Oooh, nuance!

I posted a while ago that You Gotta Have Heart. I am hereby proving I'm a good liberal gal by demonstrating that I unnerstan' what it's like to be George W. Bush these days.

See, in the early days of his appointment to the Presidency in 2001, Bush was riding high. "Heh-heh - Ah really CAN create mah own reality! Ah wasn't even elected and Ah'm still Preznit!"

Soon, his popularity sank like a stone as people realized he was no brighter than a monkey with a lobotomy. But then - the beautiful, the amazing trifecta was hit on September 11, 2001. The whole country united behind him, and he gained an all-purpose shield for every law he broke. Moreover, the press, never exactly adverse to Dubya's "charms", felt it was unpatriotic to do anything but lie down at his feet and grovel. They came up with adjectives that beggar belief - "Churchillian" being one of them, "a treat in jeans" another. This self-affirming hall of mirrors, though reflecting only Bush's own opinions and those of the pundit class, lasted right up until the devastation of Hurricane Katrina cracked them.

And thus, the nightmare of George W. Bush began, accelerating ever faster after the disaster (for him) of November 7, 2006.

I can imagine that being Bush is like being me, in some ways. I'm of a body type, for example, that was much more popular 50 years ago, in the age of Marilyn Monroe. Everywhere I go, I see images of "beautiful" women that look nothing like me, and that furthermore, I could never emulate even if I starved myself into anorexia. These images are so prevalent that every morning, I'm still briefly surprised that their created reality is not the same as mine, and that I have not, in fact, turned into a 6-foot, 110-pound supermodel overnight.

Bush must be feeling some of the same confusion. After all, he's moved from his own reality, where he is, in fact, the dictator and everything he does is legal and praiseworthy, to the fact-based reality of Nixonian disapproval ratings, GOP desertions, forced resignations and criminal indictments abounding, and the increasing certainty of his party achieving permanent minority status.

Empathy is a good liberal quality, and I'm glad I have it. But sympathy for this murdering, traitorous bastard? That, I just can't drum up.

When I was a tiny tot, my mom and dad taught me about the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

In order for you to put the Golden Rule to work, you must have a quality that has fallen out of favor in today's hyper-masculine, over-militarized age: empathy.

I believe that people who lack empathy are capable of accepting almost any outrage without feeling the slightest twinge in their complacent minds. As long as they feel that whatever it is - poverty, hunger, torture, illegal wiretapping, imprisonment, irradiation with depleted uranium, PTSD - is not happening personally to them, they just couldn't care less. In other words, these unfeeling people are the hard core of today's Republic Party. Thus, they are able to support the President no matter what he does.

Remember when Bill Clinton's refrain "I feel your pain" was relentlessly mocked as being somewhat, er, effeminate? Now, Republic candidates like Mitt "Magic Briefs" Romney (h/t Sinfonian) scream that they want to DOUBLE GITMO!!! More torture! More war! I'm so manly, I can only grunt!!! ARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!

If you're going to be President of the United States, you are presiding over hundreds of millions of people. Anyone who can't follow the Golden Rule should not, and must not, get the job.