The 'liegacy' of George W. Bush

Mere hours after America’s first dictator, George W. Bush, concluded his “State of the Union” speech, pundits opined that he was clearly attempting to resuscitate and improve his “legacy.” Some even argued that Bush’s low approval ratings were analogous to those once experienced by Harry Truman, who is now viewed as one of the most successful presidents in United States history.

Photo: The 'liegacy' of George W. Bush

The 'liegacy' of George W. Bush

But pundits and historians need not wait years or decades for the Bush legacy to be defined. As a courtesy to them, and to Pravda.Ru readers, this article will establish, once and for all, the “legacy” of George W. Bush. His legacy is that of:

1. A Silver-Spooned Brat: The neo-fascist movement in America, which catapulted the Bush dictatorship into power, mindlessly applauds his alleged “passion” and resolve. But these facades are now failing to conceal Bush’s megalomania, obtuseness, and obstinacy from the rest of America.

Born into wealth and power, Bush’s behavior is synonymous with a spoiled child who gets his way by holding his breath and pouting. But even more vile is the fact that Bush, who has been given all the advantages in life and who owes his education, income and advancement to his family’s wealth and influence, actually possessed the audacity to denounce affirmative action policies, intended to remedy racial and gender discrimination, as “preferential treatment” that prevents people from advancing on their own merit.

Even a cursory glance at the so-called leaders in America’s business, political, and entertainment industries illustrates the disingenuousness of this argument. Like Bush, most of these so-called leaders occupy their positions not because of merit, but because of family or marital wealth and connections. In fact, one of the most recent examples of this reality can be discerned in NBC Television’s The Apprentice, starring business mogul Donald Trump. Although the premise of this program is to gauge the business acumen of contestants through their success or failure in completing certain projects, much promotional fanfare was made of the fact that Trump’s own daughter would be one of the “board” members judging these contestants. How ironic that, in American culture, a beneficiary of nepotism is considered to be qualified to judge others seeking a corporate position via their own efforts.

So what Bush was really saying in his assault on affirmative action is that preferential treatment is perfectly acceptable, as long as the “right” people are being preferred.

2. A Coward: Bush rarely misses an opportunity to gleefully declare himself a “wartime president.” Yet, as is symptomatic of most dictators, he is not only a coward, but the lowest form of coward. Like many of the politicians, pundits, journalists, businesspeople and entertainers who have emulated his blustering diatribes of bravado and bellicosity, Bush avoided serving in combat himself, using his family’s influence to perform some nebulous National Guard duties during the Vietnam War.

3. A Thief: There is none so vile as those who invoke God to defend their criminality. Yet Bush did exactly that after his brother Jeb, along with Katherine Harris and other corrupt election officials, joined by an equally corrupt United States Supreme Court, helped him illegally occupy the White House during the Coup of 2000. Tragically for America, this strategy worked so well that Bush was permitted to steal another election in 2004.

4. A Mass Murderer: I don’t know if anybody, besides myself, discerned the fact that Saddam Hussein was condemned and executed for killing fewer people than George W. Bush. Hussein was found guilty of killing one-hundred and forty-eight people in the wake of a failed coup attempt.

Compare this to George W. Bush, who executed one-hundred and fifty-two people while governor of Texas. What makes Bush’s actions as reprehensible as Hussein’s is that Texas has one of the most racist, inept, and corrupt judicial systems in the United States. This, after all, is the state where Robert Lee Coney served over forty years in prison after being tortured into confessing to a crime he did not commit. In fact one county in Texas has had more wrongful convictions than the entire state of California. (As I was drafting this article, news broke that James Waller, a man convicted in this county and who served over ten years in prison, was exonerated through DNA evidence, and that Larry Fuller, also convicted in this county and who served roughly twenty years, was granted a pardon by the governor after also being cleared by DNA testing. Ironically Fuller was a decorated veteran of the very war George W. Bush used his family’s influence to dodge).

But if those examples are not frightening enough, Texas is also the most execution-crazed state in America. It is so crazed in fact, that James Edward Smith was executed even after the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal. (To illustrate how ludicrous United States Supreme Court procedural rules are when dealing with death penalty cases, four “justices” voted to hear Smith’s case, but it required the votes of five “justices” to delay his execution. After that fifth vote never came Smith was executed, and when his case subsequently came up on the docket, the same Court that aided and abetted his murder callously declared his case “moot,” because he was already dead).

The Smith case, however, was apparently not egregious enough for the State of Texas. Many legal experts now contend that its bloodthirsty legal system recently executed an innocent man named Ruben Cantu.

While George W. Bush was governor of Texas, advances in DNA testing were exonerating inmates throughout the United States, and many other governors were demanding reviews of their judicial systems or declaring moratoriums on capital punishment altogether.

But not George W. Bush. Even though one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions is faulty eyewitness testimony, Bush executed Gary Graham (aka Shaka Sankofa) solely on the testimony of one eyewitness. He also routinely denied requests from inmates for DNA testing, then boasted while campaigning for president, that “no innocent person had been executed under his watch.”

In keeping with the Bush persona, this was both a specious and cowardly boast to make, since there was absolutely no way to rebut his assertion. This was confirmed when attorneys for Jerry Lee Hogue, who had been denied DNA testing by Bush prior to his execution, tried to posthumously test the DNA evidence in his case. They were informed that after an execution all evidence is destroyed. Quite convenient, since one can never be wrong when the evidence to prove one wrong no longer exists.

5. A War Criminal: Some may argue that comparing Bush to Hussein is misleading because Hussein was actually guilty of killing more people than his court conviction reflects.

But this argument fails for two reasons. First, such comparisons lead to the spurious belief that atrocities require a numerically fixed loss of life. The reality is that the unjust loss of one life, or the unjust loss of thousands, does not diminish the culpability of those empowered to prevent such losses.

Second, Bush’s victims number in the thousands. There were the victims in the World Trade Center and Pentagon that his dictatorship sacrificed, through act or omission, so it could shred the Bill of Rights and create the hysteria and jingoism necessary to launch the illegal invasion of Iraq. There are the thousands of American troops killed or wounded in a war based upon lies, as well as an untold number of Iraqis who have lost their lives, both as “collateral damage,” and because of the Bush dictatorship’s ineptness, which destabilized that country and permitted it to plunge into chaos and civil war.

6. A Liar: George W. Bush’s career was erected upon lie after lie, from his election thefts, to his proclamations that war against Iraq was a “last” resort, to the fabricated motives he propagated to launch the illegal invasion of Iraq. Embracing Hitler’s theory that the masses are more receptive to “great lies” than small ones, Bush and his minions have lied, and continue to lie, without hesitation, without compunction, and without any desire to tell the truth.

So there you have it: The legacy or, more correctly, the “liegacy” of George W. Bush. May he forever be condemned as the man who quoted Jesus while reveling in the same intolerance, cruelty and abuse of power that brought about Jesus’ crucifixion; May he forever be reviled as the profligate hypocrite who claimed to be “pro-life,” yet sired nothing but deceit, destruction, death and despair; May he forever be compared to an oblivious Nero who fiddled while New Orleans sank and Iraq burned.

More importantly, may his “liegacy” serve as a warning to those who believe America can never succumb to the allure of neo-fascism; who unquestioningly embrace the lies spewed by so-called news networks who are more concerned about ratings, profits and the promotion of their own agendas than truth; who doubted that a plutocracy exists in America with both the power and the ability to manipulate, and if necessary undermine, the will of the people.

I have often argued that the death of America will be brought about by its terminal myopia. Although the Bush dictatorship has fallen into disfavor, it was just a few years ago when a majority of Americans were viewing him and his cronies as deities on a noble crusade to “save the world.”

Perhaps the greatest blessing of mortality is that even the most powerful do not live forever, and thus must one day face their reckoning. So I take comfort in the fact that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and all the politicians, journalists, pundits and entertainers who have exploited the Iraqi war for self-aggrandizement and profit will one day be rotting in the same hell as Saddam Hussein.

Still, it is frightening to realize that the Bush dictatorship ascended to power in what is supposed to be an educated and enlightened nation, and that far too many Americans were either blinded by, or supportive of, its evil.

David R. Hoffman
Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru