I just forced myself to watch this mornings Bush news conference and came away from it with even more chills running up and down my spine than usual.
Someone asked him about his “legacy”. I’d heard his usual answer to that one before, (paraphrased: “No one will know how great I really am till long after I’m dead”.), when it occurred to me just how deadly dangerous this guy really is, because it’s true, he has NOTHING to lose.
He’s not up for reelection. He has wealth that will insure a luxurious life till he dies if he never works again. And there’s no need to worry even about his legacy because in HIS deluded, twisted mind, he can’t lose in that area either: he truly believes he will go down in long term history as a Great President, and if he doesn’t he’ll be too dead to care.
I knew a man once, a patient in the state hospital where I worked, who could have been his clone, had he been born to money and privilege. He was the most charismatic sociopath I’d ever met, and I’d met a lot of them. I spent most of my time after he came trying to keep my nurses and techs from getting totally sucked into this guys game: he was that good. He was also completely and permanently convinced he was put on this earth to rid it of all evil. (according to HIS perception of evil, of course.)
Unfortunately, to this fellow, “evil” tended to be most concentrated in older women the age of the mother he had slaughtered when he was 14 years old. Yet in time, with years of “good behavior” he had still managed to charm his way out of a maximum security hospital into ours, where he freely roamed the wards with a large number of, yep, older women patients.
I dreaded, but was not surprised to receive the phone call at 3am that he’d killed old Millie. She’d been bugging him for weeks. Several of us had not only predicted this outcome, we’d done everything in our power to get him out of there, to no avail. He had the docs in his pocket by then.
He was sitting calmly in the day room when I got there. There was no sign of remorse: in fact he looked more relaxed than he had in some time. When questioned as to why he’d done this, he simply said, with clear and direct eye contact, “She needed to go be with God.”
He had nothing to lose and everything to gain, in his own twisted psyche. He had done gods will and he knew there would be no consequences. He knew he’d be taken care of by the state for the rest of his natural life.
It is so hard for normal people to get inside a mind that is that twisted. To even imagine a mind that fixed in delusions, that lacking the normal conscience structure that just doesn’t exist in this kind of personality. To try to conceive of how anyone could behave in ways so deadly to others, and not only feel no remorse, but feel totally vindicated by their own internal delusions.
I am not attempting to diagnose Bush. I am only telling you that he gives me the same kind of chills this other man did. I hear the resolve and certainty in his voice about staying in Iraq till we succeed in eradicating terrorists: I see the glint of fervor in his eyes when he ratchets it up, and I feel like throwing up.
I don’t “pray”, as prayer is defined by Christianity. But I sure as hell am sending fervent wishes out there into the ethers, to any forces of good there may be, that there are those present in the higher levels of government who are preparing to do SOMETHING, and SOON, to take control away from this man and anyone around him who are any part of this.
I will also continue to do my own part by making my concerns known to those elected to represent me, and by speaking up and out wherever I can. It feels like so little, but it is what I CAN do, and I can do it over and over and over again. Please join me. Write, write, and write some more, directly TO those in office, as well as here on the blogs. Call, call and call some more and don’t stop. And for those able to take to the streets, there will never be a time when it is needed any more than it is now.
Am I over-reacting? I fervently hope so.
