What Child is This?

More than a decade ago, Americans who were paying attention (and, indeed, that’s the catch!) knew Bush was America’s version of Oskar Matzerath (in Gunter Grass’s novel, The Tin Drum) - a petulant child who banged his drum and shrieked while refusing to grow up. - Walter C. Uhler

It’s been a few weeks now, and basically Scott McClellan’s book has come and gone with the expected result: 300,000,000 Americans saying “yeah, of course Bush lied and completely ruined us. Ahh well, whaddya gonna do?” A la my “He’s fucked up SO badly he somehow gets a pass” theory from a while back.

So that’s that, basically. But one thing that still sticks in my craw is being reminded of Bush as a dress-up cowboy wannabe pretender. Fucking Christ. What did we expect, after all – this a guy that dresses up to play cheerleader, dresses up to play pretend oil man and dresses up to play cowboy on his “ranch.” His tea party dress-up Lorenzo Charles moment being, of course, putting on his flight suit costume for “Mission Accomplished.” I’m surprised nobody’s walked in on him in the Oval Office in full KISS makeup wailing air guitar to “Detroit Rock City.” Ugh.

Given Bush's life of coddling and impairment, one shouldn't be surprised to learn that he still held fast to the possibility of achieving greatness. McClellan confirms it with his assertion: "As I have heard Bush say, only a wartime president is likely to achieve greatness."

And here we have it – the pretend president wanting to play “War” so he can put on his dress-up commander in chief uniform and await his own ticker tape parades. Great. Hey, I used to play War too. When I was, you know, 7. And my version didn’t get thousands of people killed. For fuck’s sake, can we find a sandbox to let this motherfucker play in? (I know, I know...only a few more months. "Hang in there.")

It’s fairly nauseating to think of someone so childish they would even entertain such fantasies while in actual power, much less enact them. But again, that’s what happens when a child is given the opportunity to play for “real.” I spent hours in my backyard as a kid pretending I was Luke Skywalker (NOT the 2 Live Crew guy...those fantasies came later.) If when I was 7 years old somehow I was offered the opportunity to fly in an X-wing fighter and destroy the Death Star and be the hero of all heroes, of COURSE I’d jump at the chance. In Bush we had a guy who had never had any real responsibilities, any real gravitas, and was handed a chance to go from his pretend dressup fantasies (cowboy, soldier...why not astronaut?) to the real thing. His chance to finally prove that he's the "real thing." JFK was hammered for two weeks by military "experts" to nuke the Soviets off the planet. Having had his boat cleaved in half and left for dead in WWII, Kennedy didn't feel he had anything to prove, to play "pretend tuff guy." The opposite? Dubya.

Anyways. Nothing new here, same old shit. Just frustrating. All this waste, all because of a fucking child. A shame.