The Shoes of our Wrath

The Wall Street bailout is a boondoggle based on exaggeration and lies, and taxpayer money is flowing to all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons; Congress can and should stop the farce but too many in that compromised body are in the pocket of the financial industry; Bush and Cheney are busy re-writing history, claiming at every opportunity that we won the war in Iraq and liberated Afghanistan and made the world safe for Democracy, Freedom and the American Way; meanwhile, the lapdog American media jots down what the liars in Washington say without question or challenge, journalists having morphed into stenographers and mindless repeaters of falsehoods. It’s a shame that no American journalist has the cajones to heave his or her shoes at George W. Bush.

Two days ago I saw this headline in the New York Times and damn near fell over: “Bush Prepares Crisis Briefings to Aid Obama.”

Come again? Bush…Prepares…Crisis…Briefings…to…Aid…Obama.

Sweet Jesus! The same Bush who turned his two-term presidency into a running crisis, fucking up everything he touched, from the misbegotten worldwide War on Muslims to Hurricane Katrina relief to Iraq reconstruction, to the economy and health care, education, the environment, executive authority (which W abused and perverted), privacy, and the rule of law.

That Bush is going to brief Obama? Hey Mr. President-Elect, just tell W “Thanks but no thanks,” and if a crisis turns up in the early days of your presidency, do the exact opposite of what Bush and Uncle Dick would do and everything should turn out fine.

In a normal, rational country, in a normal, rational age, Americans would be screaming for Bush and Cheney’s heads, for an accounting of their high crimes and misdemeanors, and for simple justice. Instead, we, and in particular our elected “representatives,” stand complicit in a collective denial which in a few years will turn into institutionalized amnesia. Bush and Cheney will never account for their crimes, foreign or domestic.

I dream that on the morning of January 20, 2009, a half million fed up Americans will surround the White House and rain a torrent of shoes on Bush and Cheney as they leave the White House for the final time. By everything that is right and holy, and for every drop of blood ever shed in America’s name, they should leave in orange jumpsuits and shackles, but if we can’t have that, a hail of broken, dirt-caked, foul-smelling shoes will do.