The Bush Administration Is Ruining My Life

Because every time I try to sit down and get any serious work done, I end up writing yet another broadside against the President Regent and his Band of Merry Robber Barons. I truly can’t help it: the vitriol just flows out of me, and, in all seriousness, it is beginning to tire me a bit. But I’m compulsive about it, which is stupid because this administration is stupid, stultifyingly stupid, and
not worth my time and emotional or intellectual energy.

It would not be worth it if these people did not purport to lead the free world, that is.

For the first few years I looked in vain for some saving grace. I was a bit encouraged after 9-11 when the Bush crew seemed to actually care about something other than aggrandizing their own egos and bank accounts. But that did not last, and the lack of reason that underlay each statement that came from Bush and his cabinet all pointed to one thing: these people are idiots.

They repeat their own carefully crafted bits of misdirection so often that they begin to believe it themselves. Or perhaps their logic is so twisted that they believed it to begin with, but that notion is almost too terrible to contemplate.

The current state of affairs really is beyond reason: Nixon was corrupt, but at least he had a soul. It may have been a rotten soul, but at least Nixon was human. He had doubts and uncertainties. He was paranoid. Real people are paranoid. The current administration is paranoid too, but it is paranoid as a matter of policy, and its predetermined policy is all it is capable of seeing.

This is not merely sad; this is alarming. Now I know how the average Roman felt as Nero fiddled and the city burned.