Guest guest Posted August 22, 2004 Report Share Posted August 22, 2004 http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/080404Mazza/080404mazza.html The final days of Bush? By Jerry Mazza Online Journal Contributing Writer " Whom The Gods Would Destroy, They First Make Mad With Power " —Charles A. Beard August 4, 2004—Could it be? Is it possible? Is that picture of an angry Bush stalking away from a reporter's questions predictive of a widening crack in the monolith? Whatever it is, it's the buzz on the Beltway: the pieces are about to fall. And all the king's men and all the king's spinners are trying to put them together again. This reported from capitolhillblue.com by Editor Theresa Hampton in her 7/28/04 article, " Bush Using Drugs to Control Depression, Erratic Behavior. " Yes. Prescription drugs are being doled out by Col., Richard J. Tubb, the White House Physician, to the president [sic] of the United States, George W. Bush. They " impair the president's [sic] mental faculties and decrease both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis, " aides commented privately. Though many of us had that feeling long before the aides spoke. And they added, " It's a double-edged sword. We can't have him flying off the handle at the slightest provocation but we also need a president [sic] who is alert mentally. " Uh huh, uh huh, a lot of us have been saying that too for a long time. Especially when he charged into Iraq without our major allies, UN or world approval, or any real evidence Saddam had WMD. Or bio, chemical, or " nucular " material, like yellow-cake uranium from Niger, which he said they had but didn't. He fibbed big-time (I mean, CIA intelligence did). Whichever, many, many people have died as a result, and the world is very angry. Obviously, Bush is very angry with the world. Dr. Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after the Bushman stormed off stage July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron former chief, Kenneth J. Lay. You remember him, the guy with the handcuffs on, saying he was innocent of all wrongdoing. Yeah. Backstage, Bush screamed the M.F.-word (plural) to describe the reporters, and to keep them away from him, as he tore an aide a new A-word (singular). He added, " If you can't, I'll find someone who can. " Jesus, could conscience be catching up with this guy? Is he getting sensitive on us? Does he have bad dreams of all those poor souls going down in the Towers? Especially since he as CIC (commander in chief) couldn't, wouldn't, didn't scramble a plane into the air for an hour and 15 minutes, as planeswent crashing into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in rural Pennsylvania. And he grinned through his photo-op with some endangered kids with whom he was reading " a goat story. " Is it all coming back to haunt him? I mean that's pretty crazy stuff. That kind of stuff can bring the old mood swings on and those nasty obscene outbursts. It's enough to drive a man to drink again, especially if he quit cold turkey and not in a supervised 12-step program, as psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank pointed out in his book, Bush On the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. What's more the prominent George Washington University psychiatrist diagnosed the Bush as a " paranoid megalomaniac. " Webster defines the first descriptor as " characterized by suspiciousness and persecution. " The second word as " marked by infantile feelings of omnipotence and grandeur. " That's a tricky combo. You know, like a Nixon or a Hitler (whose Third Reich Grandpa Prescott Bush coincidentally bankrolled, until FDR busted him under the Trading With the Enemy Act in 1942). In addition to Bush's " untreated alcoholism, " Dr. Frank noted his " lifelong stream of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks, like blowing up frogs [not the French] with firecrackers, insulting journalists, gloating over state executions, pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad. " Dr. Frank is not alone in his diagnosis. Other prominent doctors, like Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University Medical School praise the assessments of Dr. Frank. The doctors also question the intelligence of administering powerful anti-depressant drugs to an old stoner (excuse me, a person with a history of chemical dependency). Bush is an admitted alcoholic (praise for his honesty about something, certainly not for his non-military career). What's more, tales of his cocaine-use as a younger man, sniff-sniff, line up from his runs for Texas governor to his first presidential campaign. Not surprisingly, the staff at the house on Pennsylvania Avenue didn't return calls seeking their take on the Theresa Hampton article. In fact, who's to say the staff didn't leak the facts? It seems amazing such a tight-lipped administration would even mention it. Could they be getting ready to dump George? Throw a net around him? Send him off in a chopper waving his fingers in Vs, fly him to a bunker in Minnesota? Could Dick Cheney be ready to step in as the neocon presidential candidate and somebody kinder and gentler (ahem) like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as neocon veep? Folks with whom the far right or—change that market target—the moderate right could feel right about, let's say a Senator McCain? Never hurts to have a real war hero. What's more, even though the exact drugs or dosages to control depression and behavior are not known, we do know these pack enough wallop to keep Bush under control, perhaps wipe the smirk off his face. Yow! But given Republican propriety uber alles, details of Mr. Bush's health, drugs or treatment are not public record. Though they sound pretty public to me. And are guarded, zealously, by the will-o-the-wisps surrounding His Loonyness. It is The Madness of King George redux, updated for 2004. Though he's still out there folks, only yesterday endorsing a new post to oversee intelligence, a person that he (Bush) could hire or fire, according to the Monday's New York Times. Isn't that a comfort? Yet veteran White House watchers are comparing this situation to Reagan's second term: when aides managed to sit on the fact that the Gip's memory lapses were sadly signaling the onset of the big A (Alzheimer's). This is especially not funny for this author, whose father, somewhat misguided, loved the Gip, and even kept a portrait-sized photo near his bed in the nursing home room, after he contracted Alzheimer's himself, and lapsed into a heart-rending never-never land. Which only illustrates how we, from right to center to left, are all so vulnerable. And how this all too human flesh is connected, even by stem-cell research, like it or not, and can even be compassionate to a conservative who's yet to earn compassion, having left millions of kids behind, waiting for $26 billion in funding for their program. And so on. Read all about it. George Bush now walking alone in the rose garden. Behind him the pillaged environment, the monopoly of excessive tax cuts to the rich, the Saudi gifts to Arbusto and all the Bushes, insider trading at Harken, the Texas Rangers scam, Tom Hicks paying $10 million for Bush's $600,000 worth of shares, the Carlyle Group side-income. And so on. His reneging on more international treaties than any American president. His degrading Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union. His most executions by any governor in American history. And so on. With the help of brother Jeb, governor of Florida, and daddy's appointments to the Supreme Court, becoming president [sic] after losing the popular election by over 500,000 votes. Shattering the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history. Setting a record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period. In his first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues every month. Members of his cabinet the richest of any administration in U.S. history. Setting the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by any U.S. president [sic]. All-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations. The doling out of 100 million-plus dollars from the White House to Born Again Christians, and another billion from a Capital fund, but excluding other religious groups. Buying votes. Corrupting all our values. And so on, a list that goes down your arm and into the dirt easily . . . The fewest numbers of press conferences of any president [sic] since the advent of television. The all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year period, including taking off the entire month of August prior to the 9-11 attacks. The all-time record for most people worldwide to protest at once in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for protests against any person in the history of mankind. Cutting health care benefits for war veterans and supporting a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families in wartime. And so on, and so on . . . It's no wonder Bush, according to Teresa Hampton & William D. McTavish's July 29 follow-up article on capitolhillblue.com: " White House aides say Bush has retreated into a tightly-controlled environment where only top political advisors like Karl Rove and Karen Hughes are allowed. Even White House chief of staff Andrew Card complains he has less and less access to the president [sic]. " Even Andy Card has to tip toe around Bush. Yet only Attorney General John Ashcroft, a fellow fundamentalist, father of the USA PATRIOT Act, remains in the tight circle, in which he and Bush have earned the title, " The Blue Brothers, " both believing they're on a mission from God. Oh boy. Can you hear that Twilight Zone music in the background? And Tom Ridge complaining he gets too little face time with the boss (thank God for little things, Tom). W thinks he is God, not just president [sic]. Ridge staffers quip that Ashcroft is Bush's Himmler, as in Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Nazi SS. And lest we think Cheney is the Man behind the Man, Ridge staffers whisper its " Ashcroft . . . reason for all to be very, very afraid. " Even Rummy, who predicted two of the plane-hits during 9/11 (how did he know that?), even old gnarled Rummy " is outta there, no matter what happens in November. " It's all unraveling in the Final Days into a " siege mentality: " calls, emails monitored, everyone under suspicion for " disloyalty to the crown, " Kafka the doorman; one staffer questioned for dating a Democrat, imagine that, in these days of Mary Matalin and James Carville as man and wife. And the paranoia merely reflects the big guy's, or as Emerson would say, " institutions are but the shadows of the men who lead them. " So hunker in the bunker, Laura. You never know who's coming to dinner. Could it be the tall guy from New England with funny hair, his sidekick with the big southern smile, their wives and kids? And could a White House presidential portrait be whispering in the night to Bush, as they all did to Nixon . . . " We find these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. . . . But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. . . . " Now there's some sanity. A breath of fresh air that could clear the atmosphere, that could sober the brain functions, that could bring some checks and balances back to an unbalanced White House. Though it still remains the duty of every American mumbling his or her dissatisfaction, to vote it so, to monitor the vote, to fulfill the prescriptions of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution or suffer the unimaginably crazy consequences. And that's no joke. Jerry Mazza is a free-lance writer and life-long resident of New York City. Reach him at gvmaz. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.