Now that we're about to reap our reward in the form of a new and promising president, the old president is coming clean, primping for his exit.
But for George Bush, introspection is yet another thing he's heard about that a guy in his position oughtta do from time to time. After all, he will have been a two-term president and he can afford, after all the heavy lifting he's done, to be philosophical (another thing he's heard guys like him oughtta be from time to time).
But reflection is impossible if there's no light. Or intellect. Or wisdom. Or truth. Any analysis he could offer on virtually any subject would be severely handicapped at conception, born into this world already abridged and pre-regurgitated.
The Emperor's New Clothes 2.0 that was the Bush 43 administration generates as much stunning incredulity for its blatant Orwellian Newspeak bullshit quotient than for the actual deeds themselves so ably performed by the neo-con goon squad in the names of Profit and Power. It suggests not mere political obfuscation or slick sleight of hand practiced by pickpockets working a crowd at a carny but the existence of an actual survival technique practiced by the über-wealthy and über-powerful: the creation of individually tailored truths, codes of behavior that have little to do with traditionally disseminated rules for peaceful coexistence by which the smaller, less affluent, less powerful, less important people live.
These demigods are only "demi" when those tiny specks which form the mulch from which the nabobs grow their wealth want to put a name to the thing they aim their pea-shooters at. These demigods are in reality fully formed Gods, masters of their own destiny because they create destiny.
The Book of Genesis has nothing on this most recent version of the creation myth. It has a friendlier interface and dispenses with archaic philological appendages like "-eth." It is comprised mostly of one syllable words, comic book heroism and villainy, all suitably framed and comprehensible to anyone having benefited from BushCo's Triumph of the Mediocre culture.
And no one, it seems, can touch them. They are as ethereal and divine as the cardboard stand-ups they reference in their occasional public utterances, which they even realized were unnecessary after their inevitable evasion from justice became clear from Day One. Law? What law? Transparency? Justice? Accountability? Like that old saw Religion, the people's condition requires illusions and Democracy is rapidly becoming one of them.
George Bush offers us wistful admissions of fallibility, as if that will assuage his despicable, destructive reign. He trusts that the little people themselves will not want to reflect on the damage so he, magnanimous god that he is, does it for us. But if, after all the celebration fades and an Obama government takes its turn there is no legal and/or highly visible reckoning of BushCo's treasonous, historic misdeeds then we are the ones in serious need of reflection.