Because we are planning on feeling a bit lazy over the next week or so, we here at Paying Attention have decided to
make available for one time and one time only, unless there ends up being
another time...
CHAPTER
THE FIRST
OF
THE NOT SO NEW
NEVER
BEFORE SEEN
NOT
PARTICULARLY AWAITED
FIRST
BOOK FROM NOT-IN-ANY-WAY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR
I. MANGREY
The
Life and Crimes of George W. Bunch
“Facts are stupid things – stubborn things,
should I say.”
Ronald
Reagan, addressing Republican National Convention 1988
“His
ignorance covered the whole Earth like a blanket
and
there was hardly a hole in it anywhere.”
Mark
Twain
“If
we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
George W. Bush
CHAPTER
ONE
He Started Out, Continued To Be, And Ended Up
As A Child
“If this were a dictatorship, it would be a
heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
George W. Bush, December 18, 2000
“I want to piss away the first forty or so years of my
life cashin’ in on my family name and fortune and just have everything handed
onto me without havin’ to ever do any real work, maybe even become vice
president or somethin’ like that, where you get to just wave and smile a lot
but don’t have to do a bunch of work and stuff…that’s my dream.” These words, attributed to the subject of
this book at the mere age of nine, could have come from almost any young boy,
though most nine-year-old boys want to be doctors or baseball players or
firefighters or astronauts or even president... but not this one. All those things sounded like too much
work. In his mind, such as it was, he
could be so much more while doing so much less.
He believed he could see the writing on the floor, he knew which side
his cheese was buttered on – he wanted to make the pie higher. He dreamed of wanting what he believed in his
tiny little heart and similarly miniscule brain was to be rightfully his,
through no effort or even innate ability of his own. He was wholly incapable of the former and
entirely lacking the latter. This young
lad was determined to make the most out of the privilege handed to him on a
platinum platter and reach for the stairs.
In any event, most nine year olds are not known for their
grasp of either middle age or history or even puberty for that matter. As far as they know, the world is there for
their personal pleasure first and foremost, especially those born with a silver
spoon cavorting with one orifice or another.
Most of us grow out of this phase of perfectly natural self-absorption
at some point and realize there are others in this vast world, perhaps thinking
the same thing we are. Most of us
eventually learn it is best to temper our selfish desires with some sense of
community or society or, if nothing else, the Golden Rule. But not this guy. He was to be nothing if not perversely
consistent. Stubborn and immovable as a
two-legged mule stoned out of its mind on heroin. Unwilling, if not unable to learn even the
simplest of lessons or experience any significant degree of personal growth. Throughout his entire life, anything outside
of his own shoes was simply there for his amusement, or more often, his
abusement.
Our subject was not just any nine-year-old of course. One day this unassuming, unhinged,
Oedipus-like father-hating, mother-loving little rich boy would chronologically
and physically grow into a man who would manage to stumble backwards into
front-page news, the History Books and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Though he never heard of Oedipus, George
Washington, or Pennsylvania and never quite understood who Jesus was or why he
mattered, and would never manage to force open a history book, the world was
his oyster if he wanted any of it. Many
would see him as little more than a pawn of more thoughtful albeit malevolent
powers who tagged our boy-man as the kind of guy those ill-versed in the issues
of the day or, in most cases any day, and seemingly not in possession of any
means of relating causes to consequences, would like to have a beer with and
for that reason alone, for clearly there was no other, elect to high office.
These treacherous cretins, who make up a large portion of
the American electorate turned out to be right about him being a guy capable of
having a beer with someone, and the lad would one day be a boy in a man’s
attitude who would shake the world like few others.
As you may have noticed, history has a funny way of
coloring and texturing the way people and events are ultimately seen. Not always funny-ha-ha, more often funny like
– that’s-funny-I’ve-never-actually-seen-a-cloud-appear-from-the-ground-up-and-shaped-so-much-like-a-mushroom
kind of funny.
It was in the same way Christopher Columbus, lost at sea,
thinking he had finally come ashore in India, ended up discovering a New
World. Discovering seems such a
subjective descriptor in this case. Some
would say it was actually the Taino who discovered Columbus lost, stupid and
desperate on a beach in the Caribbean.
But Columbus of course had better PR men (not to mention an arrogant and
nasty disposition and weapons unlike anything the people he acquainted them with
had ever imagined) and was able to get the story told the way he wanted when
all was said and done. Instead of being
heralded as one of the dumb-luckiest sailors of the time, mostly the dumb part,
Columbus has come to be revered as a brilliant navigator who discovered
America. No matter that he had no idea
whatsoever where he made landfall. No
matter that even though Chris described the Taino as a gentle people without
guile who gave generously of themselves to the pale strangers who hadn’t the
faintest clue where they were. Columbus
still found it useful to bludgeon the land and its people with murder, mayhem
and disease, mostly in the name of greed and glory, with a side order of God
and Country...not his country mind you, but the one that financed him. I’m sure we all hope that history will paint
such an inspirational, however disingenuous, picture of us when we are
gone. Who would not want their cowardice
to be viewed as heroic? Who would not
wish their biggest mistakes would bring wealth and fame? Who would not want their murder and mayhem to
go essentially ignored, assuming one would even wish or somehow manage to
commit such atrocities in the first place?
And so it may be with our current subject who upon landing
the biggest job in his life, probably one of the biggest, most important in
anyone’s life if not history itself, managed to bludgeon not only that same
land once accidentally discovered by Columbus and its by-then-not-so-original
inhabitants, but also those who placed him in his position of power as well as
the very position itself, which would never be looked at with the same
reverence and respect it had prior to his intrusion. Like Columbus he found himself in his
once-honored position having no idea what that position meant or called for,
with little idea how he actually came to be there. In his day he committed such murder and
mayhem with no thought to the past, present or future, presenting himself for
all the world as a masterful hero; for this was precisely how he saw himself
when he looked deeply into his soul…such as it was…on both occasions.
He was the best of presidents; he was the worst of
presidents. Not really…he was, in fact
very simply and without exception, the WORST of presidents. The absolute, far-and-away, undisputed WORST
FUCKING PRESIDENT in the history of the United States. This is not one of them ex-ag-ger-a-tions nor
is it an opinion. It is historical fact…by any measure you care
to use. And there is an abundance,
actually an overabundance, of proof. Videotape,
audiotape. Digital proof, analogue
proof. Verifiable quotes, still
photographs. Mental scars, emotional
scars, physical scars. There is no
missing the significance unless you were one of the faithful. Even then chances are good that the part of
the personal subconscious entwined with the collective unconscious felt the
stinging pain that began at the moment he seized power and ended, with any luck
at the time of their own physical demise.
In addition, it turns out that almost every single presidential
historian concurs: Grand W. Bunch will go down as the worst of the worst. To be sure there have been some doozies since
the birth of this nation and perhaps even one or two almost everyone agrees
were really good ones. But according to
those whose business it is to study and know about these things, none of the
first forty-two presidents of the United States, individually or as a group,
did as much damage to as many facets of the social and political fabric, not to
mention the emotional well-being and long-term health of our nation and planet,
in as short a period of time and left in his wake more enduring and painful
consequences than did America’s 43rd president. In fact, the experts are convinced that it
would take a concerted effort with malice of forethought to surpass the
Herculean ineptitude displayed by president #43. And all he ever asked from us was that he not
be “misunderestimated.” That, and an
almost fanatical devotion to his woe begotten agenda.
Most of those who survived those surreal years have the
emotional, psychological, financial, and in many cases physical scars to bear
out just how painfully hideous his presidency was. And as it turns out, according to all the
computer models, the Grand W. Bunch presidency’s horrific ranking could be
extrapolated to include King George III of England, who inspired the birth of
our nation in response to his arrogant, corporatist, imperialist, autocratic
buffoonery in the Eighteenth Century.
Polls show that most Americans prefer root canal
procedures, labor pains, kidney stones, sharp steel needles in their eyes and
even vivisection sans anesthesia to even thinking about the 43rd
presidency. Nobody with even the
slightest taste for truthiness honestly believes that anything even approaching
mediocre occurred during or resulted from the eight-year-long Reign of Terror
that began the 21st Century or the New American Century as the
neoconservative benefactors of the Bunch presidency preferred to call it. Unfortunately, a large percentage of
Americans will never be honest about those soiled years and the putrid creature
that made them what they were. In fact,
a fairly large percentage of Americans were at best oblivious to what was going
on, as is their wont. Truth be told,
somewhere dangerously near the vicinity of fifty percent of those who took the
time to vote believed, or simply decided without the slightest thought that
Bunch should hold the highest office in, what at that time was still the most
powerful nation on the planet and still at least to some degree, the Land of
the Free and the Home of the Brave.
If there is anything to follow the attempted recovery of
America’s democracy, economy, environment, military and world standing after
the damage inflicted by the man known as President Moron, President Primate,
President Doody, President Pinhead, President Bobblehead, President Piñata,
President Peewee, President Pipsqueak, President Putz, and many descriptors
much less flattering, history will have little if anything kind to say about
the 43rd president of the United States. Leaving office with a popularity rating just
slightly higher than syphilis, Grand W. Bunch would claim that history, and
history alone would vindicate him…what choice did he have after all. As I commit this to paper (screen actually)
history has not yet had time to take full measure of what this man has
wrought. And history will likely have to
stand aside for a time while the human race attempts to lift itself by its own
bootstraps out of the quagmire left behind by this Special President (think
Special Education) until there is spare time and stomach enough to
recapitulate, analyze and commit to collective memory all that was perpetrated
during those Bunched-up years.
Said Bunch upon leaving office, ”I know some say I made
some mistakes these last eight years.
This is a free country with numerous as-inconveniently-as-possible
located Free-Speech Zones so people are free to say whatever they wants just so
long as people who don’t want to hear what these Free-Speechers are saying
don’t have to hear it. It worked for
me. I never heard one discouraging word
while I was in office, which I assumed meant that everyone loved me and agreed
with me. I am not going to take it
personal just because some now say bad things about me. They could be talking about anyone. You know, they say it takes a great man to
admit that some say he made a mistake.
And great man that I am I’ll admit they may be right. I will take their word for it if that makes
them feel any better because, and I’ve thought long and hard about this, I
can’t think of a single mistake I made as president. I suppose it’s possible that I may have
cleared a bit too much brush, and I may live to regret never using noocular
weapons while I had the chance, but those are not mistakes so much as things I
may have did wrong. As far as what may
or may not have happened before I was president, I really don’t remember any of
that at all and anyways that was all in the past. I believe in turning the other chunk and I’m
ready to move on and act like nothin’ ever happened. So long’s I still got the god-given ability
to pat myself on the back I’m good to go.
Besides, I was extremely impressed with the way I ran the country. So I’ll let history be the judge, waterboarder,
jury and executioner, heh, heh, heh, not all you evildoers and nay sayers. History will make me look real good. Now watch this drive. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.”
No matter that Grand had no familiarity with the history
that preceded him, much understanding of the things he himself did or caused to
be done, or even a fleeting knowledge of what history actually entailed, he
just liked talking about it. And surely,
after leaving office, he would pay as little attention to what would transpire
as he paid to what was in the past, which was, unfathomable as it might be,
actually more than the amount he paid while in
office. Once Bunch’s term expired some
said to the doomsayers who claimed that Bunch had all but consummated the
apocalypse, and surely with no small surprise and considerably more than a
little sense of relief, that there was in fact life after Bunch. True enough, but it was life in the ICU on
life-support with multiple organ failure and a dire prognosis. There is no evidence to the rumor that God
Himself is standing by poised to deliver Last Rites.
In any event, whatever else can be said, he was the first
president of the Zeros. That’s what the
first decade of the twenty-first century was ultimately called. We had the Roaring Twenties, the Fabulous
Fifties, the Psychedelic Sixties…not much of note for a while after that, but
the start of the new millennium was simply: The Zeros. The Zeros made the Civil War, the era of the
Great Depression, even the Second World War seem like a gentle rain on a warm
summer day. Once this down-home,
red-blooded (blue actually) American Decider-of-things-better-left-undecided-not-to-mention-undone
hurled his alleged presidency at an unsuspecting, though not altogether
undeserving, United States and the absolutely stunned and traumatized world at
large, what else could such an era be branded?
The Bunch presidency was for America the societal equivalent of whatever
put a stop to the dominance and in fact the very existence of the dinosaurs.
Though he claimed to have stopped abusing alcohol in his
early forties, Bunch remained an alcoholic at heart and one made no less belligerent,
self-sure for no good reason and obstinate beyond all measure even without the
help of his long-time drug-of-choice (the others were mere temporary
distractions, or hobbies, due to their being illegal). He claimed to have eschewed booze for the
pretense of religiosity at the age of forty-one under threat of divorce by his
wife, herself an inadvertent killer who ultimately found it comforting to blame
outside forces for her unfortunate happenstance, but that’s another story. So Grand claimed to have cleaned up his act,
all appearances, actions and outcomes to the contrary.
Grand stole into office with a villainous and sadistic
vice-president, mangled every aspect of the English language every time his
mouth opened, appointed the most incompetent bunch of worthless albeit loyal
malefactors and pinheads to every post imaginable and used the Constitution to
wipe his ass…literally, and repeatedly…without ever even bothering to rinse it
off between uses. If nothing else, at
least that goes to show that the old hemp document really holds up under
pressure – physical or otherwise.
Our hero oversaw the beginning of the end of the dominance
of the United States of America as, if nothing else, the most economically and
militarily dominant nation of the Twentieth Century. He also oversaw the beginning of the end of
the United States Constitution as a guiding force in America’s social
structure, and as it turned out, he had no small hand in the rending of the social
structure itself. And even though he
acted as if it were so…he wasn’t always President of the United States of
America.
