Sender: To: X-Original-Message-ID: <000501bf3738$b9218060$9acf69cf@pacbell.net> From: "Peter McWilliams" Subject: George W Date: Thu, 25 Nov 1999 03:32:13 -0800 X-Mozilla-Status: 8003 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 George W. Bush frightens me. Not since Nixon has a presidental candidate freightened me more. Bush has but three facial expressions: campaign smile, severe irritation, and arrogant smirk. He seems a profoundly miserable man and he’s furious about it. To keep all this discontent from public view, he has wrapped it in a frozen emotional straightjacket that, as Dorothy Parker said of Katherine Hepburn, allows him the run the emotional gamut from A to B. There are tens of millions of congenitally unhappy people in the United States. (I’m one of them and am writing a book about it entitled The Pleasure Deficit Disorder) When we stop treating our illness with pleasure chemicals and give up all drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, among the things we can become addicted to are (a) a repressive religion, (b) a draconian system of recovery, (c) food (the William J. Bennett Syndrome), or (d) self righteousness. (The latter displays itself in politicians by an uncontrollable desire to pass laws against anything that feels good.) I chose (a) and (b). The difference between Richard Nixon and George W. Bush is that Nixon knew he was a miserable angerholic whereas I wonder if Bush the younger even knows what an unhappy rage he is in. A telltale sign is that Bush chose (a) and (d). His religious views are of the you-gladly-suffer-this-veil-of-tears-to-gain-entrance-to-eternal-bliss variety; suffering becomes a badge of courage and guarantees a trip to Heaven on a private Lear Jetif not Air Force One. Richard Nixon was a crook. George W. Bush is a psychotic. On the November 21, 1999, edition of Meet the Press, Bush laid out his compassionate views, giving more than enough evidence that he is deep in (d): drug laws should be toughened, gay couples should not be allowed to marry or to adopt, teens should not be taught masturbation as a safe alternative to pregnancy-creating and disease-spreading intercourse, teens should be taught complete abstinence and only complete abstinence, life begins at conception, supports an amendment to outlaw all abortion except in the case of incest, rape, or being able to afford a plane ticket to Canadathe usual claptrap that has given conservative a bad name. Remember when a conservative wanted to conserve the Constitution and the Spirit of 1776? Now conservativesat least the elected ones want to preserve cultural values (their own, of course, almost exclusively formulated by repressive religions) and the Spirit of 1952. But the most frightening George W. Bush line on Meet the Press was, We will defend Taiwan! What? His foreign policy, always fuzzy, now seems to be: The Cold War was good enough for (and very good to) dear old dad, and it’s good enough for me. Of all the insane, arrogant, global-destabilizing boasts ever uttered, this must rank among the top ten. There is NO WAY the United States can stop China from taking Taiwan if China set its mind to taking Taiwan. Now that Bush has thrown down the gauntlet, however, will China be able to resist? What a propaganda coup to defeat the United States of America in a military engagement! If Bush’s policy becomes U.S. policy, China will have to take Taiwan, even if it doesn’t want it. In all, if George W. Bush were not George Bush’s son and was instead George Bush’s clone, George W. Bush would be the airtight argument in favor of banning human cloning. Enjoy, Peter