Yes, it’s another Cindy Sheehan diary.  I’ve been on holiday in Italy and returned to find that the ground has shifted underneath Bush’s feet…caused by a force of nature named Cindy Sheehan.  And I returned from Italy with a photograph of Michelangelo’s “Pieta”, a sculpture he did in his early 20s, which has significance for the strange and wonderful saga of Cindy Sheehan.

By the way–many thanks to MilitaryTracy for her reporting on the scene!
Cindy Sheehan is the beginning of the end for Bush.  Everything that has accumulated thus far–the scandals, the growing doubts about his character, all the lies he’s told, all the American blood and treasure that have been poured into the sands of Iraq–is now going to come crashing down on him.  Oh, and latest reports I have from the States is that petrol has crashed throught he $3 a gallon barrier.  Not even Bush’s Saudi friends can rescue him now.

Bush cannot win with Sheehan.  If he meets with her now, it looks as if Mr. Tough Guy has caved.  If he refuses to meet with her, it looks as if he’s running away.  Sheehan’s strategy is so brilliant because it’s so damned simple–my son gave his life for this country, on this President’s orders, and I want him to explain to me face-to-face why this had to be.  This has quite unnerved Bush’s cult followers, as evidenced by the fact that even Bush’s red staters (including a neighouring rancher!) appear to have given support to Sheehan.  Sheehan is almost a religious figure, a lone grieving mother–she brings to mind Michelangelo’s Pieta (he made more than one….I write of the Pieta of his youth, protected behind thick glass in St. Peter’s), in which a grief-stricken Mary has taken her grown son down from the Cross and is cradling him in her lap.  

The grieving mother is a powerful image in all cultures and one against which even a President is helpless.  If Bush were Clinton–which he is not–he would have gone out and prayed with her.  I can picture Clinton turning this whole thing to his advantage, but also being sincerely moved (rather than annoyed and frightened, as the sociopathic Bush has been) by Sheehan’s grief and anger.  Clinton would kneel down beside Sheehan, take her hand, and say a prayer…but that’s because Bill Clinton was a real, feeling  human being and not a monster wearing human skin.  It’s a good job they don’t allow Cheney near the woman; he’d kick the memorial crosses over himself and then sic his dog on Sheehan (I’m pretty sure Cheney has savage dogs who attack people…I’ve never seen them but somehow I just know they’re there).

Anyway, what will concentrate the minds of the American public quite wonderfully will be skyrocketing petrol prices.  One of my neighbours is an Iranian exile whose daughter is pursuing a Ph.D. at Berkeley.  Mr. Nasfiranyah is a petroleum industry consultant and he says that what started as old-fashioned price gouging has now got quite out of control.  There is genuine fear over the instability of the petrol supply from the Arabian Peninsula, and he is predicting pump prices of $3.75-$4 a gallon before year’s end in the United States.  Nasfiranyah told me that his own estimate was considered spot-on by most other analysts, some of whom–the minority, you understand–predict some sort of rationing scheme may have to be instituted (shades of the 1970s and Carter’s “American malaise”) in parts of the US.  Of course President Cheney will use all of this as pretence to call for drilling for oil through Teddy Roosevelt’s nose at Mount Rushmore and for getting rid of those pesky pollution controls once and for all, but the American public aren’t going to listen–they’re going to turn on Cheney, Bush, et al.  It goes like this:

Bush invaded the Middle East to get cheap oil (actually, he didn’t, but that’s what people think);
Gas prices doubled.
Bush is the problem!

Which is my way of saying that Sheehan is not the David who is going to “kill” Goliath; but she has certainly wounded him.  Everyone has been waiting for The Event that finally destroys Bush, but to destroy a religious cult figure actually requires multiple events concentrated in a relatively short period of time.

What happens next is going to be quite frightening, actually.  Picture Bush and Cheney cornered until January 21, 2009–that’s when they will begin their true reign of terror.  I have a hard time imagining what they might do, but I put nothing beyond or beneath them in their futile endeavour to save their own skins.  Except this time, with each new move, instead of frightening the people into submission, as they have in the past, they will only anger them more.

Sheehan has punctured people’s fear of Bush.  It is quite obvious that this woman is not afraid of Bush, but that he is afraid of her.  Bush and Cheney will try to re-establish fear, but once it has been lost in people’s hearts, it cannot be relocated…I have some experience in this.  Nothing is more dangerous to a monarch than a population who have been ruled through fear once that fear is gone…because fear turns to rage, and rage must be focused on someone.  That does not mean that we are due for a seismic shift in American politics, but certainly the ground is falling from beneath Bush’s feet.  I dare not predict what will happen next.

However…there is one thing that Bush’s puppetmasters might do, and that’s round up military moms who support Bush.  I’m sure they will set up a counter-vigil to say that Sheehan is a Communist and a lesbian and steals cookies from Girl Scouts…think of the “Swift Boat” veterans and the 9/11 widows who supported Bush and you have the right idea.  I don’t know if that will be enough to blunt Sheehan’s wounding of Bush.  Ordinarily I would say “yes” but I think the fabrication and artificiality of it all will appear quite evident even to the half-blind American people.  What do  you think?  Would such a transparent ploy work?