What George W. Bush Has Done

George W. Bush has made me ashamed to be an American, and caused me to become enraged against millions of my fellow citizens.

This is not unusual for a crisis President. When a political thesis, a set of myths and values meant to inform power, becomes obsolete, the government is bound to ignore the reality of its time. It goes on auto-pilot, and does grave damage.

This last happened 40 years ago under Lyndon B. Johnson. World War II vets and their wives came to hate LBJ. They also became enraged against their own children, and the elites which coddled or enabled them. The kids in turn became enraged at the parents. They have lived in shame and reaction ever since.

It also happened at the bottom of the Great Depression, with people hating Hoover and the forces he represented. It happened in the 1890s, with people hating Cleveland and the Money Power he supported. It happened in the 1850s, with people hating Buchanan and the South.

Note, too, that the hate was returned in kind, in all these cases. It’s hard to remember now the passion with which rich people hated Franklin D. Roosevelt, the class traitor. Or William McKinley. The hate against Lincoln we know, for history won’t forget the Civil War or his assassination.

The point is it happens, it always happens. A crisis breeds hate.

So I hate Bush and all his works. I’m ashamed that my country destroyed the Fertile Crescent, the Cradle of Civilization, and I’ll feel like strangling the next joker who tells me how evil Saddam Hussein was. Same with the one who claims I "hate the troops." I love the troops, it’s their commanders I hate. They should suffer, all of them, eternal damnation for what they have done.

But what have they done?

They merely followed the Nixon Thesis
of Conflict to its logical conclusion. The us vs. them, the eternal search for
enemies to destroy, the Cold War assumptions that flamed hot in "proxy
wars" around the globe for 40 years, this was at the heart of the Nixon
policy. It worked against the Soviets. Applied to Islam it made us
the Soviets. And I hate all those of my fellow citizens who don’t get
that, those who condoned Bush, who enabled him, and especially those who
continue to support him. There are millions of such people, you know,
people who have yet to take the "W" stickers off their SUVs. I see them
in Atlanta traffic regularly, and now I peer in the windows, wondering
what in the name of all that’s holy can these morons be thinking?

Again, I know, these feelings are not uncommon. And we were reminded again, yesterday, that these feelings are returned, in kind.
Before our country can start to make sense again we have to take it
back from these people, and make certain they’re never allowed near any
lever of power, ever again. As with the hippies of yesterday, so with
the haties of today. Let this year’s Summer of Hate be the bottom of the incline.

I don’t assume George W. Bush did any of this — the wild spending,
the war, the surveillance, the un-regulation, the corporate crime —
with malice aforethought. I don’t give him that much credit. He is a
product of his history, a follower. Like Johnson, and Hoover, and
Buchanan. The forces which caused the horrors of this decade were too
great for him to conjure alone. He’s just the man who let them loose.

But this means those horrors lie within us. They lie inside that
woman who asked John McCain the other day "how do we beat the bitch?"
The dripping hatred and inhuman contempt behind her words and
attitudes are shared by tens of millions of people. They can’t stand
the idea of a world where Democrats are allowed to assume power. They
will remain dangerous for many years to come. They have guns, they have
money, they have motive, means and opportunity.

But this is the sin we must put down if America is truly to become
what I was taught, growing up, that it was, the greatest nation in the
world, with the greatest heart, and the greatest spirit of generosity,
with liberty and justice for all.

I still believe in that America, and I know it’s
essential that at some point, in some way, I put my own hatreds aside
so that America may be born again. I must be touched, and surely we all
must be, by the better angels of my nature.

But right now, looking at the wreck of a nation George W. Bush has
left us, at the wreck of our economy, of our great Army, of our
diplomacy, of our reputation, of our ideals, of our planet, it’s hard for me to see
those angels.

They seem a long way off.