smartpolitics

With President Bush’s final trip to Europe, all of us back here in America are simply hoping one thing: That he won’t take as long to say goodbye as Cher did.

While Cher believes in life after love, all Americans can most assuredly believe in life after Bush. Yet this analogy seems to equate Bush with love, an unsettling shot under any circumstances.

But perhaps comparing a Cher song to the Bush administration is appropriate, and I give the following two reasons:

1. It’s simple. That’s just it. “Believe” by Cher has a simple message and a simple beat. Dubya has simple sentence structure and even simpler ideas. He’s “the decider,” and “if you’re not with [him], then you’re against us.” Yet for most Americans (Bush’s approval rating fell to an all time low recently), Dubya’s rhetoric has little effect. Most us us feel that if you are with him, you’re against us. We as a nation will be better off without him, and siding with his ridiculous notions of preemptive warfare and his policy of turning our nation’s tragedy (9/11) into a war for oil, then you are ridiculous. And if we were gonna fight a war for oil, why is oil more expensive than ever? Basically, Ol’ Dubya never thought it through. He’s led a simple presidency, one as trivial as a Cher song, if not more so. Cher at least has won an Oscar, and Bush has won nothing but the lowest approval rating since Jimmy Carter.

2. George Orwell’s 1984. This classic novel of a corrupt government parallels the Bush Administration in so many ways it’s hard to pick just one. Take for instance, his speech about “the haves and the have-nots” and how he decidedly catered only to the haves. Or his color-coded alert system, which never quite reached that low level of “country safe” despite the lack of any actual intelligence about our danger. And of course, the blatant suppression of the press by only giving reporters a chance in the “green zone” of Iraq. Essentially, it is fair to compare “life after Bush” to “life after love” because Bush is about as ironic as the Ministry of Love from Orwell’s novel. For those who don’t know, the Ministry of Love physically and mentally tortures protesters into submission. Sound familiar? I see about as much “love” in the Bush Administration as I see at Abu Ghraib, or Guantánamo Bay. Bush’s love for abusing human rights has shown in his administration, and we here in America strongly believe in life after the Ministry of Love.

Obama, with any luck, will set us free of that treacherous Ministry. Regardless, we can all be happy that Bush’s farewell tour can’t last nearly as long as Cher’s, and, with any luck, will be over long before the November elections.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS