Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

Soon, Shakers, we will never have to look at that face again.
I'm so over Bush, it's not even funny.

From Day One, Bush was my worst bloody nightmare: A right-wing ideologue with no checks or balances, left to pursue every conservative wet dream with abandon. He was the Golden Boy of modern American conservatives—a corporate shill with the affected demeanor of a country bumpkin, around whom the unholy alliance between Big Money and Big Religion could be forged, standing at the altar and giving his blessing to the crackpot marriage between the business interests who sought to get rich off the stupid sniveling sods who marched in hypocritical lockstep with the warmongers and the corporate mercenaries, as long as they were promised protection from radical feminists and kissing boys.

The hideous underbelly of unfettered authoritarian conservatism—exposed by this perfect storm of cobbled-together allies, a GOP-led Congress, and a never-ending stream of media mouthpieces willing to demonize anyone who dared to dissent—has been absolutely revolting, a grotesque mosaic of avarice, antipathy, incompetence, and corruption.

And all along I've been accused of blindly hating Bush, as if there were not reasons, as if I did not watch him take this nation to war on false premises; watch him abandon the "right" war; watch him create millions of refugees; watch him play class warfare with his gilded tax cuts; watch him let an American city drown; watch his administration out one of our own spies; watch him sell We the People piece by piece in massive government-underwritten giveaways to Big Pharma and Big Oil; watch more than 1,000 signing statements undermine the law; watch habeas corpus be cast aside like day-old bread; watch the Geneva Conventions and our Constitution be treated like suggestions…

You're goddamned right I hate George Bush.

You're right if you think I found him an insignificant slip of a man who was unprepared for and undeserving of the presidency, whose history as a drunken dullard, constructed aw-shucks shtick, and careful positioning as the ordained man who would marry religious extremists with neocon corporatists made me want to puke from the moment I laid eyes upon his sneering visage.

You're right if you think that his leadership shames me, that every heh heh which has emanated from his condescending mouth has made my skin crawl, that I am utterly unable to find the merest shadow of anything to like about him.

And you're right if you think I hate him to the point of abject indifference, fervently longing for the day he takes his leave from governance and retreats to Crawford for good, where I won't give the tiniest, microscopic shit about him whether he is lost in a tragic brush-clearing accident and his body devoured by wild dogs before the search party arrives, or whether he lives out the remainder of his useless life in good health and happiness—either way, I don't care, as long as I never have to think about him for the rest of my days.

Yes, I hate him. But not blindly. I have reasons—more than I can bloody well count.

And I can't wait for the day when he will be gone for good, never to give me another thing to add to my list of his crimes and failures.

I can't wait to see him go.

Going, going…

Don't let the door hitcha where Maude splitcha, Dubs.

[Originally published in similar form February 14, 2008.]