THE UGLY WOMAN
Another story from the saga of Mr. Nobody.
Several times I’ve begun an autobiography called, BOTTOMS UP: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A NOBODY. Each time, it dies on the vine. The words run out, the inspiration dies. But, in this Blog, I’m putting in some of those tales from my life. This story is one of many which do not reflect too kindly on me.
I was still drinking at the time, and it was shortly after my first divorce when I still lived in Ohio. At the time, I shared a walkup apartment with a crew of hippies, one of whom had been a student of mine when I taught high school. We are still good friends, Carl and I.
I used to drink sometimes in a dive in the produce district of Dayton where trucks came in to unload produce to be shipped out to retailers around the city. This establishment, The Fruit Market Restaurant, Bar and Grill, was on the main floor of the same building where I worked in a machine shop located on the second floor. An old concrete and grimy building in a grimy section of downtown not too far from the city library. At first the bar was owned by a Greek couple, then a jazz man and his wife from New York City bought it. After the jazz man, it died a seedy death with prostitution going on in the basement.
The men, mostly black, who unloaded the trucks also drank there (the ones who drank) and not many of them drank much because they were too poor to drink. They were paid piecemeal for their work, by the truck. The alley behind the building and the alleys all around were filled with empty bottles of NyQuil and empty wine bottles.
One night I showed up at the Fruit Market late in an evening of drinking elsewhere. I was as they say three sheets to the wind. The place was shadowy, long and thin. To the right, entering from the street, was the long bar and to the left a series of wooden-backed, green-colored booths. Farther back to the right was a tiny piss pot and beyond that the kitchen and to the left a dark room where overflow crowds could find a table if patrons grew numerous enough. Which did not happen until the prostitutes and topless dancing began a few years later. Me and the guys who worked in the building who drank there usually entered from a door in that dark room which opened onto the alley in back.
That night I climbed up on a bar stool halfway back and ordered a good German beer from Cincinnati, a Hudepohl. Sipping, I looked around to see if I knew anybody, and there she was, two stools to my left, the ugliest woman I’d ever seen in my life! Her face was pock marked and from jutting chin to broad, jutting forehead, her faced curved inward, like she’d been struck in the face with the back side of a shovel. Her nose in the middle of this gentle curve was flat and broad. I imagined her nose’s highest peak was level with her chin. She was also nursing a beer.
We struck up a conversation. She’d recently arrived from California, and I was interested in going to California at the time so I had lots of questions. Her voice in the noise of the bar was softly pleasant for one so ugly, I thought. She was drunk too. Soon I decided to try and get her back to my hippy pad. I don’t know why I picked on this ugly woman, but I think my thinking was this. I wanted to get laid, and I had never yet succeeded in picking up a girl in a bar (most scared me with their put on toughness) if you don’t count the prostitutes of San Juan, Puerto Rico where I lost my virginity. I sensed she was available. There was a sadness which made her vulnerable, I think, and I could pick up on that in those days. So, for no more reason than that she was available, easy, and I wanted to score a bar girl, and, additionally, I was drunk and senseless myself, I invited her back to my pad, to my mattress-on-the-floor, hippy pad. Took a little coaxing, but she assented.
In the dark of my walkup apartment, we made love on my mattress on the floor, and it was, for both being drunk, pretty tender. She was wet and open and easy to enter, and I came pretty fast. Afterwards we talked in the dark, and one thing struck through my drunkenness. It was the gentle tenderness of her voice in the darkness. Her’s was the voice of a sweet and young woman, not the voice of a beer-bloated, pock-faced hag. Her voice sounded as beautiful and sad as a morning birdcall. And so I fell in love with the ugly woman with the sad voice. But, of course, in those days, I could find a reason to fall in love with any woman who would fuck me.
Recalling it now, in my old age, all these years later, my sad self and her sad self, meeting there in mutual desperation, I feel sad again and wonder what happened to the woman with the beautiful voice and the caved in face. I know my story which has come along pretty well, but I don’t know hers.
The next day, we got up, ate bacon and eggs in a restaurant, and drove south out of Dayton in thin March sunshine to find a wooded parkland, where we could walk, where she asked to go, through the leafless trees, and we talked some more. She told me her story as we drove.
She said that she had a child at one time out in California and one day she was driving on the freeway with her child in back, and the child opened the door and tumbled out to be killed. The saddest part was that she did not notice right away. Was it drugs or alcohol? I don’t know, but after she told her story, she changed. She walked hard and fast when we entered the woodland, and she began to moan deeply and, it seemed to me, unconsciously. The moan would groan out of her every few minutes as we walked, and I’d look at her downcast face beside me and swear she did not realize that she was moaning. She never really talked to me after she told her story. She was distracted completely.
After the drive back, we returned to my walkup. Carl was there to tell me about a party two nights later somewhere in the partying city of hippies and booze and drugs. I invited my love to go with me, and she hesitated at first, but then told me to call her the next night to make arrangements for the night after that. I drove her home in the evening light and dropped her off at an old two story house in the heart of the city.
I don’t know what my friends thought as I told them I was “in love” with the “ugly woman”, the creature who moaned with pain, the one I thought I could fix. I was always in love or wanting to be in love in those days. I was so lonely and lost, it seems to me. But, no one said anything to me about restraining myself. In those days, everyone seemed to accept everything as representing a spiritual journey. Everything was spiritual, even a group fuck or a divorced older man who was not bad looking, being in love with a fucked up, truly ugly woman. It was pick your poison; what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.
That’s why you could experience so much so quickly in those days. So much was accepted and not judged but leapt into with blind gusto. Of course, we did judge the redneck harshly and often, but, then, he judged us too, didn’t he? Our clothes, our hair and music, and our opposition to his war? Who judged who first, in the first place?
Anyway, when I tried to get hold of her next evening, I kept getting an answering machine, and the more I got the answering machine, the more desperate I became, but I didn’t drive over. I don’t know why I didn’t drive over and knock on her door. Maybe she had asked me not to. As the years went by and I grew more desperately lonely, I would go and knock on doors and get into trouble and have cops show up or phone calls to cops be threatened because of my actions. Yep, pretty scary and not a pretty picture. But I said this story wasn’t flattering to myself, only honest.
Finally, on the day of the party itself, I called once again in the afternoon and a man answered. I imagined it was her father. Was it her husband? Anyhow, already inebriated in preparation to party, I begged him to let me talk to her. I said, “I love her” or, at least, “I want to help her. I really care about her.”
I was in a cold phone booth and a winter/spring drizzle dripped down and ran rivulets down the glass box, and the man said, in a kind voice, not angrily, “If you really care about her, you won’t call here again.”
I sensed not a threat but a serious request. He hung up, and I didn’t.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Monday, February 07, 2005
STRONG ARGUMENTATION FOR CHRIST BEING A FIGMENT OF IMAGINATION FOLLOWS:
"Thus I find myself more and more attracted to the theory, once vigorously debated by scholars, now smothered by tacit consent, that there was no historical Jesus lying behind the stained glass of the gospel mythology. Instead, he is a fiction." —Robert Price
It’s sad to think of all those Christians who believe in Jesus as a historical personage and to know all the facts which make their beliefs false. The arguments continue and grow louder and more heated, but, in the long run, facts and time are on the side of dismissing the Jesus mythology as false. At this time, from my own arguments and debates, the only people who can accept the Jesus myth whole hog are desperate fundamentalist who have no claim to objectivity or those who are ignorant of the facts (i.e. most of Christianity). Anyone who looks with open and unbiased eyes can’t fail to have, at least, a doubt. One could end up believing still, but they would at least have to admit there’s some very strong evidence out there which can disprove the Christ myth. Any honest Christian would have to be at least a bit of a doubting Thomas.
Read this!
_____________________________________________
“There is hardly a book of either Old or New Testament that has not been questioned, either wholly or in part, by some reputable scholar.” —Curtis MacDougall (On the other hand, the Bible contains much that is relevant today, like Noah taking forty days to find a place to park.)
"Thus I find myself more and more attracted to the theory, once vigorously debated by scholars, now smothered by tacit consent, that there was no historical Jesus lying behind the stained glass of the gospel mythology. Instead, he is a fiction." —Robert Price
It’s sad to think of all those Christians who believe in Jesus as a historical personage and to know all the facts which make their beliefs false. The arguments continue and grow louder and more heated, but, in the long run, facts and time are on the side of dismissing the Jesus mythology as false. At this time, from my own arguments and debates, the only people who can accept the Jesus myth whole hog are desperate fundamentalist who have no claim to objectivity or those who are ignorant of the facts (i.e. most of Christianity). Anyone who looks with open and unbiased eyes can’t fail to have, at least, a doubt. One could end up believing still, but they would at least have to admit there’s some very strong evidence out there which can disprove the Christ myth. Any honest Christian would have to be at least a bit of a doubting Thomas.
Read this!
_____________________________________________
“There is hardly a book of either Old or New Testament that has not been questioned, either wholly or in part, by some reputable scholar.” —Curtis MacDougall (On the other hand, the Bible contains much that is relevant today, like Noah taking forty days to find a place to park.)
Saturday, February 05, 2005
A CRIMINAL GOVERNS FLORIDA
In Kitty Kelley's THE FAMILY, pp. 406-408, you can read of Jeb Bush's criminal dealings with thugs and assorted scammers in Florida. Some of these revelations are unbelievable, and I must ask how Floridians could support such a shady dealer, but you can also understand why Jeb would not hesitate to steal an election from the Democrats. His connections with dishonest Cuban-Americans gives him great clout down there.
The more I read about the shady dealings our government has had over the last 25 years through Republican politicians, I truly do doubt if honest elections and honest government are possible anymore. Those who vote for Republicans don't seem to care about the kind of people they are putting into office. Just say the word "god" and the minds of believers, lied to from birth about angels and gods and demons, go shut to reality, and they vote for anyone who spouts the correct words. I fear for America's future.
Look, I don't absolve Democrats from shady dealings, but recall, they haven't held the executive offices for very much of this time period, and though Clinton was constantly scrutinized by a Republican special prosecutor, he was not found guilty of anything but a blow job in the White House and certainly not with overthrowing elected democratic governments in foreign lands or for using government to enrich himself.
[OPEN QUOTE.]
In one case Jeb peddled his influence for Miguel Recarey Jr., an international fugitive whose hobby was extortion. Recarey, who boasted of Mafia ties to Santos Trafficante, pulled off one of the biggest Medicare frauds in American history, skimming untold millions from taxpayers. According to law-enforcement officials, he increased his personal net worth from $1 million to $100 million in six years. By the time Recarey met Jeb Bush, the Cuban immigrant had been forced to repay $13 million in improper Medicare payments. He had also been convicted of tax evasion, served time in prison, and was being investigated for hospital embezzlement in connection with his health maintenance organization, International Medical Centers.
In 1984, Recarey made a two-thousand-dollar contribution to Jeb’s Dade County coffers. Jeb then acted as a conduit to his father and Oliver North to arrange for IMC to provide free medical treatment for the contras. Afterward, Recarey hired Jeb’s personal company, Bush Realty Management, for $250,000 to find IMC an office building. During their conversations, Recarey mentioned that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was tightening Medicare rules, which threatened IMC profits. Recarey asked Jeb to call HHS on his behalf. Jeb agreed and made two telephone calls, which he would later deny, asking that Recarey be granted a waiver of the new HHS regulations.
Jeb went right to the top. He called the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, and spoke to her chief of staff, C. McClam Haddow. Jeb told Haddow to “discount rumors that were floating around concerning Mr. Recarey... He’s a good community citizen and a good supporter of the Republican party.”
These calls from the son of the Vice President commanded not just attention but action. When Congress later investigated Recarey’s Medicare fraud, Haddow testified that Jeb’s calls for Recarey had helped IMC receive its waiver, enabling IMC to have more than half its clientele be Medicare recipients. Secretary Heckler’s approval of this waiver overruled the decision of a local HHS administrator. Jeb’s intervention basically guaranteed that Recarey could continue bilking millions from Medicare, which is exactly what he did for three more years. Recarey paid Jeb seventy-five thousand dollars, which both men claimed was a realty fee, although Jeb never found Recarey any office space. In 1985 and 1986, Recarey also gave more than twenty-five thousand dollars to George Bush’s political action committees.
In 1987, when IMC was shut down because of insolvency, more than $200 million in Medicare money was missing. Recarey was indicted for embezzlement, labor racketeering, bribery, obstruction of justice, and wiretapping. He fled to Venezuela, and then to Spain, where he now lives in luxury. To this day he remains on the FBI’s list of international fugitives.
In 1985, the year after Jeb intervened with HHS for Recarey, he wrote a letter to the Department of Housing and Urban Development on behalf of another unscrupulous character. Hiram Martinez Jr. had applied for federal loan insurance for an apartment development. The application was stalled because of questions about the value of the land. After Jeb wrote to HUD, Martinez got the loan, but HUD later discovered that Martinez had indeed inflated the value of the land and the cost of the project. He was convicted and served six years in prison for fraud. Jeb said he did not remember writing the letter, but HUD released a copy.
Jeb had interceded for Martinez because he had been hired by Martinez’s contractor, Camilo Padreda, another anti-Castro Cuban, who was finance chairman of the Dade County GOP when Jeb was chairman. In 1982, Padreda had been indicted for embezzling $500,000 from the Jefferson Savings and Loan in MeAllen, Texas. But the case never went to trial, because the CIA intervened on behalf of Padreda’s associate, who was indicted with him. His associate had worked for the CIA during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Padreda later pleaded guilty to defrauding the Department of Housing and Urban Development of millions, including the Martinez fraud, but Padreda never went to jail. Instead, he was placed under house arrest and given probation in exchange for cooperating with authorities investigating Dade County corruption.
Jeb, who has claimed that he never lobbied his father’s government, petitioned the Justice Department in 1990 in behalf of Orlando Bosch, who was in prison for having entered the United States illegally. The antiCastro terrorist, who was implicated in the car-bombing assassination of Orlando Letelier, was notorious for having masterminded the bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight in October 1976, which killed all seventy-three on board, including a group of Cuban athletes returning from the Pan Am Games in Caracas, Venezuela. At that time George Herbert Walker Bush was CIA director. The United States sanctioned terrorism against Cuba and routinely trained commandos to infiltrate the island. Jeb, who planned to run for governor of Florida, represented a rabid anti-Castro constituency, a voting bloc that held his father’s anti-Castro actions at the CIA in the highest esteem. Jeb’s public support for paroling Bosch further enhanced his standing in the Cuban community, which considered Bosch a patriot in exile and honored him for his murderous bombings around the globe. At his son’s behest, George Bush intervened to obtain the release of the Cuban terrorist from prison and later granted Bosch U.S. residency.
[CLOSE QUOTE.]
________________________________________
"Justice is my being able to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so." —Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) [This is also called "Bush-league" justice down in Texas. Now the law of the land.]
In Kitty Kelley's THE FAMILY, pp. 406-408, you can read of Jeb Bush's criminal dealings with thugs and assorted scammers in Florida. Some of these revelations are unbelievable, and I must ask how Floridians could support such a shady dealer, but you can also understand why Jeb would not hesitate to steal an election from the Democrats. His connections with dishonest Cuban-Americans gives him great clout down there.
The more I read about the shady dealings our government has had over the last 25 years through Republican politicians, I truly do doubt if honest elections and honest government are possible anymore. Those who vote for Republicans don't seem to care about the kind of people they are putting into office. Just say the word "god" and the minds of believers, lied to from birth about angels and gods and demons, go shut to reality, and they vote for anyone who spouts the correct words. I fear for America's future.
Look, I don't absolve Democrats from shady dealings, but recall, they haven't held the executive offices for very much of this time period, and though Clinton was constantly scrutinized by a Republican special prosecutor, he was not found guilty of anything but a blow job in the White House and certainly not with overthrowing elected democratic governments in foreign lands or for using government to enrich himself.
[OPEN QUOTE.]
In one case Jeb peddled his influence for Miguel Recarey Jr., an international fugitive whose hobby was extortion. Recarey, who boasted of Mafia ties to Santos Trafficante, pulled off one of the biggest Medicare frauds in American history, skimming untold millions from taxpayers. According to law-enforcement officials, he increased his personal net worth from $1 million to $100 million in six years. By the time Recarey met Jeb Bush, the Cuban immigrant had been forced to repay $13 million in improper Medicare payments. He had also been convicted of tax evasion, served time in prison, and was being investigated for hospital embezzlement in connection with his health maintenance organization, International Medical Centers.
In 1984, Recarey made a two-thousand-dollar contribution to Jeb’s Dade County coffers. Jeb then acted as a conduit to his father and Oliver North to arrange for IMC to provide free medical treatment for the contras. Afterward, Recarey hired Jeb’s personal company, Bush Realty Management, for $250,000 to find IMC an office building. During their conversations, Recarey mentioned that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was tightening Medicare rules, which threatened IMC profits. Recarey asked Jeb to call HHS on his behalf. Jeb agreed and made two telephone calls, which he would later deny, asking that Recarey be granted a waiver of the new HHS regulations.
Jeb went right to the top. He called the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, and spoke to her chief of staff, C. McClam Haddow. Jeb told Haddow to “discount rumors that were floating around concerning Mr. Recarey... He’s a good community citizen and a good supporter of the Republican party.”
These calls from the son of the Vice President commanded not just attention but action. When Congress later investigated Recarey’s Medicare fraud, Haddow testified that Jeb’s calls for Recarey had helped IMC receive its waiver, enabling IMC to have more than half its clientele be Medicare recipients. Secretary Heckler’s approval of this waiver overruled the decision of a local HHS administrator. Jeb’s intervention basically guaranteed that Recarey could continue bilking millions from Medicare, which is exactly what he did for three more years. Recarey paid Jeb seventy-five thousand dollars, which both men claimed was a realty fee, although Jeb never found Recarey any office space. In 1985 and 1986, Recarey also gave more than twenty-five thousand dollars to George Bush’s political action committees.
In 1987, when IMC was shut down because of insolvency, more than $200 million in Medicare money was missing. Recarey was indicted for embezzlement, labor racketeering, bribery, obstruction of justice, and wiretapping. He fled to Venezuela, and then to Spain, where he now lives in luxury. To this day he remains on the FBI’s list of international fugitives.
In 1985, the year after Jeb intervened with HHS for Recarey, he wrote a letter to the Department of Housing and Urban Development on behalf of another unscrupulous character. Hiram Martinez Jr. had applied for federal loan insurance for an apartment development. The application was stalled because of questions about the value of the land. After Jeb wrote to HUD, Martinez got the loan, but HUD later discovered that Martinez had indeed inflated the value of the land and the cost of the project. He was convicted and served six years in prison for fraud. Jeb said he did not remember writing the letter, but HUD released a copy.
Jeb had interceded for Martinez because he had been hired by Martinez’s contractor, Camilo Padreda, another anti-Castro Cuban, who was finance chairman of the Dade County GOP when Jeb was chairman. In 1982, Padreda had been indicted for embezzling $500,000 from the Jefferson Savings and Loan in MeAllen, Texas. But the case never went to trial, because the CIA intervened on behalf of Padreda’s associate, who was indicted with him. His associate had worked for the CIA during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Padreda later pleaded guilty to defrauding the Department of Housing and Urban Development of millions, including the Martinez fraud, but Padreda never went to jail. Instead, he was placed under house arrest and given probation in exchange for cooperating with authorities investigating Dade County corruption.
Jeb, who has claimed that he never lobbied his father’s government, petitioned the Justice Department in 1990 in behalf of Orlando Bosch, who was in prison for having entered the United States illegally. The antiCastro terrorist, who was implicated in the car-bombing assassination of Orlando Letelier, was notorious for having masterminded the bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight in October 1976, which killed all seventy-three on board, including a group of Cuban athletes returning from the Pan Am Games in Caracas, Venezuela. At that time George Herbert Walker Bush was CIA director. The United States sanctioned terrorism against Cuba and routinely trained commandos to infiltrate the island. Jeb, who planned to run for governor of Florida, represented a rabid anti-Castro constituency, a voting bloc that held his father’s anti-Castro actions at the CIA in the highest esteem. Jeb’s public support for paroling Bosch further enhanced his standing in the Cuban community, which considered Bosch a patriot in exile and honored him for his murderous bombings around the globe. At his son’s behest, George Bush intervened to obtain the release of the Cuban terrorist from prison and later granted Bosch U.S. residency.
[CLOSE QUOTE.]
________________________________________
"Justice is my being able to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so." —Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) [This is also called "Bush-league" justice down in Texas. Now the law of the land.]
Friday, February 04, 2005
THE EUROPEAN IDEA OF MARRIAGE
I've been told that Europeans quite often stay in marriages of convenience while both partners keep affairs on the side. George Bush Sr. also did that European thing. Of course, he didn't divorce because he had designs on the presidency. Perhaps his father's infidelity, George Jr. being a momma's boy, was a source of the anger he felt toward George Sr. which caused him to want to fight his dad "mano a mano". Following from THE FAMILY, pp. 330-331:
[Open quote.]
In his mind George had slotted his wife into the mother-of-my-children category, a ranking of respect that was bracketed in steel. Like a Mafia don, he kept the wife category separate from the category of other women. While his attentions strayed over the years, his family commitment remained solid. That was Barbara’s insurance policy—knowing she would never be divorced—but in 1974 that was not enough.
“I don’t think there was much going on in that marriage by then,” recalled Nadine Eckhardt, who was married to Democratic Representative Bob Eckhardt of Texas. “We saw a lot of them in the days when George and Bob served in Congress together.
“I have given lots of thought to the duality of people like the Bushes. All of us have male and female in us; some more, some less. George and Barbara married young and had those kids when the hormones were working well. By the time I met them George was very ‘femme.’ Slim and silly and a hopeless flirt. In my book I say he was cute and we were attracted to each other. It was sort of like when you’re attracted to a gay guy and you know nothing’s going to happen so you just forget about it and be friends.”
Another congressional wife who observed the Bush marriage was Marian Javits, the widow of the late senator from New York Jacob Javits. “George needed more hugging and touching,” she said. “Passion was a need for him that was probably part of his great ambition . . . We visited them in China and while I do not understand Barbara, I do know she adored George. Pure love . . . I think she saw that her biggest strength was to imitate his mother, almost become his mother. . . Barbara let herself look the way she did on purpose. If George had wanted her to look any other way, she would have. Believe me . . . I know this as a wife . . . I think with Barbara her kids made up for everything.”
In later years other women would comment on the way Barbara “mothered” her husband. “I was working at CBS-TV when I first met the Bushes,” recalled Carol Ross Joynt. “He came into the Green Room with a gray-haired woman who I thought was his mother. Someone told me she was his wife, and I became fascinated by their dynamic because they were not a matched pair. . . He engaged women immediately. He’s not a lecher, but he makes eye contact with sexual energy. He’s polite and does not behave improperly—he’s no Bill Clinton—but the sexual message is there. She [Barbara] is oblivious to it all. She’s supremely confident and in charge of him like a mother overseeing her child. It’s clear that she’s the one in the relationship who totally wears the pants.. . and it’s also clear that he relies on her.”
[Close quote.]
THE CHILLY CHILE THING
I've always been infuriated with the Republican Party for encouraging and supporting the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Chile and Nicaragua. The ease with which their consciences support the overturning of elected governments shows me a party which contains people who are unable to accept ideas different than their own and a willingness to go to any length to destroy those they differ with. I think the ferocity with which they attack even fellow Americans shows that they have little control of their anger. As a Democrat who disagrees with them, you can understand my fear. Anyhow, the following from THE FAMILY sheds some additional light on Bush Senior's willingness to bend the rules to advance his own presidential standing. It's why I used to talk about the blood dripping from Senior's hands when he was president. Following from THE FAMILY, p.348:
[Open quote.]
He [Bush Sr. while head of CIA] refused to cooperate with the investigation into the Washington, D.C., bombing of the car of the former Chilean Ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier, that killed Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, a colleague from the Institute of Policy Studies. The murder was directed by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s secret service, and the CIA knew that two of the assassins were in the United States at the time of the bombing. Needing to cover up the CIA’s involvement with the Chilean secret service, George directed the agency to leak the story that the bombing was the work not of the obvious suspects but of leftists looking to create a martyr for their cause.
“Look, I’m appalled by that bombing,” George told Justice Department lawyers. “Obviously we can’t allow people to come right here into the capital and kill foreign diplomats and American citizens like this. It would be a hideous precedent. So as director, I want to help you. As an American citizen I want to help. But as director I also know that the Agency can’t help in a lot of situations like this. We’ve got some problems.” George then turned to the CIA’s general counsel. “Tell them what our problems are.”
When George took his oath of office, he swore to uphold the laws of the country, which as of February 1976 included Executive Order 11905, known as the assassination ban: “No employee of the U.S. Government shall engage in or conspire to engage in political assassination.”
[Close quote.]
____________________________________________________
"Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution yet." —Mae West
I've been told that Europeans quite often stay in marriages of convenience while both partners keep affairs on the side. George Bush Sr. also did that European thing. Of course, he didn't divorce because he had designs on the presidency. Perhaps his father's infidelity, George Jr. being a momma's boy, was a source of the anger he felt toward George Sr. which caused him to want to fight his dad "mano a mano". Following from THE FAMILY, pp. 330-331:
[Open quote.]
In his mind George had slotted his wife into the mother-of-my-children category, a ranking of respect that was bracketed in steel. Like a Mafia don, he kept the wife category separate from the category of other women. While his attentions strayed over the years, his family commitment remained solid. That was Barbara’s insurance policy—knowing she would never be divorced—but in 1974 that was not enough.
“I don’t think there was much going on in that marriage by then,” recalled Nadine Eckhardt, who was married to Democratic Representative Bob Eckhardt of Texas. “We saw a lot of them in the days when George and Bob served in Congress together.
“I have given lots of thought to the duality of people like the Bushes. All of us have male and female in us; some more, some less. George and Barbara married young and had those kids when the hormones were working well. By the time I met them George was very ‘femme.’ Slim and silly and a hopeless flirt. In my book I say he was cute and we were attracted to each other. It was sort of like when you’re attracted to a gay guy and you know nothing’s going to happen so you just forget about it and be friends.”
Another congressional wife who observed the Bush marriage was Marian Javits, the widow of the late senator from New York Jacob Javits. “George needed more hugging and touching,” she said. “Passion was a need for him that was probably part of his great ambition . . . We visited them in China and while I do not understand Barbara, I do know she adored George. Pure love . . . I think she saw that her biggest strength was to imitate his mother, almost become his mother. . . Barbara let herself look the way she did on purpose. If George had wanted her to look any other way, she would have. Believe me . . . I know this as a wife . . . I think with Barbara her kids made up for everything.”
In later years other women would comment on the way Barbara “mothered” her husband. “I was working at CBS-TV when I first met the Bushes,” recalled Carol Ross Joynt. “He came into the Green Room with a gray-haired woman who I thought was his mother. Someone told me she was his wife, and I became fascinated by their dynamic because they were not a matched pair. . . He engaged women immediately. He’s not a lecher, but he makes eye contact with sexual energy. He’s polite and does not behave improperly—he’s no Bill Clinton—but the sexual message is there. She [Barbara] is oblivious to it all. She’s supremely confident and in charge of him like a mother overseeing her child. It’s clear that she’s the one in the relationship who totally wears the pants.. . and it’s also clear that he relies on her.”
[Close quote.]
THE CHILLY CHILE THING
I've always been infuriated with the Republican Party for encouraging and supporting the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Chile and Nicaragua. The ease with which their consciences support the overturning of elected governments shows me a party which contains people who are unable to accept ideas different than their own and a willingness to go to any length to destroy those they differ with. I think the ferocity with which they attack even fellow Americans shows that they have little control of their anger. As a Democrat who disagrees with them, you can understand my fear. Anyhow, the following from THE FAMILY sheds some additional light on Bush Senior's willingness to bend the rules to advance his own presidential standing. It's why I used to talk about the blood dripping from Senior's hands when he was president. Following from THE FAMILY, p.348:
[Open quote.]
He [Bush Sr. while head of CIA] refused to cooperate with the investigation into the Washington, D.C., bombing of the car of the former Chilean Ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier, that killed Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, a colleague from the Institute of Policy Studies. The murder was directed by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s secret service, and the CIA knew that two of the assassins were in the United States at the time of the bombing. Needing to cover up the CIA’s involvement with the Chilean secret service, George directed the agency to leak the story that the bombing was the work not of the obvious suspects but of leftists looking to create a martyr for their cause.
“Look, I’m appalled by that bombing,” George told Justice Department lawyers. “Obviously we can’t allow people to come right here into the capital and kill foreign diplomats and American citizens like this. It would be a hideous precedent. So as director, I want to help you. As an American citizen I want to help. But as director I also know that the Agency can’t help in a lot of situations like this. We’ve got some problems.” George then turned to the CIA’s general counsel. “Tell them what our problems are.”
When George took his oath of office, he swore to uphold the laws of the country, which as of February 1976 included Executive Order 11905, known as the assassination ban: “No employee of the U.S. Government shall engage in or conspire to engage in political assassination.”
[Close quote.]
____________________________________________________
"Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution yet." —Mae West
Thursday, February 03, 2005
LOTS OF TEARS ALLEVIATE THE FEARS
Five degrees this morning and a brilliant sun happys my heart as I sit at the Coffee House on Washington Street to write this. What can I say? Now’s a good time to tell another true tale of the wounded heart in recovery. Okay... I know... the heart is not the seat of emotional life. It’s the limbic system, isn’t it?
Let’s call him Trip. He was a professor of Russian and Far Eastern history out at Eastern Washington University in Cheney when I met him. Born a Mormon, he had become a Buddhist when I first encountered him. Later, after an encounter with a Father D’ioro, an evangelical priest in the Catholic church, Trip became a practicing Catholic, his wife’s long time faith.
Trip was a serious Buddhist. He transplanted his family to South Korea at one time in order to study under Buddhist masters who live in mountain caves there. Trip didn’t do anything halfway, and no matter what faith he was working in, he was what others would call a spiritual man. Spiritual people exist in all religions and non-religions. Even atheists have been known to be spiritual. Spirituality is a state of emotional and psychological awareness that anyone with an open mind can achieve. Read the works of Jung and Joseph Campbell to understand what spirituality might include. At the level of religion, you might say that a fundamentalist in any religion is a rigid person of law while a liberal religious person is a person of spirit. Moses versus Jesus.
From my point of view, Trip was an enlightened or spiritual man or, as a Jungian might say, a fully “individuated” person. He came to my aid when I was in need and through him I experienced many new insights on my own path toward “individuation” or enlightenment. The first couple of years after my third divorce were the most transcendental days I’ve ever experienced. At first I was in dire straits. I truly was in suicidal pain.
One day I ran into Trip at a restaurant in Cheney. Trip had only recently become a Catholic, and he reached out to me in my pain. He suggested that we meet in the vestibule of the Catholic church in Cheney every morning for six weeks and meditate or silently pray together. I was into prayer at the time. Trip faithfully met me every morning that six weeks, and we prayed or meditated silently side by side in a pretty chilly St. Rose of Lima vestibule. Afterwards, we’d talk a bit about my pain and the insights that were coming to me. He was wonderful, and I loved him and his whole family.
Eventually I was living like a monk in a huge old farmhouse on Trip’s land six miles outside of Cheney and spending every morning reading spiritual things, like the Psalms and like John Bradshaw’s books and tapes about family troubles. Many a morning and in counseling, I broke into deep sobbing. I read Jung too, went to counseling and twelve step meetings, attended the local Lutheran church and prayed a lot, all the while working my evening shift as a machinist at a Spokane job shop. Immediately after the divorce, I worked for fifteen months as a nurse’s aide at a local nursing home.
One time I went with Trip and his wife to an evening church service that was like nothing I’d ever seen in a Catholic church. They both were slain in the spirit that night. I watched this man of towering intellect allow himself to be tapped on the forehead and fall backward into the arms of waiting attendants. Returned to his seat, he invited me to go up to the altar, but I wasn’t about to do that. Still, the experience forced me to consider the fact that very intelligent people can allow themselves to participate in irrational events. Of course, he was not so irrational as to deny the truth of natural selection.
Trip also invited me during this time to attend Wednesday prayer meetings in the basement of St. Rose of Lima church. He and a few others gathered every Wednesday at 7 to sit around a table and read Bible passages, comment on them, or sing hymns and songs. Each person would suggest what he wanted to read or sing as they went around the table. It was a small group and very definitely not like other Catholics I’d known. These were evangelicals.
One night, maybe the third night I participated, one of them suggested we sing this song about “take me to the water’ or “bring me to the water”. That’s all I recall about the song, but it portrayed a man who felt very poor, lonely and afraid. Someone who has lost everything. After about two refrains, I completely identified with the feelings of the lost, impoverished man and broke into tears, I mean real gut-wrenching tears. I cried so hard I could barely catch my breath. I was bent over in my chair and the snot and slobber was dangling from my nose and chin down to the floor. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
Suddenly, all of them gathered around me to lay on hands and pray over me. I cried for a long time while they prayed. I felt completely cleansed by the tears. They all went back to their chairs. Then a man called Charley from across the table recited the words to me: “Do you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your lord and savior?”
I recognized the scene from a movie called “Rachel, Rachel”, which had starred Joanne Woodward, when “they” swoop down on the wounded person to bend them to their religion.
Calmly, with a little anxiety, I said, “No.”
Immediately Charley made as if to get up and to come around the table to pray over me some more. It was silly. Then, beside me, Trip quietly said, “No, Charley,” and they let me alone.
And so I escaped the clutches of Christians once more, but I learned a great deal about myself and how deep my wounds were cut into me. And my respect for Trip soared to even greater heights. Had they prayed over me again, I’d felt nothing but contempt for the lot of them. I wrote several poems about my time on that plot of land where I could watch coyotes run across the meadows and where I walked and ran the dirt roads and prayed and read and listened to tapes in the little monkish bedroom with a mattress on the floor and my Kaypro computer to write on.
Within two years, Trip was dead of lung cancer. His memorial service was packed, and they made a celebration of it, balloons and individuals sharing good thoughts at the lecturn about his life and belting out some pretty happy songs.
I lived on his land in his old farmhouse until several months after his death, then I cleaned up that old farmhouse and moved into the city of Spokane, Washington where I still live. I wrote the following poem as he lay dying in his home not far from mine.
THE VOICE OF SUCH A FRIEND
for Lynn T.
He's dying up there, a scant fifty yards from here,
My home, where I compose this note to myself.
Fifty yards over scab rock and through pine trees,
Fifty yards through the tall, yellowing meadow grasses
Which bend today under an autumn rain outside my window.
I imagine snow drifting the land between his home
And mine. Soon it will fall the days and nights
Until distinctions blur and a memory of land is all
That remains. What clever metaphor of death, ever so well written,
Can replace the sight of his strong figure,
Walking on the summer grasses between his place and mine
Or the memory of his voice which informs the void between
These lines? At this question, I lay down my pen and walk into
The meadow where I stand to listen as silence fills all like snow.
Five degrees this morning and a brilliant sun happys my heart as I sit at the Coffee House on Washington Street to write this. What can I say? Now’s a good time to tell another true tale of the wounded heart in recovery. Okay... I know... the heart is not the seat of emotional life. It’s the limbic system, isn’t it?
Let’s call him Trip. He was a professor of Russian and Far Eastern history out at Eastern Washington University in Cheney when I met him. Born a Mormon, he had become a Buddhist when I first encountered him. Later, after an encounter with a Father D’ioro, an evangelical priest in the Catholic church, Trip became a practicing Catholic, his wife’s long time faith.
Trip was a serious Buddhist. He transplanted his family to South Korea at one time in order to study under Buddhist masters who live in mountain caves there. Trip didn’t do anything halfway, and no matter what faith he was working in, he was what others would call a spiritual man. Spiritual people exist in all religions and non-religions. Even atheists have been known to be spiritual. Spirituality is a state of emotional and psychological awareness that anyone with an open mind can achieve. Read the works of Jung and Joseph Campbell to understand what spirituality might include. At the level of religion, you might say that a fundamentalist in any religion is a rigid person of law while a liberal religious person is a person of spirit. Moses versus Jesus.
From my point of view, Trip was an enlightened or spiritual man or, as a Jungian might say, a fully “individuated” person. He came to my aid when I was in need and through him I experienced many new insights on my own path toward “individuation” or enlightenment. The first couple of years after my third divorce were the most transcendental days I’ve ever experienced. At first I was in dire straits. I truly was in suicidal pain.
One day I ran into Trip at a restaurant in Cheney. Trip had only recently become a Catholic, and he reached out to me in my pain. He suggested that we meet in the vestibule of the Catholic church in Cheney every morning for six weeks and meditate or silently pray together. I was into prayer at the time. Trip faithfully met me every morning that six weeks, and we prayed or meditated silently side by side in a pretty chilly St. Rose of Lima vestibule. Afterwards, we’d talk a bit about my pain and the insights that were coming to me. He was wonderful, and I loved him and his whole family.
Eventually I was living like a monk in a huge old farmhouse on Trip’s land six miles outside of Cheney and spending every morning reading spiritual things, like the Psalms and like John Bradshaw’s books and tapes about family troubles. Many a morning and in counseling, I broke into deep sobbing. I read Jung too, went to counseling and twelve step meetings, attended the local Lutheran church and prayed a lot, all the while working my evening shift as a machinist at a Spokane job shop. Immediately after the divorce, I worked for fifteen months as a nurse’s aide at a local nursing home.
One time I went with Trip and his wife to an evening church service that was like nothing I’d ever seen in a Catholic church. They both were slain in the spirit that night. I watched this man of towering intellect allow himself to be tapped on the forehead and fall backward into the arms of waiting attendants. Returned to his seat, he invited me to go up to the altar, but I wasn’t about to do that. Still, the experience forced me to consider the fact that very intelligent people can allow themselves to participate in irrational events. Of course, he was not so irrational as to deny the truth of natural selection.
Trip also invited me during this time to attend Wednesday prayer meetings in the basement of St. Rose of Lima church. He and a few others gathered every Wednesday at 7 to sit around a table and read Bible passages, comment on them, or sing hymns and songs. Each person would suggest what he wanted to read or sing as they went around the table. It was a small group and very definitely not like other Catholics I’d known. These were evangelicals.
One night, maybe the third night I participated, one of them suggested we sing this song about “take me to the water’ or “bring me to the water”. That’s all I recall about the song, but it portrayed a man who felt very poor, lonely and afraid. Someone who has lost everything. After about two refrains, I completely identified with the feelings of the lost, impoverished man and broke into tears, I mean real gut-wrenching tears. I cried so hard I could barely catch my breath. I was bent over in my chair and the snot and slobber was dangling from my nose and chin down to the floor. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
Suddenly, all of them gathered around me to lay on hands and pray over me. I cried for a long time while they prayed. I felt completely cleansed by the tears. They all went back to their chairs. Then a man called Charley from across the table recited the words to me: “Do you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your lord and savior?”
I recognized the scene from a movie called “Rachel, Rachel”, which had starred Joanne Woodward, when “they” swoop down on the wounded person to bend them to their religion.
Calmly, with a little anxiety, I said, “No.”
Immediately Charley made as if to get up and to come around the table to pray over me some more. It was silly. Then, beside me, Trip quietly said, “No, Charley,” and they let me alone.
And so I escaped the clutches of Christians once more, but I learned a great deal about myself and how deep my wounds were cut into me. And my respect for Trip soared to even greater heights. Had they prayed over me again, I’d felt nothing but contempt for the lot of them. I wrote several poems about my time on that plot of land where I could watch coyotes run across the meadows and where I walked and ran the dirt roads and prayed and read and listened to tapes in the little monkish bedroom with a mattress on the floor and my Kaypro computer to write on.
Within two years, Trip was dead of lung cancer. His memorial service was packed, and they made a celebration of it, balloons and individuals sharing good thoughts at the lecturn about his life and belting out some pretty happy songs.
I lived on his land in his old farmhouse until several months after his death, then I cleaned up that old farmhouse and moved into the city of Spokane, Washington where I still live. I wrote the following poem as he lay dying in his home not far from mine.
THE VOICE OF SUCH A FRIEND
for Lynn T.
He's dying up there, a scant fifty yards from here,
My home, where I compose this note to myself.
Fifty yards over scab rock and through pine trees,
Fifty yards through the tall, yellowing meadow grasses
Which bend today under an autumn rain outside my window.
I imagine snow drifting the land between his home
And mine. Soon it will fall the days and nights
Until distinctions blur and a memory of land is all
That remains. What clever metaphor of death, ever so well written,
Can replace the sight of his strong figure,
Walking on the summer grasses between his place and mine
Or the memory of his voice which informs the void between
These lines? At this question, I lay down my pen and walk into
The meadow where I stand to listen as silence fills all like snow.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
TO MYTH OR NOT TO MYTH
"The greatest enemy of the truth is not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth—persistent, pervasive and unrealistic." —John F. Kennedy
"When ideas go unexamined and unchallenged for a long time, certain things happen. They become mythological, and they become very, very powerful." —E.L. Doctorow (novelist)
I picked up a another book to read today while working down at the Friends of the Library used book store on the main floor of the downtown library. We call it "Buy The Book." The book I bought today is HOUSE OF CARDS by Robyn Dawes. A psychologist, he claims he'll debunk many modern psychological beliefs with clinical, evidentiary data. The two quotes about mythology are on the credit page. I include them because, lately, I've been reading and entering into my BLOG data from Joseph Campbell's book MYTHS TO LIVE BY.
To Joseph Campbell it's absolutely necessary for people to have some sort of mythology by which to enlighten and fire up their mundane lives, and to give people a sense of transcendence over their fears and mortality. As for myself, I like Joseph's help in debunking the Bible myths, but I don't think I'm living with any myth at the present time. Yet, I have and will have transcendent moments.
SELF-WORTH
Since I believe so much in self-esteem as a positive force in the nature of any human being, I thought I'd present a view contrary to my opinion. I'm looking forward to reading this book in its entirety to see how much of my learned self-help ideas, what others call psycho-babble, might be false. I know that it took me nearly fifty years to raise my own self-esteem, and I know I was the most troublesome when I felt poorly about who I was, yet I do realize that raising my self-esteem might have been a combination of action as well as doing some of the grief work that men and women like John Bradshaw suggested.
From HOUSE OF CARDS, pp. 9-10) "... the mental health professionals who claim expertise without a scientific base have apparently had a profound effect on our culture’s beliefs about what constitutes a good life, what types of behavior are desirable, and—most important—how people “should” feel about the world (see Part II). The most pernicious of these beliefs is that adult behavior is determined mainly by childhood experiences, even very subtle ones, and particularly those that enhance or diminish self-esteem. Self-esteem, in turn, is believed to be an important causal variable in behavior, even though the California Task Force on the Importance of Self-Esteem could find no evidence of such a causal effect. Especially, low self-esteem is believed to yield, with unerring consistency, personally or socially destructive behaviors, so that people who wish to change their behavior must experience an elevation of self-esteem first (as the result of therapy or an esteem-raising self-help group) and attempt serious change in their lives only later. Again, the evidence for these beliefs is negative. What these beliefs do is discourage people from attempting to craft a decent life for themselves and instead encourage them to do whatever is necessary to feel good—about themselves. Sometimes such striving after “mentally healthy” feelings and attitudes simply result in ludicrous behavior (like clutching a teddy bear while proudly proclaiming oneself undoubtedly an incest victim, despite an inability to remember any credible instances). In general, however, this strategy is self-defeating, because it ignores the simple principle that much of our feeling results from what we do rather than causing us to do it."
A PRICKLY RIGHTIST
A friend and I were having a laughing discussion of the Bush family the other day in a McDonald's restaurant. We were talking about why Bush Jr. hates people smarter than himself and why he spent his youth rebelling against his father and grandfather's Eastern upbringing. Why doesn't Bush like to read, for example? A lot of this is very interesting stuff. Anybody who votes would be interested in such material. We wanted to know why he doesn't read a lot and why he's not interested in anything in the world other than power and religion, why he was never interested in books, movies, autobiographies, or the major ideas of the world.
Before we'd finished our discussion an angry women sped past our table and growled in passing, "Why don't you move to France?"
My friend and I were shocked into silence. The old lady who'd been eavesdropping and who'd just insulted us went to stand at the counter. Finally, I got up and walked to her side and offered my hand.
"Parlez vous, Francais," I said. "Thank you. I live in France part of the year," I lied.
"I won't shake your hand," she trembled.
I stepped back and said, "You are a bitchy old... an angry old woman, aren't you?"
"You can't talk about my country like that."
I leaned ever closer and spoke into the side of her face for she would not look at me at all. "I wasn't speaking about America. I was talking about our stupid President." Then I returned to my seat and my friend and I left the restaurant.
Why do these rightists keep asking people who don't agree with them to leave the country? I've been told to emigrate at least three times recently. Why do rightists and fascists like them not want to hear any dissent? Why did they drive Marlene Deitrich, Freud, Einstein and others out of Germany when the fascist right were in charge in that country? Why did they kill Jews because they imagined that Jews didn't think like other Germans during the first world war? Why did they burn the books of those who were dead with whom they didn't agree? Why can't the fascist right bear to be contradicted?
My guess is they can't stand to be challenged because they don't have any facts to back anything up with. That's my experience with them. When you begin to debate with them, they have nothing but prejudices and opinions they picked up when they were kids, and they don't read and study enough to learn anything which could change or modify those childhood prejudices. Like George Jr. who said that all poor people are lazy and who couldn't come up with any data to prove his point when he was in Harvard business school and his fellow students challenged him to prove his contention. So, if they can't back up their claims, of course, all they could wish is to silence through book burning and exile those ideas and people who disagree with them.
_________________________________________________________
"The only way to succeed is to make people hate you." —Josef von Stermberg (My sentiments exactly, von!"
"The greatest enemy of the truth is not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth—persistent, pervasive and unrealistic." —John F. Kennedy
"When ideas go unexamined and unchallenged for a long time, certain things happen. They become mythological, and they become very, very powerful." —E.L. Doctorow (novelist)
I picked up a another book to read today while working down at the Friends of the Library used book store on the main floor of the downtown library. We call it "Buy The Book." The book I bought today is HOUSE OF CARDS by Robyn Dawes. A psychologist, he claims he'll debunk many modern psychological beliefs with clinical, evidentiary data. The two quotes about mythology are on the credit page. I include them because, lately, I've been reading and entering into my BLOG data from Joseph Campbell's book MYTHS TO LIVE BY.
To Joseph Campbell it's absolutely necessary for people to have some sort of mythology by which to enlighten and fire up their mundane lives, and to give people a sense of transcendence over their fears and mortality. As for myself, I like Joseph's help in debunking the Bible myths, but I don't think I'm living with any myth at the present time. Yet, I have and will have transcendent moments.
SELF-WORTH
Since I believe so much in self-esteem as a positive force in the nature of any human being, I thought I'd present a view contrary to my opinion. I'm looking forward to reading this book in its entirety to see how much of my learned self-help ideas, what others call psycho-babble, might be false. I know that it took me nearly fifty years to raise my own self-esteem, and I know I was the most troublesome when I felt poorly about who I was, yet I do realize that raising my self-esteem might have been a combination of action as well as doing some of the grief work that men and women like John Bradshaw suggested.
From HOUSE OF CARDS, pp. 9-10) "... the mental health professionals who claim expertise without a scientific base have apparently had a profound effect on our culture’s beliefs about what constitutes a good life, what types of behavior are desirable, and—most important—how people “should” feel about the world (see Part II). The most pernicious of these beliefs is that adult behavior is determined mainly by childhood experiences, even very subtle ones, and particularly those that enhance or diminish self-esteem. Self-esteem, in turn, is believed to be an important causal variable in behavior, even though the California Task Force on the Importance of Self-Esteem could find no evidence of such a causal effect. Especially, low self-esteem is believed to yield, with unerring consistency, personally or socially destructive behaviors, so that people who wish to change their behavior must experience an elevation of self-esteem first (as the result of therapy or an esteem-raising self-help group) and attempt serious change in their lives only later. Again, the evidence for these beliefs is negative. What these beliefs do is discourage people from attempting to craft a decent life for themselves and instead encourage them to do whatever is necessary to feel good—about themselves. Sometimes such striving after “mentally healthy” feelings and attitudes simply result in ludicrous behavior (like clutching a teddy bear while proudly proclaiming oneself undoubtedly an incest victim, despite an inability to remember any credible instances). In general, however, this strategy is self-defeating, because it ignores the simple principle that much of our feeling results from what we do rather than causing us to do it."
A PRICKLY RIGHTIST
A friend and I were having a laughing discussion of the Bush family the other day in a McDonald's restaurant. We were talking about why Bush Jr. hates people smarter than himself and why he spent his youth rebelling against his father and grandfather's Eastern upbringing. Why doesn't Bush like to read, for example? A lot of this is very interesting stuff. Anybody who votes would be interested in such material. We wanted to know why he doesn't read a lot and why he's not interested in anything in the world other than power and religion, why he was never interested in books, movies, autobiographies, or the major ideas of the world.
Before we'd finished our discussion an angry women sped past our table and growled in passing, "Why don't you move to France?"
My friend and I were shocked into silence. The old lady who'd been eavesdropping and who'd just insulted us went to stand at the counter. Finally, I got up and walked to her side and offered my hand.
"Parlez vous, Francais," I said. "Thank you. I live in France part of the year," I lied.
"I won't shake your hand," she trembled.
I stepped back and said, "You are a bitchy old... an angry old woman, aren't you?"
"You can't talk about my country like that."
I leaned ever closer and spoke into the side of her face for she would not look at me at all. "I wasn't speaking about America. I was talking about our stupid President." Then I returned to my seat and my friend and I left the restaurant.
Why do these rightists keep asking people who don't agree with them to leave the country? I've been told to emigrate at least three times recently. Why do rightists and fascists like them not want to hear any dissent? Why did they drive Marlene Deitrich, Freud, Einstein and others out of Germany when the fascist right were in charge in that country? Why did they kill Jews because they imagined that Jews didn't think like other Germans during the first world war? Why did they burn the books of those who were dead with whom they didn't agree? Why can't the fascist right bear to be contradicted?
My guess is they can't stand to be challenged because they don't have any facts to back anything up with. That's my experience with them. When you begin to debate with them, they have nothing but prejudices and opinions they picked up when they were kids, and they don't read and study enough to learn anything which could change or modify those childhood prejudices. Like George Jr. who said that all poor people are lazy and who couldn't come up with any data to prove his point when he was in Harvard business school and his fellow students challenged him to prove his contention. So, if they can't back up their claims, of course, all they could wish is to silence through book burning and exile those ideas and people who disagree with them.
_________________________________________________________
"The only way to succeed is to make people hate you." —Josef von Stermberg (My sentiments exactly, von!"
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
BUSH AT HARVARD: "SPOILED AND UNDISCIPLINED"
From THE FAMILY, pp. 309-310.
[Open quote.]
During his first year [seeking an MBA at Harvard] George came to the attention of Yoshi Tsurumi when the macroeconomics professor announced his plan to show the film The Grapes of Wrath, based on John Steinbeck’s book about the Great Depression. “I wanted to give the class a visual reference for poverty and a sense of historical empathy,” Tsurumi explained. “George Bush came up to me and said, ‘Why are you going to show us that Commie movie?’
“I laughed because I thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t. After we viewed the film, I called on him to discuss the Depression and how he thought it affected people. He said, ‘Look. People are poor because they are lazy.’ A number of the students pounced on him and demanded that he support his statement with facts and statistics. He quickly backed down because he could not sustain his broadside.”
Professor Tsurumi continued: “His strong prejudices soon set him apart from the rest of the students. This has nothing to do with politics, because most business students are conservative, but they are not inhumane or unprincipled. Unlike most of the others in class, George Bush came across as totally lacking compassion, with no sense of history, completely devoid of social responsibility, and unconcerned with the welfare of others. Even among Republicans his kind was rare. He had no shame about his views, and that’s when the rest of the class started treating him like a clown—not someone funny, but someone whose views were not worthy of consideration . . . I did not judge him to be stupid, just spoiled and undisciplined. . . I gave him a ‘low pass.’ Of the one hundred students in that class, George Bush was in the bottom 10 percent. He was so abysmal that I once asked him how he ever got accepted in the first place. He said, ‘I had lots of help.’ I laughed, and then inquired about his military service. He said he had been in the Texas National Guard. I said he was very lucky not to have had to go to Vietnam. He said, ‘My dad fixed it so that I got into the Guard. I got an early discharge to come here.’”
[Close quote.]
No wonder Georgie's classmates had little respect for him. Most of them saw nothing in him worth consideration.
"'He was remarkably inarticulate,' said Steve Arbert. 'God, so inarticulate it was frightening. The reason I say that he is dumber than dumb is not that I saw his test scores or his grades; it's the comments he made in the classes we had together that scared me...." (THE FAMILY, p. 309)
Not only did Eastern elites see through Georgie Bush, but so did earthy Southern Republicans he worked with in Alabama. In 1972 when Junior worked on Winston Blount's campaign for the Senate against John Sparkman in Alabama, his coworkers "behind his back... called George 'the Texas soufflé' because... he was all puffed up and full of hot air.'" (THE FAMILY, p. 305)
-------------------------------------------------------
It's obvious why George Bush Junior came to hate the people he had to study under and with at Yale and then Harvard. They did look down on him and judged him harshly, but not because of the likable person he could be. They slowly came to distrust him because he held a lot of unsupported opinions which were not backed up by the facts as Professor Tsurumi's comments reflect.
So here was a chance for Bush to buckle down and study and come up with facts and scholarship to support his opinions. Instead, just like at Yale, and just as I've pointed out in a similar posting, Georgie folded, drank, partied, whined and complained. He showed the same weaknesses which he and his neocon friends like to make fun of in others. When George was at Harvard, he "spent many weekends with his aunt [Nan Bush Ellis] and her family outside of Boston, lambasting Harvard's 'smug guilt-ridden affected liberals.'" (FAMILY, p. 308)
Bush was unable to see that he was hiding his own guilty self-pity under his contemptuous anger. But more... I think my thesis that George was not fighting the Eastern establishment so much as he was fighting the Easternness in his dad and granddad is supported by the fact that during this time of his lost years at Harvard, he challenged his dad to fight him "mano a mano" after a night of drinking.
Let me admit once more, as a drunk myself, I can understand George Jr. completely. I've acted just like him when confronted with people better educated than myself, and I challenged my dad to a fight once too. The only difference between President Georgie Bush Jr. and me, Georgie Thomas Jr., is that I decided to grow up and confront my insecurities and deep-seated lack of self worth. Instead of continuing to fold up and blame others, I redoubled my efforts to learn from history and to dig into my psyche to find out what makes me tick. And I specially learned a lesson or two from fellow recovering drunks about making the mistake of thinking that god is telling me to do things which are harmful to others. They call that "self will run riot." If you ask me, "self will run riot" describes Bush's actions in the world to a gnat's ass. There's a pile of difference between people who decide to learn who they are and those who seek power in order not to have to deal with their own weaknesses like George Bush has done.
__________________________________________________
"Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power." —Aldous Huxley (Yep, you're born again too. Right, George?)
From THE FAMILY, pp. 309-310.
[Open quote.]
During his first year [seeking an MBA at Harvard] George came to the attention of Yoshi Tsurumi when the macroeconomics professor announced his plan to show the film The Grapes of Wrath, based on John Steinbeck’s book about the Great Depression. “I wanted to give the class a visual reference for poverty and a sense of historical empathy,” Tsurumi explained. “George Bush came up to me and said, ‘Why are you going to show us that Commie movie?’
“I laughed because I thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t. After we viewed the film, I called on him to discuss the Depression and how he thought it affected people. He said, ‘Look. People are poor because they are lazy.’ A number of the students pounced on him and demanded that he support his statement with facts and statistics. He quickly backed down because he could not sustain his broadside.”
Professor Tsurumi continued: “His strong prejudices soon set him apart from the rest of the students. This has nothing to do with politics, because most business students are conservative, but they are not inhumane or unprincipled. Unlike most of the others in class, George Bush came across as totally lacking compassion, with no sense of history, completely devoid of social responsibility, and unconcerned with the welfare of others. Even among Republicans his kind was rare. He had no shame about his views, and that’s when the rest of the class started treating him like a clown—not someone funny, but someone whose views were not worthy of consideration . . . I did not judge him to be stupid, just spoiled and undisciplined. . . I gave him a ‘low pass.’ Of the one hundred students in that class, George Bush was in the bottom 10 percent. He was so abysmal that I once asked him how he ever got accepted in the first place. He said, ‘I had lots of help.’ I laughed, and then inquired about his military service. He said he had been in the Texas National Guard. I said he was very lucky not to have had to go to Vietnam. He said, ‘My dad fixed it so that I got into the Guard. I got an early discharge to come here.’”
[Close quote.]
No wonder Georgie's classmates had little respect for him. Most of them saw nothing in him worth consideration.
"'He was remarkably inarticulate,' said Steve Arbert. 'God, so inarticulate it was frightening. The reason I say that he is dumber than dumb is not that I saw his test scores or his grades; it's the comments he made in the classes we had together that scared me...." (THE FAMILY, p. 309)
Not only did Eastern elites see through Georgie Bush, but so did earthy Southern Republicans he worked with in Alabama. In 1972 when Junior worked on Winston Blount's campaign for the Senate against John Sparkman in Alabama, his coworkers "behind his back... called George 'the Texas soufflé' because... he was all puffed up and full of hot air.'" (THE FAMILY, p. 305)
-------------------------------------------------------
It's obvious why George Bush Junior came to hate the people he had to study under and with at Yale and then Harvard. They did look down on him and judged him harshly, but not because of the likable person he could be. They slowly came to distrust him because he held a lot of unsupported opinions which were not backed up by the facts as Professor Tsurumi's comments reflect.
So here was a chance for Bush to buckle down and study and come up with facts and scholarship to support his opinions. Instead, just like at Yale, and just as I've pointed out in a similar posting, Georgie folded, drank, partied, whined and complained. He showed the same weaknesses which he and his neocon friends like to make fun of in others. When George was at Harvard, he "spent many weekends with his aunt [Nan Bush Ellis] and her family outside of Boston, lambasting Harvard's 'smug guilt-ridden affected liberals.'" (FAMILY, p. 308)
Bush was unable to see that he was hiding his own guilty self-pity under his contemptuous anger. But more... I think my thesis that George was not fighting the Eastern establishment so much as he was fighting the Easternness in his dad and granddad is supported by the fact that during this time of his lost years at Harvard, he challenged his dad to fight him "mano a mano" after a night of drinking.
Let me admit once more, as a drunk myself, I can understand George Jr. completely. I've acted just like him when confronted with people better educated than myself, and I challenged my dad to a fight once too. The only difference between President Georgie Bush Jr. and me, Georgie Thomas Jr., is that I decided to grow up and confront my insecurities and deep-seated lack of self worth. Instead of continuing to fold up and blame others, I redoubled my efforts to learn from history and to dig into my psyche to find out what makes me tick. And I specially learned a lesson or two from fellow recovering drunks about making the mistake of thinking that god is telling me to do things which are harmful to others. They call that "self will run riot." If you ask me, "self will run riot" describes Bush's actions in the world to a gnat's ass. There's a pile of difference between people who decide to learn who they are and those who seek power in order not to have to deal with their own weaknesses like George Bush has done.
__________________________________________________
"Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power." —Aldous Huxley (Yep, you're born again too. Right, George?)
Monday, January 31, 2005
PRAISE THE TRUTH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION
All I’m doing this particular posting is passing on a column by Michael Kinsley, with which I totally agree, about the possibility of raising Clarence “pubic hair on a Coke can” Thomas to Chief Justice. Thank you Michael for your remembering what so many of us want to forget.
[Open quote.]
Michael Kinsley
Los Angeles Times
January 25, 2005
Will President Bush actually have the guts to nominate Clarence Thomas for chief justice of the Supreme Court when that opportunity arises, probably soon? You know he's just aching to do it. Because of their shared judicial philosophy, of course. But also because of that arrogant willfulness Bush has that a more generous person than myself might even call integrity.
And will the Democrats have the guts to oppose Justice Thomas' elevation to chief, resisting all the Republican cries of, "Oh, for mercy's sake, you people – not that again"? Those cries are starting pre-emptively, in an effort to cow the opposition party out of opposing a Thomas nomination. I wish I could be as confident of the Democrats' guts as I am of the president's.
Ordinarily, and sensibly, it's considered to be an advantage when a presidential nominee has already gone through a Senate confirmation hearing. One reason Bush chose Michael Chertoff as secretary of Homeland Security after his first nominee imploded is that Chertoff already has gone before the Senate for confirmation three times. He's filled out the forms, he's been investigated, he's testified: Like a preapproved mortgage, he can slip right through.
But Clarence Thomas is different, because his famous 1991 confirmation was different. His strategy was to do or say anything that would allow him to crawl past the finish line. When the prize is a virtually invulnerable lifetime appointment, that's a good strategy. But it can, and should, come back to haunt you when you put in for a promotion.
Thomas' performances at the hearings, as well as the things we know now that we didn't know then, and even the things we knew then but were bullied or rushed into ignoring, are not just fair game — they are disqualifying. If he wasn't unworthy of the Supreme Court when his confirmation hearings began, he certainly was by the time they were over. The fact that he got confirmed as an associate justice anyway is no reason to give him a free pass to chief justice. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
And yes, some of Thomas' opponents may have been as demagogic and dishonest as he was, but that's not the point. When Anita Hill is nominated for chief justice, we can consider her qualifications.
To take the most obvious example of an issue that was opened, rather than closed, by Thomas' 1991 testimony: Thomas avoided revealing his opinion about Roe vs. Wade, the abortion decision, by insisting that he didn't have one.
It is beyond legitimate dispute that he tried to leave the impression that he'd never even thought or talked about Roe. This was implausible on its face – Roe is the most controversial Supreme Court ruling of the last century, and it came down while Thomas was in law school – but no one could prove Thomas a liar during the hearings. Since then, however, several people have popped up with memories of having discussed Roe with Thomas. His views were as you would suspect, and he has reasserted them with a vengeance from the moment he joined the court.
Thomas' supporters say he didn't commit perjury because he testified only that he had never "debated" Roe, not that he had never "discussed" it. They also like to point out that he said he had no view on Roe "this day," which doesn't make him a liar if he expressed a view some other day.
This is pathetic. But it's also irrelevant. The standard for becoming chief justice ought to be a bit higher than the standard for staying out of jail. Thomas indisputably did his best to deceive senators trying to perform their constitutional duty of advice and consent. If that isn't something the Senate should consider when passing judgment on his fitness for an even higher job, then "advice and consent" has no meaning. And we have endured too many sermons from Clarence Thomas, strict constructionist, to believe that the words of the Constitution have no meaning.
Since the hearing, various witnesses and pieces of evidence have come out lending credence to the stories about his personal life that he so indignantly denied at the time. Maybe most of this stuff should never have been raised. But that didn't give him the right to lie about it. Meanwhile, various remarks and rulings by Justice Thomas since 1991 have cast doubt on his professions of agnosticism on almost every important legal issue during his confirmation.
Because he chose an outright fib on abortion, Thomas relied somewhat less than most recent Supreme Court nominees on the silly pretense that discussing actual judicial issues at their confirmation hearings would amount to "prejudging" future cases. It's silly because sitting judges do nothing else but issue opinions on judicial issues, and no one thinks that this year's opinions are illegitimately "prejudging" next year's opinions. The nomination of a sitting justice for elevation to chief, if it happens, ought to snuff this pretense once and for all. After almost 14 years of strongly held and strongly worded opinions, it would be preposterous for Thomas to decline to discuss his judicial ideology, or to insist that he does not have one, on the nonexistent principle that a judge should never tip his hand.
It would be preposterous, but that is no guarantee that it won't happen. Saying the preposterous under oath has served Clarence Thomas well so far. If he is given the opportunity to be preposterous again, and the Senate Democrats let him get away with it – again – they will get the chief justice they deserve, and they'll deserve the justice that they get.
[Close quote.]
______________________________________________________________
"She cried and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook." —Tommy Manville (Oft married celebrity.)
All I’m doing this particular posting is passing on a column by Michael Kinsley, with which I totally agree, about the possibility of raising Clarence “pubic hair on a Coke can” Thomas to Chief Justice. Thank you Michael for your remembering what so many of us want to forget.
[Open quote.]
Michael Kinsley
Los Angeles Times
January 25, 2005
Will President Bush actually have the guts to nominate Clarence Thomas for chief justice of the Supreme Court when that opportunity arises, probably soon? You know he's just aching to do it. Because of their shared judicial philosophy, of course. But also because of that arrogant willfulness Bush has that a more generous person than myself might even call integrity.
And will the Democrats have the guts to oppose Justice Thomas' elevation to chief, resisting all the Republican cries of, "Oh, for mercy's sake, you people – not that again"? Those cries are starting pre-emptively, in an effort to cow the opposition party out of opposing a Thomas nomination. I wish I could be as confident of the Democrats' guts as I am of the president's.
Ordinarily, and sensibly, it's considered to be an advantage when a presidential nominee has already gone through a Senate confirmation hearing. One reason Bush chose Michael Chertoff as secretary of Homeland Security after his first nominee imploded is that Chertoff already has gone before the Senate for confirmation three times. He's filled out the forms, he's been investigated, he's testified: Like a preapproved mortgage, he can slip right through.
But Clarence Thomas is different, because his famous 1991 confirmation was different. His strategy was to do or say anything that would allow him to crawl past the finish line. When the prize is a virtually invulnerable lifetime appointment, that's a good strategy. But it can, and should, come back to haunt you when you put in for a promotion.
Thomas' performances at the hearings, as well as the things we know now that we didn't know then, and even the things we knew then but were bullied or rushed into ignoring, are not just fair game — they are disqualifying. If he wasn't unworthy of the Supreme Court when his confirmation hearings began, he certainly was by the time they were over. The fact that he got confirmed as an associate justice anyway is no reason to give him a free pass to chief justice. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
And yes, some of Thomas' opponents may have been as demagogic and dishonest as he was, but that's not the point. When Anita Hill is nominated for chief justice, we can consider her qualifications.
To take the most obvious example of an issue that was opened, rather than closed, by Thomas' 1991 testimony: Thomas avoided revealing his opinion about Roe vs. Wade, the abortion decision, by insisting that he didn't have one.
It is beyond legitimate dispute that he tried to leave the impression that he'd never even thought or talked about Roe. This was implausible on its face – Roe is the most controversial Supreme Court ruling of the last century, and it came down while Thomas was in law school – but no one could prove Thomas a liar during the hearings. Since then, however, several people have popped up with memories of having discussed Roe with Thomas. His views were as you would suspect, and he has reasserted them with a vengeance from the moment he joined the court.
Thomas' supporters say he didn't commit perjury because he testified only that he had never "debated" Roe, not that he had never "discussed" it. They also like to point out that he said he had no view on Roe "this day," which doesn't make him a liar if he expressed a view some other day.
This is pathetic. But it's also irrelevant. The standard for becoming chief justice ought to be a bit higher than the standard for staying out of jail. Thomas indisputably did his best to deceive senators trying to perform their constitutional duty of advice and consent. If that isn't something the Senate should consider when passing judgment on his fitness for an even higher job, then "advice and consent" has no meaning. And we have endured too many sermons from Clarence Thomas, strict constructionist, to believe that the words of the Constitution have no meaning.
Since the hearing, various witnesses and pieces of evidence have come out lending credence to the stories about his personal life that he so indignantly denied at the time. Maybe most of this stuff should never have been raised. But that didn't give him the right to lie about it. Meanwhile, various remarks and rulings by Justice Thomas since 1991 have cast doubt on his professions of agnosticism on almost every important legal issue during his confirmation.
Because he chose an outright fib on abortion, Thomas relied somewhat less than most recent Supreme Court nominees on the silly pretense that discussing actual judicial issues at their confirmation hearings would amount to "prejudging" future cases. It's silly because sitting judges do nothing else but issue opinions on judicial issues, and no one thinks that this year's opinions are illegitimately "prejudging" next year's opinions. The nomination of a sitting justice for elevation to chief, if it happens, ought to snuff this pretense once and for all. After almost 14 years of strongly held and strongly worded opinions, it would be preposterous for Thomas to decline to discuss his judicial ideology, or to insist that he does not have one, on the nonexistent principle that a judge should never tip his hand.
It would be preposterous, but that is no guarantee that it won't happen. Saying the preposterous under oath has served Clarence Thomas well so far. If he is given the opportunity to be preposterous again, and the Senate Democrats let him get away with it – again – they will get the chief justice they deserve, and they'll deserve the justice that they get.
[Close quote.]
______________________________________________________________
"She cried and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook." —Tommy Manville (Oft married celebrity.)
Saturday, January 29, 2005
BUSH HATES AND FEARS THE ELITISTS? HE HATES HIMSELF?
“Yale had not been an easy ride for young George, even as an Andover graduate, a fraternity man, and a member of Skull and Bones. Ordinarily, those credentials would have allowed him to rule the campus, but as George told one of his Yale advisers, he felt his childhood in Texas set him apart socially from the more polished easterners who had similar resumes. He felt he was looked down upon by “snobs” and “elitists.” He also felt alienated on the liberal campus, because of his father’s conservative politics. In fact, he came to despise what he called “arrogant liberal intellectuals.” (THE FAMILY, p. 267)
“He felt he was looked down upon by ‘snobs’ and ‘elitists’.” (THE FAMILY, p. 267)
And if you don’t think that George Bush is a puffed up, arrogant prick, think about what his comment on the destruction of the elite system at Yale reveals about his conflicted values:
“George did not realize it at the time, but his class was one sweep in front of the dustpan. The class of 1968 was the last legacy class in which the sons of alumni were almost automatically accepted, thereby rewarding those with the most advantages. After 1968, admissions to Yale were to be based on merit. No more preferences for private schools; no more Social Register requirements. No more quotas for Jews.
“The year after George’s graduation the freshman class had more students from public and parochial schools than private schools for the first time in Yale’s history. Women were admitted (‘That’s when Yale really started going down hill,’ said George W. without a trace of humor); the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps was banished from campus; the dress code of jackets and ties was abolished. Fraternities, which the class yearbook described as a “benign irrelevancy,” soon disappeared, and even the secret societies lost some of their allure as more and more students began turning down taps, even from Skull and Bones.” (THE FAMILY, p. 268)
Bush Jr., if he were judged by the same standards that he and the neocons use to judge others, would come out very poorly, for don’t they tell people to quit whining and to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and to get a life? So what did Georgie do with all the benefits and opportunities in the world? Did he use them wisely or did he self-pity and booze himself into academic failure? He threw his opportunity away on booze and self-pity and to this day won’t take responsibility for himself. Instead, he blames and hates those who did not waste their privileged opportunities.
Some of us a tiny bit familiar with psychology will recognize that Georgie was not actually rebelling against Yale; he was rebelling against his absentee father and his grandfather and all their Connecticut and Kennebunkport hoity-toity upbringing which his Texas training taught him to hate. You would think with his newfound power over the people that his self-worth would have increased to the point that he would not be so afraid of who he is, really and truly down deep inside, but I think his going over to fundamentalism short-changed him by allowing him to imagine he is doing god’s will rather than his own. If Georgie took responsibility for what he’s doing rather than imagining that god is speaking through him, he might be more responsible and have to eventually come to terms with his inner demons. Bush, like so many of his conservative fellows, has identified with the abuser rather than opposing abuse, so he spreads and amplifies America’s abusive under-culture rather than helping to end it.
________________________________________________________
“The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.” —G.K. Chesterton [This is humor? The Bushes are funny?]
“Yale had not been an easy ride for young George, even as an Andover graduate, a fraternity man, and a member of Skull and Bones. Ordinarily, those credentials would have allowed him to rule the campus, but as George told one of his Yale advisers, he felt his childhood in Texas set him apart socially from the more polished easterners who had similar resumes. He felt he was looked down upon by “snobs” and “elitists.” He also felt alienated on the liberal campus, because of his father’s conservative politics. In fact, he came to despise what he called “arrogant liberal intellectuals.” (THE FAMILY, p. 267)
“He felt he was looked down upon by ‘snobs’ and ‘elitists’.” (THE FAMILY, p. 267)
And if you don’t think that George Bush is a puffed up, arrogant prick, think about what his comment on the destruction of the elite system at Yale reveals about his conflicted values:
“George did not realize it at the time, but his class was one sweep in front of the dustpan. The class of 1968 was the last legacy class in which the sons of alumni were almost automatically accepted, thereby rewarding those with the most advantages. After 1968, admissions to Yale were to be based on merit. No more preferences for private schools; no more Social Register requirements. No more quotas for Jews.
“The year after George’s graduation the freshman class had more students from public and parochial schools than private schools for the first time in Yale’s history. Women were admitted (‘That’s when Yale really started going down hill,’ said George W. without a trace of humor); the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps was banished from campus; the dress code of jackets and ties was abolished. Fraternities, which the class yearbook described as a “benign irrelevancy,” soon disappeared, and even the secret societies lost some of their allure as more and more students began turning down taps, even from Skull and Bones.” (THE FAMILY, p. 268)
Bush Jr., if he were judged by the same standards that he and the neocons use to judge others, would come out very poorly, for don’t they tell people to quit whining and to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and to get a life? So what did Georgie do with all the benefits and opportunities in the world? Did he use them wisely or did he self-pity and booze himself into academic failure? He threw his opportunity away on booze and self-pity and to this day won’t take responsibility for himself. Instead, he blames and hates those who did not waste their privileged opportunities.
Some of us a tiny bit familiar with psychology will recognize that Georgie was not actually rebelling against Yale; he was rebelling against his absentee father and his grandfather and all their Connecticut and Kennebunkport hoity-toity upbringing which his Texas training taught him to hate. You would think with his newfound power over the people that his self-worth would have increased to the point that he would not be so afraid of who he is, really and truly down deep inside, but I think his going over to fundamentalism short-changed him by allowing him to imagine he is doing god’s will rather than his own. If Georgie took responsibility for what he’s doing rather than imagining that god is speaking through him, he might be more responsible and have to eventually come to terms with his inner demons. Bush, like so many of his conservative fellows, has identified with the abuser rather than opposing abuse, so he spreads and amplifies America’s abusive under-culture rather than helping to end it.
________________________________________________________
“The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.” —G.K. Chesterton [This is humor? The Bushes are funny?]
Friday, January 28, 2005
BUSHSHIT ON THE BRAIN (To tune of "No Business Like Show Business")
There’s no Bushshit like George Bushshit,
There’s no Bushshit I know...
Everything about it is repelling,
Everything about it is quite vain,
Everything about it is revealing
Of the low ceiling inside his brain!
BAR BUSH RAISED THE BAR AND LOWERED THE BOOM
We read in THE FAMILY (p. 262) how Barbara Bush balked at allowing a certain religion into her family. She opposed George’s first fiancé, Cathy Wolfman.
According to Cody Shearer a one-time family friend, “She [Bar] couldn’t abide the fact that Cathryn’s stepfather was Jewish... ’There’ll be no Jews in our family,’ she said.”
Does that surprise us? Of course not; the racist, prejudiced South has now completely waffled over to the Republican Party, bringing with it all the yellow dog Democrats with their history of prejudice toward races and religions other than WASPS [White Anglo-Saxon Protestants]. Sadly the South now rules America again. People who don’t know history, of course, are ignorant of those prejudices, and they’ve added in their own prejudices and hatreds for homosexuals. The Republican Party is now the party of Mr. Allprejudice. The Dems, of course, do have prejudices. They’re prejudiced against the Southern Baptist religion from which all other prejudices flow. They’re prejudiced against prejudice—which I don’t think is so bad. Prejudiced Southerners have a way of taking over whatever party they need in order to further their prejudices in the cultural life of this nation.
SOME SKULL AND BONES REJECT THE BIG BUSHSHITTER
Some of George’s classmates saw through the hard-drinking, Texas-size bullshitter and noted that though he would use his family name to get into Yale, he would refuse to study hard and perform like a Yalie. Bush was two-faced even then. Read below:
From THE FAMILY (pp. 265):
[Open quote.] Each of these men [Skull and Bones men] had distinguished himself in some activity at Yale—intellectual, athletic, or social. George’s distinction was, unquestionably, social. Years later many who lived with him in Davenport College were forced to reexamine their cherished belief that hard work triumphs over all. Some sounded cynical as they reappraised the rewards of meritocracy over aristocracy, and a bit of resentment seeped into their recollections of the young man who had skipped studying in favor of socializing and yet ended up with the most powerful job in the world.
“It’s not that anyone is jealous,” said Ken White, “because we’re all at the peak of our careers and doing quite well. It’s just that George . . . from what we knew of him then.., doesn’t seem to be the.., a... well... the best-equipped person to be President of the United States.”
“He never seemed to care about studying,” recalled Thomas Wik (Yale 1968).
“I do not consider him a well-educated man at all,” said Richard Hunter (Yale 1969).
“He put me off because he just didn’t seem like he was working very hard in school,” said John Gorman (Yale 1968). “He would appear in the morning like he’d partied all night. . . He viewed himself as a Texan and did not want to be considered part of the eastern establishment at Yale so he went out of his way to act.., crude... It’s quite amazing that someone you held in low esteem later becomes President.”
The stories of George’s alcoholic escapades at Yale traveled the Andover network. At Harvard, Torbert Macdonald listened sadly to the tales of his old friend, whose politics were as out of sync with the times as his fraternity carousing. “Poor Georgie,” said Macdonald. “He couldn’t even relate to women unless he was loaded . . . There were just too many stories of him turning up dead drunk on dates.” [Close quote.]
THE SAD CENTER OF GEORGE BUSH’S FINGER: A BALANCED APPRAISAL
From THE FAMILY (pp. 266-267):
“’Hell, it’s not George’s substance abuse that bothers me as much as his lack of substance,’ said Tom Wilmer (Yale 1965 and Delta Kai Epsilon). That he coasted on his family name is understandable. Lots of guys do that. But, Georgie, as we called him then, has absolutely no intellectual curiosity about anything. He wasn’t interested in ideas, books or causes. He didn’t travel; he didn’t read newspapers; he didn’t watch news; he didn’t even go to the movies.... How anyone got out of Yale without developing some interest in the world besides booze and sports stuns me. This guy has no concept of complex issues.... He’s a simple-minded zealot and—God help us—he’s now the guy with his finger on the button.’”
________________________________________________
“Ignorance once dispelled is difficult to reestablish.” —Laurence J. Peter [This is why George’s failure to study in college is a current tragedy for American influence in the world.]
There’s no Bushshit like George Bushshit,
There’s no Bushshit I know...
Everything about it is repelling,
Everything about it is quite vain,
Everything about it is revealing
Of the low ceiling inside his brain!
BAR BUSH RAISED THE BAR AND LOWERED THE BOOM
We read in THE FAMILY (p. 262) how Barbara Bush balked at allowing a certain religion into her family. She opposed George’s first fiancé, Cathy Wolfman.
According to Cody Shearer a one-time family friend, “She [Bar] couldn’t abide the fact that Cathryn’s stepfather was Jewish... ’There’ll be no Jews in our family,’ she said.”
Does that surprise us? Of course not; the racist, prejudiced South has now completely waffled over to the Republican Party, bringing with it all the yellow dog Democrats with their history of prejudice toward races and religions other than WASPS [White Anglo-Saxon Protestants]. Sadly the South now rules America again. People who don’t know history, of course, are ignorant of those prejudices, and they’ve added in their own prejudices and hatreds for homosexuals. The Republican Party is now the party of Mr. Allprejudice. The Dems, of course, do have prejudices. They’re prejudiced against the Southern Baptist religion from which all other prejudices flow. They’re prejudiced against prejudice—which I don’t think is so bad. Prejudiced Southerners have a way of taking over whatever party they need in order to further their prejudices in the cultural life of this nation.
SOME SKULL AND BONES REJECT THE BIG BUSHSHITTER
Some of George’s classmates saw through the hard-drinking, Texas-size bullshitter and noted that though he would use his family name to get into Yale, he would refuse to study hard and perform like a Yalie. Bush was two-faced even then. Read below:
From THE FAMILY (pp. 265):
[Open quote.] Each of these men [Skull and Bones men] had distinguished himself in some activity at Yale—intellectual, athletic, or social. George’s distinction was, unquestionably, social. Years later many who lived with him in Davenport College were forced to reexamine their cherished belief that hard work triumphs over all. Some sounded cynical as they reappraised the rewards of meritocracy over aristocracy, and a bit of resentment seeped into their recollections of the young man who had skipped studying in favor of socializing and yet ended up with the most powerful job in the world.
“It’s not that anyone is jealous,” said Ken White, “because we’re all at the peak of our careers and doing quite well. It’s just that George . . . from what we knew of him then.., doesn’t seem to be the.., a... well... the best-equipped person to be President of the United States.”
“He never seemed to care about studying,” recalled Thomas Wik (Yale 1968).
“I do not consider him a well-educated man at all,” said Richard Hunter (Yale 1969).
“He put me off because he just didn’t seem like he was working very hard in school,” said John Gorman (Yale 1968). “He would appear in the morning like he’d partied all night. . . He viewed himself as a Texan and did not want to be considered part of the eastern establishment at Yale so he went out of his way to act.., crude... It’s quite amazing that someone you held in low esteem later becomes President.”
The stories of George’s alcoholic escapades at Yale traveled the Andover network. At Harvard, Torbert Macdonald listened sadly to the tales of his old friend, whose politics were as out of sync with the times as his fraternity carousing. “Poor Georgie,” said Macdonald. “He couldn’t even relate to women unless he was loaded . . . There were just too many stories of him turning up dead drunk on dates.” [Close quote.]
THE SAD CENTER OF GEORGE BUSH’S FINGER: A BALANCED APPRAISAL
From THE FAMILY (pp. 266-267):
“’Hell, it’s not George’s substance abuse that bothers me as much as his lack of substance,’ said Tom Wilmer (Yale 1965 and Delta Kai Epsilon). That he coasted on his family name is understandable. Lots of guys do that. But, Georgie, as we called him then, has absolutely no intellectual curiosity about anything. He wasn’t interested in ideas, books or causes. He didn’t travel; he didn’t read newspapers; he didn’t watch news; he didn’t even go to the movies.... How anyone got out of Yale without developing some interest in the world besides booze and sports stuns me. This guy has no concept of complex issues.... He’s a simple-minded zealot and—God help us—he’s now the guy with his finger on the button.’”
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“Ignorance once dispelled is difficult to reestablish.” —Laurence J. Peter [This is why George’s failure to study in college is a current tragedy for American influence in the world.]
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