers and sisters, of a man who came into office with a flawed ideology that disregarded any fact or theory that He was a bag of rocks coming in and he’s a bag of rocks going out. Naturally I don’t expect any better of him now than then, but a couple of examples lately illustrate how acutely out of touch and unaware of his surroundings the man really is. (You could pick any two issues out of a hat and reach the same conclusion; these are just two of the most recent. And most egregiously wrong.) Here’s the lead paragraph of the AP story July 12: “The Bush administration, dismissing the recommendations of its top experts, rejected regulating the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming Friday, saying it would cripple the US economy.”
No news here — he’s been rejecting the top experts in every field of endeavor unless they rubber–stamped his ill-conceived, neo-con notions from day one. But what is really galling is that his excuse is the same as it was when he pulled the US out of the Kyoto Protocols in 2001, citing potential job losses and damage to the economy.
So, how’s that worked out for you, Duh? Lucky for us you had the foresight to protect big business profits, otherwise we might be seeing 438,000 jobs lost in 2008 alone, a stock market that’s lost 2,000 points in a few months, foreclosures soaring, the federal deficit ballooning to unfathomable numbers, consumer confidence shot to hell. Why, without your brilliance, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be on the verge of meltdown, airlines could be declaring bankruptcy weekly, the value of the dollar could be plummeting to unprecedented lows. Lordy, we could even be looking at four-dollar gas prices.
Besides, what are a few polar bears? It’s even worse than I imagined when I penned my first column calling for his impeachment in August, 2001. Kyoto was the first warning sign that it was going to be a Bush’s America vs. the rest of the world, that we were in for a long, dark ride, but even I had no idea we’d be peering over the abyss by now. But then again, in my worst nightmares I could not have predicted that the American voters could be so gullible and ignorant to elect this goomer again.
Oh, and just to allay fears of the 7 percent at the shallow end of the gene pool who still support him that he hasn’t veered off course, immediately after his greenhouse gas-emissions decision, he lifted the presidential ban on offshore oil drilling. Never mind that it would take 20 years for it to have even minimal impact on gas prices, by God if it will make Big Oil one more nickel, the Duh is all for it. Hey, the Gulf Coast, the Outer Banks and Cap Cod are all overrated. What’s a little oil in your seawater? If you wanna swim, that’s why God invented pools.
But the most poetic irony in this is that the offshore drilling ban was first signed by… his father. That’s showing him, Duh. Wisdom is way overrated.
Ogi may be reached at ogiman100@yahoo.com and seen on “Triad Today” hosted by Jim Longworth on ABC 45 at 6:30 a.m. Fridays and on WMYV 48 at 10 p.m. Sundays.
