A word to the wise: Beware of any newspaper article in which it is asserted as fact that George Bush reads books.
Case in point, a Washington Post article (Alone Yet At Peace), reprinted in the Day this morning. This is not the worst of the Bush hagiographies that have been inflicted upon us by the mainstream media, but the world would nonetheless have been a better place had it been spared this claptrap, served up whole by a procession of courtiers, named and unnamed. Example:
Bush is seeking out those who are, embarking on an exploration of the currents of history that have swept up his administration. For all the setbacks, he remains unflinching, rarely expressing doubt in his direction yet trying to understand how he got off course.
Now, I have parsed the final sentence in that quote, and I have come to the conclusion that, with an awful lot of effort, you can thread the needle and make it make sense. But even after putting in all that effort, you still come back to the common sense initial reaction: How can someone “understand how he got off course” if he refuses to acknowledge that he is going in the wrong direction?
What lurks below the surface of this article is a portrait of a man who has grown increasingly isolated and detached-who seeks solace for his failure in his belief (which can never be disproved in his lifetime) that history will judge him well. He consults with historians but is apparently not really interested in history, preferring instead to discuss good (him) and evil (pretty much everyone else). He continues to believe that he is carrying out God’s commands. The mental illness that this implies goes unmentioned.
Instead, we get a picture, in the main, of a man who has nobly shouldered the burden of being a great man misunderstood. He is like Churchill, because he says he is, and besides he has a bust of the great man. He is a man who cries at the sight of a wounded soldier, and even insists on confronting the wounds themselves (next thing you know, like Saint Francis, he’ll be kissing lepers), something that comes as news to those of us who’ve noticed that he has never attended a funeral and appears to prefer to use his wounded vets as backdrops for photo-ops or shields against unwanted questions about his personal corruption. He is “totally and completely aware of all the existing circumstances around him” according to (as usual) a “close friend” (How many close friends can one sociopath have?), even though, as one historian says, his alleged stoicism is: “either extraordinary self-confidence or out of touch with reality. I can’t tell you which.” How about both?
During the Clinton years, anything Bill did was covered with massive doses of cynicism. It was simply beyond belief that he would ever do anything because it was the right thing to do or because he had anything but political, and usually base, motivations. With Bush we see how the press can put a good face on almost anything. We have a president, according to the Post, who struggles with questions of good and evil. This is taken at face value. (We are not told on which side of the ledger he places torture.) In fact, every factual statement his sycophants make is taken at face value, no matter how inconsistent with the public record or what we already know about Bush’s character. There is no suggestion in this piece that anything these folks have to say must be taken with a ton of salt. Finally, and back to where we started, we are told that he reads books. No, he and his courtiers use books as props and name books on the President’s fictitious reading lists (remember Camus?) to send signals to a compliant press about the image that they wish to project. And, like good boys and girls, they project it.
Bush doesn’t need a bunch of historians to sit respectfully while he blathers on about good and evil and his Messiah complex. What he needs is a court jester, someone, like Lear’s fool, who will rub his face in his own mess.