THE CRAWFORD BUNKER

[Guest guest]

The Crawford Bunker

by Alan Bisbort

 

August 15, 2005 -- HARTFORD (apj.us) -- Did he really say that?

 

Did he really do that?

 

These are questions that many Americans have been asking daily since

Bush was appointed president in Jan. 2001 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

At

first, it was the malapropisms, the dyslexic, nearly incoherent

mangling

of our shared language. Then it was the policy, the day-in, day-out

ruination of all that we hold dear, all the tenets of an open

democracy

under which this nation has, for the most part, operated for two

centuries.

 

Like abuse victims, Americans became inured to the viciousness and

bullying, as did the Democratic Party, backing away, apologizing,

blaming themselves for the pain and suffering, even asking for more

when

the pain from the previous whipping had subsided. Thus, it takes a

really special whipping, a really appalling act of brazenness and

viciousness, to break through this cycle and wake up the body politic.

 

By reducing the equation to a one-on-one, person-to-person level,

Cindy

Sheehan, who lost her son Casey in the illegal war in Iraq last year,

may have helped provide that special whipping we need.

 

There she sits, in the Texas heat outside Bush's little cowboy ranch,

day after day, as the fat cat Republicans in their air-conditioned

pimpmobiles, Hummers and limos drive back and forth along the route

to

Bush's sagebrush bunker, which is always open to them but never to

the

nearly 2,000 grieving mothers of the soldiers who've died in Iraq.

They

slow down to get a peak, and undoubtedly crack jokes at Sheehan's

expense, laughing among themselves inside their soundproof,

bulletproof,

mirrored metal bubbles, and then speed on to their fund-raising or

oil-policy appointment with Bubble Boy.

 

It was callous enough that Bush sped past Sheehan on the way to a

fund-raising event the other night, leaving her to ask the obvious,

if

rhetorical, question, " Why do you make time for donors and not for

me? "

 

It was inexcusable, then, when Bush told reporters the next day that

he

would not meet with Cindy Sheehan because " It's important for me to

go

on with my life. " This little man, who is incapable of even faking

humility, compassion, or self-doubt, who has pathologically dodged

responsibility for his actions all of his life, then said, " I think

the

people want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp

decisions and to stay healthy, and part of my being [healthy?] is to

be

outside exercising. "

 

This adolescent sentiment -- which amounted to telling the grieving

mother to " Git over it, bitch, and git yore ass back to Californy " --

was said just prior to his going on another manic, Pee Wee Herman-

like

bike ride on his ranch rather than take five minutes to go down the

road

to speak with Sheehan. On the same day, he had scheduled other more

important things, as well, such as viewing a Little League Baseball

playoff game, having lunch with Condi Rice, a nap, " some fishing and

some reading. "

 

I think it is now safe to say that no American president has ever

been

as small a human being as George W. Bush. Historians can, and will,

chew

over his nearly seamless series of failures and poor decisions and

right-wing pandering for many years. But psychologists and humanists

will simply nod their heads in dismay and wonder how this great

nation

could have been, for eight years, under the thumb of such a lost

soul,

such a lout. What must life be like under his skin? What happened to

this man's conscience, his heart, his mind? It must be horrible to be

so

distant from real emotion and feelings, to be so cluelessly mean-

spirited.

 

What, then, must life be like on that protected, high-security

Crawford

ranch? What do his aides and daily associates really feel about this

most insulated of human beings? Surely, they have to go back at the

end

of every day to live in the real world Surely they have neighbors and

interests and pursuits that aren't as limited as those of their boss.

Surely they have moments of, uh, doubt or humility or even humanity.

 

Because we are never told the truth about anything involving George

W.

Bush, we can only use our imaginations and our gut feelings. Thus, it

was that I was visited by what Edmund Wilson has called " the shock of

recognition " last night while watching " Downfall, " the brilliant,

painfully true-to-life depiction of the last days of Adolf Hitler in

his

Berlin bunker. Watching this, then reading about the same events in

Gitta Sereny's brilliant book Albert Speer: His Battle with the

Truth, I

was struck by how familiar it sounded. While the Americans and the

Russians converged on the devastated German capital, Hitler continued

to

give orders to his generals, impossible orders to follow given the

lack

of equipment and manpower in the army's decimated ranks.

 

Hitler's associates, meanwhile, were holed up in the Chancellory --

beneath which, 50-feet down, sat Der Fuhrer's Bunker -- drinking

champagne, gorging themselves on food, listening to music and

dancing.

This loyal coterie was so psychotically attached to this little man

below them in his Bunker, that they were, literally, fiddling while

Berlin burned. It was Jonestown without the Kool-Aid.

 

When Hitler made the decision to commit suicide, he called for his

secretary Traudl Junge and asked her to take down his " Political

Testament. " This man, who had destroyed Europe and nearly the world

in

his megalomaniacal drive to exterminate his perceived enemies, did

not

evince even a scintilla of regret, remorse or humility. Instead, his

" Political Testament " consisted of ten pages of ranting. Junge, in

her

postwar recollections, said, " You know, here we were, all of us

doomed,

I thought -- the whole country doomed -- and here, in what he was

dictating to me there was not one word of compassion or regret, only

awful, awful anger. I remember thinking, `My God, he hasn't learned

anything. It's all just the same.' "

 

To the very end, Hitler embraced his narcissistic pathology, one that

pinned blame on others. He did not even offer one word of sorrow or

apology to the people of Germany. He did not even offer fond

farewells

to those who surrounded him in the bunker and who would, following

his

death, either commit suicide or be captured by Russians and spend

years

in Soviet gulags. Hitler even killed his favorite dog and her

puppies.

IT WAS ALL ABOUT HIM.

 

Jesus Christ, that sounds familiar. Way too familiar.