(Later note: I wrote this in 2006. How naive it was.)
I was thinking today that we often say, this administration is so horrible, hypocritical, incompetent etc. that we wish for the days of Nixon. I asked my father about the days of Nixon and Reagan and got the answers you would expect (both had their good and bad points, Nixon a bit ahead on the bad, but all presidents do bad things – Nixon just got caught). So I wondered if my son will ever ask me about the regime of George W. Bush. That, in turn, made me wonder if I would be able to say it was by far the worst presidency EVER. Could it get any worse between now and when my son is old enough (or foolish enough) to ask that question? How bad would it have to be to be WORSE? What could make someone in, say, 2045, wish for the simpler days of the Bush II Administration? The only thing I could think of was, well, yes, Hitler. If we were being led and bled by a leader who was similar to the loud, ugly, demented little maggot who held his jackboot on the neck of my beloved Germany in the worst years of the 20th century, then, and only then, could I see somebody saying something like that. For example:
“President-for-life Snerd is so evil and demented that it makes me wish for the days of George W. Bush, back at the turn of the century. Back then, when the government lied, it was obvious. When they stole from the poor to give to the rich, not only did they do it out in the open, they did it repeatedly, and ran on it. They were so incompetent, they made us laugh. They had this dolt, McLennan, or McClellan, for their press secretary one time, man, that guy was soooo bad. And there was the Vice President Cheney who liked to curse reporters and shoot people. And the Secretary of Defense, who caused thousands of soldiers to die needlessly. And that mess with that hurricane…and how we’re still trying to recover from the environmental damage. And…OK, it sucked then too. But at least we didn’t have public beheadings and frontal lobe privacy-eradicator implants like we have today. Oh, shit son, now I’ve done it. Here come people from the Office of Suppressing Opprobrium of our Exalted Officials to take me away.”
Oh no! I made a Hitler reference! In the same paragraph in which I mentioned the president! I will surely get some flak for that. I would, that is, if anybody read this…
And yes, my America is beloved too. She’s just having adolescent identity crises right now and I’m trying to control my temper with her.