Thursday, January 15, 2009

Crown Prince of Neverland

I have a confession. I'm not a blogger. In fact, I wasn't even sure I knew how to write a blog until I heard the 43rd president of the United States give his swan song on primetime television tonight.

Oh, and yes, I have another confession. I wasn't able to watch all of it, but suffice it to say that from what I did watch, whoa, baby, we're into some pretty heavy denial here. How can a commander-in-chief claim that we have a burgeoning democracy in Afghanistan when the Pentagon is planning to increase the number of troops there by 30,000 as soon as his successor takes office?

Also, does he really expect people to think that "economic collapse" happened accidentally while he was in office, and that it would have happened regardless of who was in the White House? Oy!

The man who insists his raison d'etre, since 9/11, has been to keep this country safe neglects to mention that, more than seven years later, he still hasn't finished processing it.

The president who has attempted among the most memorable jihads against the environment and wildlife in Utah, and throughout the nation, who has worked sedulously to take us back to the days when Creationism trumped Darwinism, who has infused ideology into HIV/AIDS programs by supporting abstinence-only sex education both here and abroad, and who vetoed legislation enabling stem cell research; the same executive branch that ordered the redaction of military reports, demanded the destruction of 5 million White House e-mails, and forced science into public compliance with party line on global warming wants us to believe it was an accident that we are in the shape we're in today? The leader that has given the biggest tax relief to Fortune 500 companies, and the upper one percentile of the population, wants us to think that he made the hard choices. Whether he did or not, we, and the entire planet, will have to live with them for a long, long time.

Like I said, I consider myself a virgin until now, and am happy to report President Bush got something right today. We're witnessing a burgeoning democracy, alright, only it's not in Afghanistan, it's in the U.S.A. We're leaving never neverland behind and, who knows, with a bit of luck we may grow up yet.