(Originally Published in 2000, after the Supreme Court oficially “selected” the next President)
In 2000, my Harvard-educated, WASP uncle in Connecticut said, “I’m not voting for the man, I’m voting for his team”. Perhaps the original sentiments of some 40 million Republicans who surely couldn’t, with a straight face, exclaim greatness in then-candidate G. W. Bush . As one who’s recently fled the GOP, I’ve never been unclear that sheer buffoonery, laziness, intellectual silly putty, and a torn cowboy hat may not be the hallmarks of presidential greatness. This was well known before Michael Moore’s cinematic scimitar was skillfully riposted in the form of “Fahrenheit-911”. Indeed, America’s first DUI President rendered unconscious at the hand of a mere unsalted pretzel—daily dangles the keys to 10,000 thermonuclear warheads. His VP, Swingin’ Dick Cheney , also boasts not 1 but 2 DUIs.
Eeeeek! It’s BushCo. led by a uni-browed nitwit; America’s first subliterate leader, knuckle-walking across the world stage. The spectacle makes even the homeless guffaw. Third graders whisper of cooties. Garbage men yearn for a similar Yale diploma.*
At any given conference, world leaders cringe when the lips of our Presi-dunce part in preparation for confused air to escape. G. Dubya then leans forward only to splutter saliva bubbles and an odd glottal noise like a child’s deflating balloon. With crinkled brow, the Great Warrior recalibrates his mind for speech. Suddenly, from that dilating meatus known technically as his mouth, out come a gurgle, a hiccup, then a wheeze of disconnected words. For tips in oratorical wizardry, surely the man could have consulted Dutch Reagan before the Gipper’s doleful admittance to the morgue. Many an experienced neurosurgeon would drool at the opportunity to observe, under microscope, the president’s fine brain as it manufactures these meaningless word salads. Imagine the barely visible blips on the lobotoscope as we observe real-time synaptic misfires in which that dormant organ betwixt his hair-sprouting earholes fizzles and farts from nowhere to nowhere.
Poor POTUS (President of the United States ) reportedly is unable even to maneuver through the daily newspaper unassisted. His staffers are charged with reducing complex and often highly nuanced issues down to several lines on an index card then to be handed over to Him. A quick glance and our man in DC says he then draws instructions “from above”. Could it be?
Dubya’s dramatic, yet humble pipeline to the ‘ Lord (Jesus/God? Both?) surpasses even the infallible talents of the mystical Pope, who, himself, must feel spiritually dwarfed by this Chosen One. In truth, the only other globally-known despot gifted with direct cell service to God happens to be the furry-faced Bin Laden.
Are both practicing fundamentalists? The word fundamentalism comes from the root, fun·da·ment, which means ass or buttocks. Fundamentalism, therefore, is essentially nothing more than assthink.
Alas, Team POTUS is comprised of the most sinister collection of knaves any cracked-out Shakespeare could imagine. Macbeth? Child’s play! Hamlet? Dog doo! The Team has come to stand almost exclusively for special interests, secrecy, and fierce political coercion… not to mention, frenzied efforts to Constitutionally catapult any two gay hairdressers, caught on a date, back to the pre-civil rights luxuries afforded the common negro. Even the nocturnal stupors of the late Richard Nixon , in his most bug-eyed power-hungry state while vomiting bourbon-soaked emesis over the White House piano like a gargoyle Ed Sullivan could never envision slipping into a catch-me-if-you-can bullet-proof negligee like the Patriot Act. Through it, the Mr. Bush has classic sovereign immunity: ‘ The King can do no wrong’ .
Via the “official media”, he beseeches his public to rove a watchful eye across their neighbors all potential terrorists, don’t you know. Not one of the Republic’s vaunted TV anchors dares practice reportage and challenge the simian stutters of the Mr. Bush hiding quietly behind his silken American flag .
Am I being unduly unkind? Or can it be, as Mr. Bush so adamantly avers, that the great terrorist menace is really the hundreds of millions of Homer Simpsons , endlessly grunting at the trough of feckless consumerism while their leader’s mighty peek-a-boo proctoscope is applied so enthusiastically by Attorney General Strangelove ? Yes, the Lord’s Eunuch our statue-draping, nipple-covering, self-castrating Evangelist, who not only delights in phone-tapping 24/7, but also spying on every chatroom, email, fax, Cell, PDA, credit card purchase, library checkout, and magazine subscription. All this is zealously executed with the full capabilities of the supercharged Rumsfeld Pentagon delivering nonstop freedoms at the end of an electrified cattle prod.
Leading Team POTUS, as Grand Dragon, is none other than the foul-mouthed Darth Dick Cheney. As CEO of oil giant Halliburton, Mr. Cheney cunningly sold Iraq $73 million in oilfield services between 1997 and 2000, then tactically planned for Halliburton to receive a bill ion dollars…
(that’s $1,000,000,000.00) a month (right now) in government/taxpayer contracts for the Iraq invasion. Ironically nicknamed Dick, the VP publicly ejaculated all over Senator Leahy, during an official Senate photo shoot, with a crazed Go fu*k yourself when Sen. Leahy inquired about the VPs $tock options and deferred compen$ation packages currently rolling in from current Halliburton conquests.
What is perhaps most shocking is the level of mean-spirited machismo that would make even Machiavelli’s eyeliner run. The front cover of mad cow investigator John Stauber ‘ s latest book, Banana Republicans, boasts the prescient slogan: You’re either with the Republican Party or you’re with the Terrorists! There’s no middle ground! Does that imply my 94 year-old grandmother is secretly diddling Bin Laden? If so, we can only hope the Bush legal team actually does successfully maneuver a way to cancel those inconveniently competitive November elections, lest granny-bin-laden vote the “wrong way” between naps and Oprah.
Had Thomas Jefferson foreseen what sort of ghastly usurpations would spring from our Founding Fathers’ gritty debates come that memorable November of 2000, he might have characterized the presidential title more as ‘ His Evangelical Excellency, Most High Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Mesopotamian Council of the 33rd degree and Lord Conquering Military Pontiff of the United Christian Colonies of Petropolis and Supreme Leader Forever .
Yup. POTUS of Petropolis . When surrounded by his thuglike team, it does make for a delightful show though; rather like a lithium-sedated Chihuahua in the midst of a dozen Pit Bulls. The whole bunch of freakish zealots furiously keeping the world whipped up in an unstable frenzy in order to see pals profit off of 150 year-old combustion engine technology. To wit: it’ s the Coalition of the Drilling (or is it the Killing?), endlessly sucking gooey black liquid dinosaur shit out of a 168,927 square mile sandbox.
