Even amidst the general joy of watching Bush and Company come unglued, an unspoken, unspeakable fear stalks the land. A fear that gives pause to the DLC and our Democratic Senators, a fear that somehow Bush and his vicious buddies will get out of this mess intact.
That Cheney will resign on Christmas Day, taking all the blame and bad mojo with him. That Bush will change a few faces, move Rove across the hall to an office nearer the bathroom, withdraw 40,000 grunts from Iraq just before the 2006 elections, and use Diebold to hang on to both the House and Senate. So the Dems hold back, don’t use both barrels, and come up with slogans like “We Can Do Better.”
Well, here’s the facts of life: no stunt Bush can pull will avail him anything. Out in the heartland, the game is over.
Do you recall how Bush has been described as America’s “Daddy” and all Americans as his children? His advisors even bragged about it.
That metaphor worked for him after 9/11, when four-fifths of the country wanted someone to stand up with a bullhorn, tell us not to worry, and then go shoot the burglars who broke into our house.
You know, the Afghan burglar, the Saudi burglar, who broke in and knocked stuff over.
That’s what kids want daddies to do — go shoot the burglars so we feel safe again.
What Daddy Bush has done since 9/11 is ignore the Saudi burglar completely, and chase the Afghan burglar only as far as the picket fence. Now the Afghan burglar is standing there reloading his pistols because Daddy Bush rushed rushed next door and beat the shit out of our neighbor, old man Iraq, and set fire to his house.
Turns out Daddy Bush had a real bad grudge about old man Iraq throwing a rock at Grandpa Bush years ago.
Turns out Daddy is best friends with the Saudi burglar, and owes him a lot of money, so he’s real polite to him.
Besides all that, we’ve had a couple of storms lately, and the basement flooded, but Daddy won’t even try to clean it up or fix the roof. He won’t go to work, either. Instead, he’s spent our grocery and Christmas and college funds buying flamethrowers and guns to shoot at old man Iraq, who keeps killing our pets if they stray outside.
We can’t even walk down the driveway anymore, so we all stay in the house, which is looking more and more like a bunker every day.
Now Daddy wants us kids to help him blow up old man Iran’s house and burn down Mrs. Syria’s rundown trailer, and bring home any food and cash in their homes.
Daddy’s announced that our family is going to be Lords of the Whole City, by scaring the hell out of everyone who lives here.
Anyway, that’s what’s gone on at our house.
So, you can understand that if Daddy Bush puts on a fresh set of clothes, shaves, brushes his teeth, and sits down to a family dinner and makes nice conversation it won’t make the slightest damned difference.
Not when all our pets are dead, we’re cold and hungry, there’s water in the basement, holes in the roof, no money in the bank, no groceries in the cupboard, smoke drifing in the windows from old man Iraq’s house, all the neighbors screaming at us from across the street, the Afghan burglar reloaded, and Christmas cancelled.
Daddy Bush can’t change our minds.
We want Daddy in jail, so we can feel safe again. All the burglars in the world aren’t half as scary as Daddy is.
Politics is described as the art of finding a parade and getting in front of it.
The only parade Bush can get in front of involves rails, tar and feathers. It’s over.
If American politicians were actually free in the coming few years to choose which parade to start, stop, steer, then yes, they will be able to grandly direct the course of Bush’s downfall. Send him and his ilk home with their wallets intact.
That won’t happen.
The parade that’s building won’t have any Boy Scouts in front of it. We want blood.
And we want our money back.
Cleaning up after Bush and the pirate GOP, during the deep economic collapse America will be facing after this winter, will create a parade of angry citizens who will not be satisfied with anything less than hanging every bastard who has had any part in creating this mess.
We want our country back, we want our money back. We want the tax cuts Bush forced on us not only reversed but repaid with interest, and we want the world’s largest military budget chopped in half.
Want to get in front of a parade? Here’s the slogan that’s ringing across the Heartland:
“To Hell With This American Empire Crap!”
