I started writing this post before we got to the airport. Final boarding was called just as Senator Biden was about to become Vice President Biden. I continued to write from the air assuming that President Elect Obama has become President Obama but since I cannot actually confirm this for now I still write with a President Bush and Vice President Biden.
As I have written earlier, Lesley and I are going to China, there will be more on that in a moment but for now in honour of President Elect Obama I had some thoughts on the Bush Administration I just had to make known.
It is not great secret, I am a dyed to the wool pinko by American standards, but then by American standards there are very few "conservatives". Still what President Bush said in the farewell address has to go down as one of the most insulting and idiotic remarks ever to be spoken by an adult, let alone the President of the United States. When Bush said something to the effect of: "history will be kind to me, I was faced with tough decisions and I made them." Who on Earth did this man think he was talking to? The Mouseketiers? Does he believe that we are all so ignorant as to not think the President of the United States will have to face difficult decisions? Does he honestly think that being POTUS is nothing more than joining some frat house? Did he ever grow up?
Of course the president has momentous issues dozens, every single day. Do I send fine young people off to die in some far away land? Do I incur the wrath of my base by raising their taxes? Do I risk my chances of re-election by offering the body politic a more elevated form of debate that forces the audience to engage "the better angles of their nature" and not just their id? In every single example I cited the President was faced with just that situation and he made the wrong call, in those examples and almost every other time.
Making a decision is easy even if it is tough, making the right decision - that is a different animal. It was this profound inability to do the right thing even when he knew what the right thing to do was: "most of my [tax] cuts go to those at the top" he once (possibly many times) said during the 2000 primary then general campaign, he was supposed to say "most of my cuts go to those at the bottom". Bottom, top, easy to mistake after months of speaking but that is just one of dozens of Freudian slips well documented by Mark Crispen Miller in The Bush Dyslexicon. The man knew it was wrong but went ahead with it anyway because he George anointed by his Poppy's Supreme Court picks.
Perhaps that explains things? Perhaps Bush never saw himself as legitimate either and so every call, every decision was hard and he never should have taken it - and he knew it. I watched "An Inconvenient Truth" again, on the flight over, I kept thinking if the Supremes had let the vote counting continue so that Gore could win Florida as he almost certainly would have, would we be in the same mess we are in now? I strongly doubt it.
Speaking of Inconvenient Truths, I know we are a pretty inventive bunch and we can usually find a way out of ugly problems but as I fly at almost 600 miles an hour towards Shanghai (covering about 11500 miles in 16 hours) I wonder, what if we cannot find a replacement before the oil runs out? Oil is a non-renewable, it will run out, current prices not-withstanding. The period between my Grandparents and my Grandchildren might very represent the extent of cheap energy. if that is the case, no more jetting around, no more driving, no more fancy foods, mangos become something my great grandchildren would only know in songs, I don't think it is a coincidence that all of our modern inventiveness is thanks to cheap energy, it takes a lot of energy to build a silicon chip and the first stage of a Saturn 5 moon bound missile is fueled by kerosene. What if it all stops? It is going to really suck when the music stops.
Anyway we are making our final decent towards Shanghai Pudong Airport, we are near Wuxi home of the World's largest Buddha. An aside before I shutdown, my Parents, Lesley and I once went to Wuxi. On the way to Wuxi Lesley told my parents that Wuxi is a small town, only a few million people. When it comes to demographics China is a whole different scale than back home.
No comments:
Post a Comment