Reply #57: Presidential Legacy...

[ElboRuum]

I woke up one chilly November morning back in 2000, a little hungover, as I was shooting pool at one of the local dives the night before. I turned on the TV and found that George W. Bush was our new President... well, sort of... Florida was iffy, but I knew that when the play's really questionable, the ref's ruling usually stood. Didn't seem to matter too much to me then... sure he was a Republican, and worthy of no palpable measure of trust, but at the time, I couldn't see the harm. I didn't know much about him and Al didn't give him much of a run, but for the time being I could be content. At the time, with prosperity in the air and America seemingly on the right track, I simply thought that the next president would be a caretaker, foolish to squander the progress of eight years with little or no hope of screwing things up if he'd just continue on the road set forth.

Then the Brooks Brothers Riot happened, and I got a real sinking feeling about things. I had never seen suits so... well... voluble before.

Then the Supreme Court stopped the recount.

Then the $300 bribe came in the mail.

Then the stock market tanked.

Then he started giving ridiculous tax breaks to the richest 5% of this country.

Then the budget surplus started circling the drain.

Then, one chilly September morning in 2001, I drove in to work. I had my coffee in one hand, and my smokes in the other. I didn't turn on the TV that morning, and for some reason I had the CD player going instead of listening to Stern like I usually did. I have one last smoke before going in to the building, and I see everyone congregated in the conference room. I was a little late, and I thought I'd missed an impromptu meeting, only no one was talking. I poked my head in to find everyone staring at the TV, with one of the WTC towers billowing dark smoke. I could only manage a "wow." It hadn't been clear, because I knew that planes had been known to crash into NYC skyscrapers before, so I was thinking "tragic accident". Then the other one got hit. Then the Pentagon. Then Flight 93 went down in the backwaters of Pennsylvania. The attack was on.

Then he stared into space for a good seven minutes.

But at least after his waking nap, he went into Afghanistan looking for those responsible.

Then in the most ridiculous spaghetti twist of logic, he went into Iraq looking for... Saddam?

Then he went on vacation, for like weeks at a time. I think he caught a perch.

Then there were some swift boats and in another spaghetti twist of logic, a war veteran was painted as a milquetoast, and a douchebag who went AWOL is dubbed the second coming of Alexander the Great.

Then he got re-elected amongst even more rampant suspicious election handling via Diebold and Sequoia, only this time Ohio played the role of dirty tricks ground zero.

Then homosexuals were denied the right to marry, the morning-after pill still can't get FDA approval, and evolution, long accepted by nearly the entire of the scientific community, was painted as highbrow, pointy-headed, scientific hokum meant to peel impressionable children away from the loving arms of Jesus.

Then the war in Iraq tanked with sectarian unrest and terrorist insurgency.

Then there was the outing of Valerie Plame

Somewhere in there, at various points, Osama Bin Laden made a few tapes... did I mention that we don't know where the fuck he is... still?

Then his entire cabinet, as well as a few notorious congressional leaders, for the most part ended up being indicted, convicted, fired, asked to resign, or some combination thereof.

Which brings us to the present day, where he's now involved in a lot of loose talk about a little pre-emptive warfare in Iran.

Pardon me if I left any of the highlights out.

The end result is as follows:

Most of the world thinks we're the devil incarnate, a running sick joke, the kind of dangerous which makes our allies nervous and uncooperative, and our enemies laugh as we shift from foot to foot trying to hamhandedly justify our collective brashness and stupidity.

Our economy is in the shitter, and those who have been victims of it were forced to find jobs often two ticks below the one they were laid off from. The stock market vibrates around the same stagnant Dow Jones figure, and Big Oil makes money hand over fist as the Middle East instability is the perpetual raison-d'etre for keeping gas prices high.

Religious zealots dictate the terms of engagement in all aspects of our society, using the FCC as their personal pitchfork they use to invade infidel castles. The media conglomerates have gone near-completely propagandist, reducing a history of journalism to a den of iniquity where shock-and-awe have replaced the truly fair and balanced reporting we once knew (now a relic of history, due to the Reagan-era repeal of the Fairness Act).

Funny, if you would have told me six years ago that this would be the result of electing George W. Bush and his buddies to the White House and Congress, I would have laughed at the impossibility of so much damage being done in so short a period of time. I'm laughing now, though, but only because I think I've become a little insane.

As I analyze the timeline, a breakdown of his Presidency, with his "accomplishments" lined up so carefully like quacking ducks, it becomes clear that when he said that the high point of his Presidency was when he caught a perch...

HE WAS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT, PRECISE, AND TRUTHFUL... probably for the first time in his entire Presidency.