Are things not going well for you? Are you experiencing
problems of any kind in your life?
Don’t be disheartened. You are probably not responsible for these disappointments. It’s all George W. Bush’s fault. That’s because, at least for
some folks, everything is George W. Bush’s fault.
In Columbus,
Ohio last week, NBC 4 television news reported on an area robbery. The thieves targeted a bank employee and one of them explained to
her, “This is all George W. Bush’s fault. He screwed up the
economy. We just need gas money for the car.”
Mr. Bush
has become the fall guy-in-chief. He’s blamed for permitting
9/11 to happen by not adequately conducting surveillance of possible
terrorist activities. Now that he’s conducting surveillance
of possible terrorist activities, he’s blamed for trampling on civil
liberties.
A poll taken a couple of years ago found that a majority
of Democrats believed 9/11 might have been caused by “U.S. wrongdoing.” And, with Mr. Bush in office a full seven months before the attack,
they know exactly who was guilty of those transgressions.
The
popular “Bush lied, people died” is another way of placing blame,
in this instance for the deaths in Iraq. It’s true that the
president did say, “If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force,
our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat
posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.”
Oh, wait
a minute. The president who said that was Bill Clinton. But let’s set that aside. It still must be Bush’s fault. As Wisconsin Senator Russell Feingold noted, “It is the fault of the
administration for sending them (our soldiers) into battle without
a clearly defined or well-thought-out mission.”
The Asia tsunamis,
in some quarters, were caused by President Bush’s scorn for the environment. Certainly he’s to blame for being so miserly when it came to dishing
out relief dollars. The New York Times editorialized: “Are we
stingy? Yes.” Naturally, it wasn’t really us who were stingy,
because we’re not accountable for any of it. It was, as usual,
that parsimonious George W. Bush.
When Katrina hit the U.S.,
there was no uncertainty who to point the finger at. Cindy “Where
are the TV cameras?” Sheehan claimed Mr. Bush was “heading to Louisiana
to see the devastation that his environmental policies and his killing
policies have caused.”
Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu pinpointed
why available local buses weren’t used to evacuate residents: “It’s
because this administration and administrations before them do not
understand the difficulties that mayors - whether they are in Orlando,
Miami, or New Orleans - face. . . In other words, this administration
did not believe in mass transit.”
President Bush can’t even take
a physical without playing the whipping boy. When an exam showed
the chief executive in good health, the Democratic National Committee
took the occasion to accuse him of ignoring children’s health with
cuts in physical education programs. Moreover, he’s responsible
for the skyrocketing rate of childhood obesity. Oh, and for
rolling back athletic opportunities for women also.
After a
flu vaccine shortage developed in 2004, Massachusetts Senator John
Kerry identified the guilty party. He ran television ads deploring
the situation advising, “It’s a demonstration of this administration
and how they (sic) deal with everything.”
Everything. As
in everything is Bush’s fault. Like the recent West Virginia
coal mine tragedy. Asked why the mine was open despite previous
safety violations, the former director of the National Mine Academy
said: “I think it’s because of the current Bush administration’s policies
toward mine operators. . .”
Mr. Bush isn’t satisfied to
just ruin the United States. He’s been expanding his culpability
and is now widely blamed for troubles around the world. Venezuelan
president Hugo Chavez set responsibility for his country’s dispute
with Mexico: “The one to blame for all this lamentable conflict
is none other than Mr. Danger.”
George W. Bush is responsible for rising gas prices, global warming, job losses, increased trips to psychiatrists, terrorist bombings abroad, poverty, nukes in Iran and North Korea, the spread of AIDS, various states’ budget woes, declining literacy, mercury pollution, abortion, deficits, hate crimes, corporate scandals, low farm prices, high grocery prices, inflation, deflation, stagflation and the breakup of the Beatles. Of course, this is merely a partial list.
Even in small towns in Ohio, he’s
driven otherwise honest citizens into lives of crime. What did
we ever do before he made himself available as the Nation’s permanent
perp?
This appears in the February 9, 2006 Oak Lawn Reporter.
Mike Bates is the author of Right Angles and Other Obstinate Truths.
