Tuesday, February 06, 2007

I know George Bush

I know George Bush.

I encountered him a couple of time when I was in high school, and repeatedly in my college days. Even in my adulthood, I have run into him at social events and in my business life, though lately we're not going to the same parties.

Well, maybe it wasn't actually George Bush, but it might as well have been. Rich. Confident. Lacking any fear of the future or the self-doubts that prompt introspection. In college, while I lived in a windowless basement room where, at night, viscous brown foam gurgled mysteriously from a drain in the floor, he inhabited a different plane. Sure, I'd see him at parties sometimes. He'd was usually the loudest, happiest drunkard in the room. But at best, he saw the rest of us as a supporting cast. More likely, we were his playground equipment. The only people in my crowd that he ever acknowledged as flesh and blood were the good looking girls, and for these he had less respect than prostitutes. A blowjob that costs money is accorded at least the significance due a business transaction.

But when the party waned, when the coke was gone and we couldn't scrape together the money for more, George would be gone, beamed back to a different world populated only by his own kind. A world with few limitations on luxury and excess, with few pressures or worries, where performance was inconsequential.

George did carry one insecurity though: life without adversity had made him weak in mind and spirit. This awareness, inchoate, drove him to acts of petty dominance and callousness. Dirty play in sports. Rudeness to commoners. He was a mean drunk.

As long as I have known him, I have hated George Bush.

I don't hate him out of jealousy of his material wealth. Nor am I burning with frustration over some crushing repartee he made to me when last our paths crossed. Rather I hate him because his entire life is an insult to plain, regular folks less privledged than himself. Frankly, I don't feel the insult personally. I'm blessed with a good job, a healthy family, and a safety net likely to keep me and mine from starving except in the event of the most extreme catastrophe. I may not be a true "elite," but on a global and historical scale, I'm blessed and rich beyond imagining. I hope I am always mindful of it.

But most Americans have bigger worries than I. Dead-end jobs. Schools that don't serve their children. Debt. Poor health care. Pressures to perform every day with consequences like failure, poverty, and the destruction of their family always hanging over their head

George Bush's life and being is a wad of phlegm hocked into the face of these Americans.

And yet, somehow, his handlers have manufactured an image based on anti-intellectualism and a weak Texas twang that has convinced most of blue collar America that George is one of them.

But think back to your high school days, America. Think back to that one party that summer, to that time when you went to the beach. You've met George Bush. You know George Bush.

You hate that guy.

5 comments:

nunya said...

Yup. Grew up with kids less wealthy than him, but the same attitude was everywhere.

This is the greatest line I've ever seen: "George Bush's life and being is a wad of phlegm hocked into the face of these Americans."


thanks for that :)

Mark Lazen said...

Hey Politicky one--thanks for checking out my blog!

pissed off patricia said...

Hell, I married him. I was desperate to get out of my parents grip and he was there to take me away. The marriage lasted longer than it should have and I finally wised up and changed my life to be a life sans him. Best move I have made in my whole life too.

Unknown said...

met many "georges" married one too like Patricia and took too long to leave. but what really upsets me... is the "georges" who claim to care about the poor or the working class, yet treat them with contempt. Woking in the service industry I have met many, who think nothing of complaing if you don't attend to their needs immedialty. Not caring that their complaints could cost someone their livelyhood. So the next time your in a restaurnt, grocery store or god forbid wal-mart remember don't be a "george"

Anonymous said...

FLEETING THE VAGRANCIES OF PROFIT

Remember those old codgers George and Sam--that´s Bush and Walton--
Each patting of the other´s back as if there were no salt in
The vasty earth except for those who both knew how to profit--
Yet what have they bequeathed us, please? That perch, you must come off it.

So both colluded in a way to take jobs that paid better
And send abroad--to China--hands that knit and purl that sweater,
Not that (you understand) I harbor feelings as begrudge
My good Chinese friends--pungyomen--who mostly toil and trudge:

But I resent the profiteers that toy with persons´ lives,
As make employees bondsmen that are trapped within the hives
Of labor without any true compassion to console ´em,
Fulfilling tasks tout de suite in modulated rank and column.

No, George and Sam in their flim-flam may slap each other´s backs,
Despite which mien of friendliness we see between the cracks:
It was all talk how all of it was good for all of us,
But distribution´s mean unkindly treated many thus.

Again so tell me what has each of these men left behind?
A fortune for their children to distribute to the wind;
Disasters, turmoil, trouble as ensue, without some charm
To compensate depletion having pilfered all the farm--

So the majority will starve for bread, save Ali Baba
Come open up the store--Bush had Ambassador Al-Sabah
Hands overhead clasped to congratulate his war Kuwaiti,
While Walton saw communities reach poverty like Haiti.

Nor either George nor Sam nor neither Sam nor George (you notice?)
More than hot air has left us having flapped his epiglottis,
For plastic goods and oil muck as pollute land, sea and air,
Are but the legacy with us these rich men had to share.

So should we then admire them having made their buck, held power?
The vagrancies of profit do not last beyond an hour--
While it is only by the good a man has left behind
Eternal valuation we esteem so as we find.

(Nor don´t supply me with a further cause for umbrage, unction--
The children left behind is but a biological function,
So one may swagger snidely with a codpiece for compunction,
The heavens do commend neither the juncture nor the junction.)

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