Romney channels Bush; Vicious bully pulls wool over America's eyes

Romney, Bush II: A certain case of sheep and goats (Wiki Commons)

This is not what I planned to write today. But I find there is nothing that is more important than this: an explication of why Romney is a sterling successor to George W. Bush as the Republican Party's fair-haired boy.

Oh, sorry. Did I mention fair hair in the same sentence as Romney? Why yes, I did. I guess that is likely to put one in mind of the now well-documented physical assault by a young Mitt on another student at the private school they attended. The other student was presumed gay. Who knows, who cares? But it was very obvious that he had long blond hair, flopping nonchalantly over one eye. A sort of Beach-Boys-Go-Hippie look, one might suppose. Interesting. Unique. And isn't that what boys do in their teens, try to be unique?

Not the Suits-in-Waiting, apparently. It was simply too much for old card-carrying rich snot Republican bigwig wannabe junior master of the universe Mitt Romney. So he led a posse, pinned the blond-haired guy down and cut his hair off.

Excuse me, but that constitutes assault with a deadly weapon in my book.

But aside from that, it is probably actually a bit worse--although not much--than Dubya's so-called prank of stuffing firecrackers into frogs' mouths, lighting the firecracker and tossing the frog into the air to see it explode. Not worse, though, than another of Dubya's tricks, branding frat pledges with a coat hanger. Again, that seems like assault with a deadly weapon to me. But in an article about the hanger business, one of the victims said it was almost a relief after the beating he'd taken earlier from his putative "brothers."

What was Romney's excuse for his youthful assault on another student (which he ludicrously referred to as hijinks), I wonder? TV kids' shows when G. Porgie was a boy were not nearly as violent as they got later, and adult TV was pretty tame, too. So it would be hard to blame the influence of the media for their sadistic tendencies. Same for Mitzi.

Oh, my. I am SOOOOO sorry. I punned on Romney's name in a way that could be construed as, well, gay.

I would spend some time wondering how anyone, even a Teapublican, could fail to see that electing vicious men, who had been vicious boys, to the presidency is a bad idea. But there's no need to ponder just how vicious Romney's predecessor in unwarranted aggression was; a quick look at just today's headlines from a few publications reveals that viciousness is the heart and soul of the Republican mindset.

Here's a brief roundup of things currently favored by Republicans:

•  Capital punishment.

• Rounding up, detaining and exporting starving South Americans who will do anything to try to provide for their families, including sneaking into a nation they can see is as hostile as it used to be wealthy.
• Keeping tabs on citizens who simply want a responsive government, such as the Occupiers, and beating them up at will.
• Tossing society's watchdogs, the journalists, into jails in larger numbers than ever before.
• Cutting essential humanitarian services instead of taxing the idle rich...even when one of the richest pleads to be taxed.
• Allowing virtually unchecked gun purchases for any reason by any person, sane or not--criminal or not.
• Demanding that all sexuality in the nation be performed as if by Puritan missionaries.
• Ensuring that the vast knowledge of the globe on which we live is parceled out according to the beliefs of terrified fundamentalists boobs, or denied altogether.
• Reversing such few bona fide attempts at government-backed equality between the sexes as there are.
• Taking control by fiat of women's health.
• Ensuring that more babies are born to mothers who cannot feed them by denying birth-control information and services.
• Consigning, in some states, victims of rape to the position of bearing their attacker's young.
• Destroying such few unions as are left, the only slim glimmer of salvation from virtual serfdom for working Americans.
• Demonizing anyone who uses the word socialism.
• Making heroes of unconscionable reprobates like Rush Limbaugh.
• And on and on.

And you'll notice I didn't even mention Afghanistan or Iraq, or the death and misery dealt there and the insupportable destruction of young Americans sent to fight and/or be maimed for little Georgie's vendetta against a dictator his father failed to bring down, and the ludicrous search for Bin Laden, whose whereabouts were probably known higher up the Washington food chain than anyone really cares to consider.

In the face of all of the above, or even half of the above, or even a quarter of the above, is it possible to understand how any decent human being could cast a vote for George W. Bush or Mitt Romney? No, it is not. A vote for Dubya was...and a vote for Romney is...tantamount to condoning any sort of viciousness of which mankind is capable. And frankly, a few kinds that were added when the Bush-Cheney Cabal seized power and are now therefore in the arsenal of the Republican governance machine.

Can anyone really imagine giving that power to Romney? He's just as vicious as Bush, and worse, he has the brains and comportment to hide it a bit better. A bit. If you ask me, his intent is written all over him. You don't even have to listen to whatever he mumbles about now; his character and pathway through the universe were set in the hallway of a private school when he viciously led an attack--and assault with a deadly weapon--on another student who was different from Romney and Co.

Viciousness, need one say, should not be the major emotional component of any sitting president, except possibly in Russia, and I figure they've got that all right.

The difference between men and women

Roman statue of Cerberus, mythology's three-headed dog that guarded the gates of Hell. (Wiki commons)

I have concluded that women are like communists and men are like capitalists. And that’s a good thing.

Let me explain. When I was in the sixth grade, America was immersed deeply in the Cold War. In order to explain to a bunch of 11-year-olds the difference between the United States’ form of government and that of the U.S.S.R., my teacher put two students at the front of the room, standing behind a chalk line. He then instructed them to race each other to the line on the other side of the room. One was to only skip; the other could do anything at all to reach the other side first―run, do backflips. Anything.

It was clear that the one allowed to run would win. And this, said Mr. Smith, was like the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. The U.S. only did things according to the rules (whatever those were; he didn’t elaborate), while the U.S.S.R. would do ANYTHING to win.

Male gamesmanship is paramount to men

So am I saying that women will do anything to win, while men will follow the rules―whatever they are?

Yes and no. But to digress first. All this arose after I asked my husband a question this morning and he answered me, mumbling into his moustache as is his habit, while walking into another room, knowing that I had bacon sizzling, the extractor fan running, and BBC on the radio. Hmmm….and I would hear his answer how?

So I asked again. Again, he did not do the sensible (the female) thing. Rather, he walked through the living room, petted the cat while the bell on its collar jingled, opened the french doors to let the birdsong in. Not once did he consider doing what a woman would have done: return  to the kitchen and answer  the question without making the person who asked it sound like a lightbulb: What? What? What?

Yes, of course, this is a generalization of the worst sort. But it has been my experience that women do what is needed to get the job done whereas a man will ‘follow the rules’ set out, regardless of whether the job gets done. Just so they can say they did it. “But I ran the lawnmower, honey.” Too bad he didn’t drop the blade enough to whack grass. “But I took out all the garbage I could see.”  Too bad he didn’t look in the trash bin under the sink, where it has been for DECADES!

Bush as a fine example

For a real-life example, look (if you can stomach it) at George W. Bush. He didn’t get the job done. He didn’t get ANY job done. What he did was follow the rules: If someone punches you, you punch him back harder. The male rules, I might add. The fact that he didn’t have a strong enough punch going in to knock out the opponent never occurred to dear, dumb Georgie. He was simply following the rules. (“But Daddy, I did invade Iraq like any son of yours should to avenge your failure; aren’t you proud?”)  

Dumbya was able to tell the world that he had done what he was supposed to do. The fact that what he did was wildly ineffective, indeed deadly, doesn’t count in the man’s  game. Saying he had done it was all that counted.

What would Jesus' mother do?
What would a woman have done? I’d like to think that a woman wouldn’t have been reading My Pet Goat to a bunch of kids, trying to look ordinary, when the job she held was extraordinary. Anyone can read My Pet Goat; only the POTUS can lead America. So I would have hoped she’d be in D.C., doing the job of the President and reading something more enlightening to adults than My Pet Goat…a security briefing, for example.

Indeed, I’m hoping a woman would have paid heed to the prior warnings that had been floating about, things about Muslim men learning to fly planes and not land them.  But then, I’m hoping a woman would not have had Cerberus―oops, I mean Dick Cheney―insulating her from the essential information she needed for her job.

But even assuming four planes were brought down by terrorists during the tenure of a female president, as they were on 9/11 during a man's tenure, I would hope she was totally communist about the response.

Women put first things first

That is, if one assumes that the first goal would be to prevent any attempt at a recurrence, then she would instruct the minions to find out what was needed to defuse the situation, and then provide that. She might insidiously and with lack of malice aforethought bring learning to the hut-bound masses so they couldn’t be so easily fooled and led by cunning demons in human clothing. She might apologize for previous national insults to others, and make amends. She might, indeed, send a goon squad or two to find the mastermind of the disaster and bring him/her to justice, but it wouldn’t be the first priority. Solving the global inter-relational problems would be the first priority, because that would keep her population safe. Catching the evil-doers, if indeed their own people didn’t marginalize them as they began to hate America less, would be no more than gravy.

But that magical woman president would lack one thing. She would lack the ability to simply claim, at the conclusion of her term, that she had followed the rules, done the expected, filled in the usual blanks. That would be enough for a man, enough for a male president, and more than enough for Dumbya.

I can dream, can’t I?

To the apologists for George W. Bush who couldn’t find their own nose in the dark

Someone, sometime, invented matches.

Someone else found that one could chop wood and apply matches to it and, if it happened to be dry enough, it would burn.

Someone else discovered that black stuff oozing up from the ground in various places could be made into a number of liquids that would burn if heated.

Someone discovered houses could be made from wood, and people could take shelter inside.

Someone else discovered that one could burn either different pieces of wood, or in a properly constructed container, some of that black liquid and make the house warm.

All this was good.

And then one day, someone else…someone stupid or evil or reckless or suffering from a lack of empathy with his fellow humans, in short, a sociopath…came along and decided to open the valve on the container holding the black liquid and let it run through the house. Then he decided to strike a match, set a piece of wood on fire, and throw it into the house.

Kaboom! He was so pleased with his creation! He had taken three things that are quite harmless, even helpful, by themselves and combined them in such a way that a horrific event and sorrow and loss and years of rebuilding would result, and nothing would really be the same again. While the stupid, evil, reckless, sociopathic man delighted in the truly impressive mess he had created, the onlookers were a lot less overjoyed.

The land the house had been on had been scorched, and would retain for eternity the odd bit of charring, the smell of fire when a rock was overturned. The people would retain sadness at their loss, even as they rebuilt. Their cat was nowhere to be found. They hoped he had escaped, but the cages of their hamster and birds were charred, twisted bits of metal with carcases inside. Their dog’s body was found under the timbers that had fallen on their charred bed, next to his favorite toy, as if he had taken it with him, seeking comfort from the people. They suffered, thinking their beloved pets would think they had done this to them on purpose, when, of course, they had not. They had simply not noticed the stupid, evil, reckless, sociopathic man in their midst. 

Aside from the lives destroyed, their favourite comforting things―things they really liked and enjoyed and used and had acquired through their toil―were gone. Worst, of course, was the fact that other living beings they had loved were gone, and the pain of thinking of them in their terror and seeming abandonment tore at the people’s hearts. And now, of course, they would have to use the money they had saved to build another house.

But they were afraid. The man who had opened the petrol tank and tossed in a lighted match was still around. He had powerful friends who thought he wouldn’t burn their houses if they just kept him from being arrested for burning the little wooden house, the house the people loved so very much, the house that had sheltered them and allowed them to sing and dance and learn and love, and care for other living things.

There was nothing the people, the householders, could do. The man’s friends were too powerful; the householders feared that if they spoke up, they would lose their new house, too. But they knew, sooner or later, the stupid, evil, reckless, sociopathic man would burn another house. And if that stupid, evil, reckless, sociopathic man got too old to wreak the havoc he enjoyed so much, another would spring up to take his place.

But the householders would not act. They would not even blame the stupid, evil, reckless, sociopathic man for their misery; they couldn’t. It was too painful. So they deflected the evidence of their failure to lock their door against him by saying it was not him, that someone else had invented the matches, wooden houses and oil products, and that it was unfair to blame him.

Certainly, they refused to see that they had failed to lock their doors against the stupid, evil, reckless, sociopathic man; they refused to take responsibility for their own mistake. It was too painful to think that, because they had seen the stupid, evil, reckless, sociopathic man’s appearance as a friendly guy and failed to recognize the devil within, they had allowed the disaster to happen. It was too hard to understand that their own lack of vigilance allowed their happiness and comfort and future to be destroyed, along with the lives of living things they had loved. 

They could not accept that they had enabled the author of the greater part of humanity’s misery at the moment to put all the diverse and individually neutral factors together in such a way that the world caught on fire and took with it their hopes and dreams, and the hopes and dreams of a great many of the world’s people.

***

And yet, it is true. No one else brought all those disparate parts, harmless on their own, together in a wild conflagration speading through a heartsick world, weakening the strong, killing the weak. No one else, just George W. Bush, with the complicity of millions. Only George W. Bush created strife and misery and wanton killing and abuse and poverty unmatched in the modern era by being the only person to combine independent harmless elements―of politics, of finance, of culture, or religion gone awry―into an incendiary pile of his own making. Only George W. Bush―no one else―opportunistically perverted innocent actions others had taken to maliciously rend the fabric of nations.

George W. Bush did not single-handedly cause the current disastrous conditions in the United States and the world. As has been accurately pointed out, President Clinton signed some of the legislation that allowed the financial meltdown. George W. Bush did not fly a plane into the Twin Towers, but he did make a big show out of hunting down the son of family friend’s the bin Ladens, failing miserably to find their wayward son, but destroying multitudes in his a priori useless attempt. George W. Bush did not create Saddam Hussein; doubtless he didn’t like him, or else perhaps he liked Hussein’s oil more, and destroyed a nation and a culture and goodness knows how many antiquities…not to mention, of course, soldiers of many nations and civilians of one ancient civilization who had begged him in vain, as had Karla Faye Tucker, for their lives. And he laughed at them, as he laughed at her.

And he laughs still.

George W. Bush lied. He lied so that we wouldn’t notice that it was he, and he alone, who took the matches and tossed them into a house he had filled with flammable liquid. He lied so we would be fooled into looking elsewhere―at stem cell research, at bowdlerized religiosity, at down-home folksiness, at his sneering buffoon of a craven vice president, at his grandstanding in various militaristic costumes claiming his patriotism while gutting his nation fore and aft―while he burned down the houses of nations.

It is the duty, first and foremost, of an existentialist to connect the dots in human activities. It is the duty of an existentialist, if that existentialist believes truly that existence precedes and supersedes concept, to act on behalf of existence. It is the duty of an existentialist to shed light on lies because whatever compromises the human condition compromises all there is. It is a more fundamental, more basic belief than the more prevalent belief in God as author of all that is. But it is not one, ultimately, that is at odds with bona fide spirituality, a spirituality that identifies the inimical and celebrates the good.

It is at odds with religions that pass off execrable actions as sins to be forgiven rather than unethical acts to be noted, prevented in future, even temporally punished. Forgiving execrable acts is giving tacit permission for their repetition; pointing them out again and again and again is the only reasonable response, until a sufficient mass of people begin to understand the enormity of the offences against them, against their personhood and everyone’s personhood, and demand cessation and reparation. Forgiveness is immaterial; recognition of evil is essential. Taking action against evil is highly to be desired.

Amen.