"...One of these days, he and I are going to be rocking in chairs in Texas and talking about the good old days."
--George Bush today on Scott McClellan
Wow.
Now that I've managed to vacuum the froth off my lips since reading the above, and bring my pulse down below 300, and stuff my heart back into my T-shirt from whence it exploded, I just want to chip in my two little cents, to say:
Actually, Mr. President, we have in mind you spending your forthcoming years (should you and we physically survive your Presidency) on trial at the Hague. And thence incarcerated somewhere, for your and your appalling buddies' egregious crimes against the whole world. And ya'll can rock there till the cows come home. This on top of any penalties flowing from impeachment. (A long shot; but we live in hope).
America doesn't recognize the Hague Court as applying to itself, you say?
Fine--then we'll try you and your cohorts in absentia. And let the world come looking for you.
This is venting, I suppose; but I personally find it comforting.
And whence comes George Bush's insouciance as he spins and sputters us on the edge of spreading maelstroms, horizon to horizon ? Sheer delusion, increasingly defensive and unmoored? Perhaps.
But let's also bear in mind that it was Bush's practice--and still is, I would guess--to begin each day reading from "My Utmost for His Highest," a collection of short homilies by Oswald Chambers, a Scottish minister from the World War One era. The main thrust of these homilies is that, for the truly devout Christian, keeping to God's course and doing God's bidding, the worst things look, the more that's a sign you're on the right course. By adversity you shall find your compass. The more folks and facts go against you, the bloodier things get, the more God is smiling on you.
Scholar Robert Wright gives an excellent synopsis.
Today's reading from "My Utmost for His Highest" is here. I note from it the sentence, "Do not be abnormally examining your inner self, looking forward with dread..." Which is another hallmark of these homilies, one I'm sure Bush upholds with ease.
But as Robert Wright notes: "Shortly before his death in 1917, Chambers declared that 'war is the most damnably bad thing,' according to Christianity Today magazine. He added: 'If the war has made me reconcile myself with the fact that there is sin in human beings, I shall no longer go with my head in the clouds, or buried in the sand like an ostrich, but I shall be wishing to face facts as they are.' Amen."
You can say that again, brother.
As for our man Scotty, surely there's some kind of job for him at Ringling Bros? Maybe sitting on a plank above a tub of water, so people can throw things at a target and down he goes? This repeated over and over, into eternity, like an Aesop fable for our times?
Peronally, I find that another comforting thought, childish as it may be.