Remember, though, that Bush sees himself as absolutely right and the rest of us as poor, ignorant peasants.....and, in his mind, all he has to do is stay the course and the rest of us will come to agree with his point of view. Eventually.

If God were to present himself to GWB and show him the many errors of his ways he would say it was a false God and an evil God that presented itself to him. There many metaphores that can be applied to Mr. Bush but like the Bible they can be interpreted many ways and the Bush administration would have their unique spin.

Uh, have you lost your mind? The very idea of Baby Caligula apologizing for his numerous sins and offering himself up as a sacrifice is beyond ridiculous. Take your meds and go back to sleep.

Drex and Auberon are right: it's not Bush who's Jonah -- it's (almost every member of) "our" Congress, willfully asleep -- drugged insensible by image, power, booze, pharmaceuticals, and their manipulative objectification by corporate teevee and print commentators -- at the wheel of the ship of state.

It's up to the military to arrest Cheney and Bush. They should have done it long ago, about the time of the "Patriot Act", when the cowed Congress caved in on the Iraq war vote AND on everything else.

Note: full-time service at that "minimum wage" the Democrats have the nerve to mention is insufficient to provide for even housing -- think replacement of labor -- in any U.S. State. Pelosi and Reid ought to be fed to a large animal of some sort, possibly a tiger.

I was awed that, during the Republican debate last night, when asked what the most morally pressing issue was, none of the candidates mentioned climate change or nuclear proliferation. A few of them mentioned "life", but where's this when the earth cooks or is irradiated by nuclear war or accident? Life will be for cockroaches only in the end of either scenario. Kids always see this first. But the candidates say "life", then begin with the religious mumbo-jumbo. Insanity.

Jonah wouldn't do anything as the buybull is a book of myths. but since bush thinks he hears god, who can reason with him?

The essay is as interesting as the replies.

Shetterly calls for the president to confront the extent of his own evil deeds and to do the right thing.

And you do not have to be bible believing or God fearing to appreciate the stories of Jonah or much of the Bible.

Of course, I have always wondered what _would_ happen if George Bush had a moment of insight and turned to face it instead of doing what ever it is he buries himself in since he is ostensibly white-knuckling it off alcohol.

Would he commit suicide?

Is that how we would know our president finally had a modicum of insight--he is found dead by his own hand?

Of course, I often think of suicide as the permanent solution to a temporary problem and that would be no less true in George Bush's case.

But what if he finally admitted awareness of this mess? Would he realize the oil is really not worth all these lives and start re-aligning his policy in light of this? Would he make a personal call to the powers that be in Iran and Syria and Egypt? Would he apologize and beg their help in stabilizing the region? Would he roll back the tax breaks for richest and try to return the government to the people instead of the corporations? Would he appear clear-eyed on the television and apologize to the world and to the people of US for corrupting the Bill of Rights and diminishing habeus corpus? Would he publicly apologize for promoting torture and acknowledge the incalcuable harms done by his policies? Would he appear personally at Guantanamo Bay and beg the apologies of the imprisoned and immediately begin a plan for their release with restitution?

Would the current and previous congresses recognize and acknowledge their role in complicity?

And what of us, the American people?

***
Perhaps it is too much to hope for Mr. Bush's "conversion". But I do not think we can fail to hope for it, act to promote it and ask our congress persons why it has not yet happened.

You had better all just resign yourselves to riding out the storm along with your Dear Leader -- and brace for impact. Cuz if this war on Iran goes forward, which it probably will, not even Zbigniew Brzezinski's "second chance" at pax americana is gonna get a chance.

MollyJ June 6th, 2007 2:27 pm

If you're waiting for a piece of human filth like George W. Bush to repent, I suggest you wait on some different planet. The situation on this planet is urgent and this crazed, fascist administration must be disposed of by any means necessary.

Purvis Ames, I really do understand your fervor but it is important to not become the thing you've displaced. (For illustration, see Iraq before and after Saddam.)

What would Jesus do?
Turn the other cheek, of course.

What would a Muslim do?
Take an eye for an eye, of course.

What would a Jew do?
Kill them both, of course.

"why doesn't w. do this or that?" why doesn't anybody? b/c of the people around them who mirror to them that they are doing a good job, are important, are loved, whatever. how does somebody in the military kill children? how does someone in the MSM obfuscate reality as their daily chore? how do corporate bigwigs downsize companies or steal retirees pensions? how do senators live with themselves? or congressman? how does dick or bush sleep at night? how do people get up and go to work everyday w/insanity reigning? how do parents send kids off to school?

a social reality disconnects and shields each of us from "reality"and lets us go about our daily lives, whether that's being a neocon, a soldier, a soccer mom, or a journalist. that's why "evil" is so common, and so easily lived with. "morality" 99% of the time is nothing more than conforming with those around you, no matter how immoral the results.

Shane,
A whole lotta killing has been perpetrated in the name of God/Jesus. Not just historically but there are too many people that think that Iraq is an epic battle of good and evil, christianity and islam. Just as those who kill in the name of God select the God of Justice (not mercy) verses from the Bible, I believe the same can be said of those from Islam and their _use_ of the Koran.

Shane, while your little phrase may feel very satisfying to write, it hardly represents any real insight or help for our situation. And I would say that in all cases, it caricaturizes the religion's represented.

Implicitly we must find common ground with those in Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Israel, America who desire peace.

I respect Mr. Shetterly's Jonah analogy, but Jonah was a fictional character, who, through deep introspection, was eventually presented as remorseful and redeemable with obvious possession of a conscience and the ability to feel empathy for the people he hurt. Conscience and empathy are necessities in order to separate oneself from "... corrupt [men] of hardened conscience." Bush, on the other hand, along with his administration, are not just "corrupt [men] of hardened conscience", but corrupt men WITHOUT conscience. Unlike the fictional Jonah, the real-life Bush boys, and, by extension, Congress, are not introspective, have no conscience, feel no remorse, are unfazed by consequences, and will continue to exploit Americans for their own personal power and economic gains until Americans finally stop them. I do not believe it would ever occur to them to consider what either Jesus, Jonah, or a real American would do; they could not care less.

As an aside, to clearly understand the Cheney/Bush cabal, the books I would highly recommend that American's should consider reading are titled Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, written by Robert D. Hare, Ph.D., and Snakes in Suits, written By Robert D. Hare, Ph.D. and Paul Babiak, Ph.D.

Maybe the reason George Bush responded to the 2006 election results and to the Iraq Study Group's recommendations to start withdrawal from Iraq by instead escalating the US military presence in the Middle East was Bush's symbolic offer (or dare) to be cast overboard like Jonah - sort of a final call for help from a sinner sensing himself to be personally beyond redemption, having implicated us all collectively in mass murder, torture, rape, and financial plunder.

If this Biblical parallel possibly holds, then impeachment is clearly the Constitutionally prescribed remedy for tossing him overboard. And the new crew manning the decks in Washington should seriously rethink why that option should stay off the table while the storm surges on.

MollyJ June 6th, 2007 5:15 pm
Purvis Ames, I really do understand your fervor but it is important to not become the thing you've displaced. (For illustration, see Iraq before and after Saddam.)

Uh, I don't really understand the analogy. Are you comparing me to Saddam Hussein? Or is it Paul Wolfowitz? Just kidding, Molly. Best regards.

Congress ( the "sailors" ) is asleep and not even dreaming of impeaching ( "throwing him overboard" ). I wonder if the first one to "cast him away" will be Laura Bush? But, no, she's been bought off, just like everyone else, with all the money the Bush family has grabbed. What a "Stepford" wife, so much pancake makeup, she doesn't look real.

We The People do not need President CocoBananas, or anyone else, to motivate us to do the right thing. Who cares that he and his insane cabal of loons live in some alternate universe where they are gods and everyone else is an obstacle? He said it himself - he'll be dead when the Earth melts. It's up to us to ignore the few who say whatever the oil companies tell them to and start doing what needs to be done ourselves. It's called self-motivation - because if you're waiting for a "leader" to "save" us, you're as nuts as they are.

The whole principle of this articel kind of fails because a) jonah never existed and neither did his imaginary friend god and b) it is the religious actions of G.W. that brought us to this place. The total elimination of religion from public life is the only way forward.

"No doubt one of the most ennobling and redeeming moments of Jonah's story is his plea to the sailors to pitch him into the tempestuous waves." It is a biblical fantasy and is not really appealing. Its only slight virtue is it shows what an evil bigot god is supposed to be.

MollyJ writes:
"Of course, I have always wondered what _would_ happen if George Bush had a moment of insight and turned to face it instead of doing what ever it is he buries himself in since he is ostensibly white-knuckling it off alcohol."
-----
Likely something in the hypnotics family, like Daddy's Halcion, made famous by that barfing-on-the-Emperor, or whoever it was, in Japan. And whatever fuzzifying anti-psychotic causes him to stress certain words -- frequently ones with esses in them: did Dub stutter in early childhood? -- unpredictably, in his public remarks.

"Would he commit suicide?"
-----
You're kidding of COURSE:
1. this is a guy who was a cheer-leader in college, couldn't take his flight-school medical exam, and disappeared during the war in Viet Nam from his Air Force "service".
2. one has only to take a look at him on teevee to see he's stone nuts. Laura Bush and the Secret Service -- and unknown burly designates, surveillance and restraint machinery -- are certain to monitor his EVERY move.

"Is that how we would know our president finally had a modicum of insight–he is found dead by his own hand?"
-----
Notwithstanding 1. and 2. above, it works for me. Prudence suggests a stake-through-the-heart, however, if there's any thought of burying the remains in hallowed ground . . .

"For, it seems an immutable law that powerful people who invoke their Christian God to justify their violence invariably have aligned themselves with the god of vengeance who thrashed his foes in the Old Testament." This is the key quote in the essay; so long as people are taught by secular and religious "leaders" that the innocent lives they take, or finance taking, represents some god's will, a false rationale becomes public policy. AND we are there, and it's tragic for its ignorance. IF there are angels, you know they are crying.

Purvis Ames wrote:
Uh, I don't really understand the analogy. Are you comparing me to Saddam Hussein? Or is it Paul Wolfowitz?

No, I was pointing out that we (America) invaded Saddam because he was evil and perpetrating evil but in doing so we have become the perpetrators of at least (if not greater) evil.

Jonah would listen to this man:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzXyatvzDU4&mode=related&search=

At this point - forget what Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha, Confucius, Einstein, or Moses would do.

Lets get someone that would do what Lassie or Flipper would do.

We would have to ease into it though because re-entry into a reality based world is going to be a bitch after Bu$h the inferior.

The main premise of this article that Bush is human and has a brain is wrong beyond any shadow of doubt. Somehow the writer seems to missed realizing this after observing *Baby Caligula* (borrowing purves ames apt title). To bring in a far fetched Biblical myth of Jonah and whale, mixing it up with Mobby Dick (actually the *dick* part is correct as his second in command non- human is one and is also named as such by his mother), and believe that a brain dead non human killing machine is going to get a Biblical epiphany should really not be put up here on this website but in some site which deals with children*s fairy tales.

molly j. - - are you for real!!! *we (America) invaded Saddam because he was evil and perpetrating evil*

so you believe in america the good, saving a poor brown skinned Arab people (while killing one million of their children in th 1990s as *worth the price*) from their evil dictator who just happen to living on a sea of oil worth $10 trillion.

I guess its people like you who re-elected bush and dick in 2004.

Aymon, while the motives for going to war have become increasingly muddied with time and I'm not sure anyone "remembers" why we went to war, least of all the president, ostensibly we went to free the world of the great evil of Saddam and in so doing perpetrated some evil of our own. I agree that the motivations were probably "america the good, saving a poor brown skinned Arab people" and I, like you, detest the idea that we would treat the cradle of civilization so poorly and so ethnocentrically.

I never voted for Bush and was and am no fan of this war but some of the rhetoric here makes me uncomfortable. While I understand that what the president and his cohort has done is purely wrong, I will feel that our democracy is shown to be intact when the solutions grow out of the rule of law. Impeachment, trial before the International Court, a restoration of the writ of habeus corpus. These should be our rightful goals. NOT replacement of one mobocracy with another, even if that mob claims to be aligned with "my" side.

Some of the language here regarding the president is very de-personalizing. Referring to him as "a brain dead non human killing machine", someone deserving of "a stake-through-the-heart", or "a piece of human filth" creates a situation not unlike Abu Grahib which gives us permission to deal with him as someone not deserving of any human consideration. I would not relish watching this movement become a replay of what we already have with "nobler" motivations. We'd still be a mob.

Finally, for the person that dismissed the possibility of Bush's suicide, addictions and suicide often go hand in hand. And even as I deplore the way he has ruled us and what he has brought this country to, I cannot lightly dismiss the deep despair that leads someone to suicide. Tragically, deep despair is a logical response to where this man's policies have lead us.

Again, for the people of this movement, our efforts should be aimed toward solutions that rise out of the rule of law: impeachment, trial before the international court, and restoration of the writ of habeus corpus (even for Bush and Cheney).

Ah, the metaphor of story -- revealing us to ourselves as it always does. Yes, we are cast at sea aboard a heaving ship taking on waters that grow evermore violent and dangerous. And yes, the ship is in great part threatened because our Jonah and his cabal of senior officers are deciding obsessed course and perverse direction. But unlike Melville's Jonah, our Jonah fails to awaken. Our Jonah is incapable of sobering up from his drunken thirst for power -- even if that means bleeding the crew and selling-off the ship to the most black-hearted of bidders. Our Jonah lacks any cognition let alone introspection -- and doesn't even have the heart or mind (let alone basic wisdom) to recognize deeper, truths and understanding of just about anything in life. Nope! In comparison to what I sense may be in store for us -- we will only wish it were Meliville's Jonah and not George Bush. Hold on! It's gonna be on hell of a long, dark night! We can only wish for morning.

Jeffrey: Excellent, apt and all too fitting prose. If we're gonna do fiction, I'm kind of hoping for the Indiana Jones scene where those who would recklessly abuse the powers of the Arc of the Covenant melt to their own unleashed dark forces.

MollyJ writes:
"Some of the language here regarding the president is very de-personalizing. Referring to him as "a brain dead non human killing machine", someone deserving of "a stake-through-the-heart", or "a piece of human filth" creates a situation not unlike Abu Grahib which gives us permission to deal with him as someone not deserving of any human consideration."
-----
Well, don't get all nasty-nice at this late date! :^)
'Twas YOU, MollyJ, who speculated:
----
"Is that how we would know our president finally had a modicum of insight–he is found dead by his own hand? ... the permanent solution to a temporary problem and that would be no less true in George Bush's case."
-----
The suggestion of a stake through the heart related -- QUITE clearly -- to the remains of a Bush suicide which was introduced by YOU.

In the more-or-less "real" world, ample grounds exist for impeachment/punishment by the Congress, or -- and this is MY favorite, considering the uncounted thousands of dead Dub's done in, in order to move around a few TRILLION "public" dollars -- to bring Bush and Cheney to military justice, where permanent punishment for the neo-con coup is, sooner or later, a real possibility.

Navarro, the notion of suicide being a permanent solution to a temporary problem is supposed to point out that it is an _inappropriate_ solution to a temporary problem (even though in Bush's cases the "temporariness" of the problems introduced by his policies will predictably last decades at a minimum).

Person to person, I would be saddened if he awoke to what he had done and felt so much despair that he committed suicide.

That is what I meant, and I think upon re-reading you might see that.

The conundrum that many have referred to here is this: without some insight on his part we are predictably going to muddle along on this fateful road he has chosen for us. But if he had his Road to Damascus moment, could he _tolerate_ it? I think that is a real fear and it is what keeps many an alcoholic driven back into denial. To turn and face this mess would be a true act of courage but would take tremendous ego strength and humility. Some people say the most important, defining moment for JFK was realizing that in the Bay of Pigs, he had drug America to the very brink of nuclear war. What followed was his intelligent and humble willingness to deal with that fearful reality and de-escalate the situation.

We have seen no similar intelligence or willingness from this president and that is the crux of our fears.

But I do salute your suggestion for military justice, though I do not see the president as a military personnel. I think impeachment or the International Criminal Court are the best tools and that we agree on.

"But I do salute your suggestion for military justice, though I do not see the president as a military personnel."
-----
[Some readers won't bother to look up Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus: it's at Acts 9:1-19 . . . ]

Political power really DOES grow out of the barrel of a gun, sometimes: Junior couldn't hack the military except from the tippy-top, BUT inasmuch as he's played Hell with the C-in-C position that comes along with his stolen "presidency", one hopes he qualifies from a MILITARY view.

The struggle of interest is most likely going to wind up being between the US military and the BUSH-CIA et al. coup. That the military doesn't televise its power struggles doesn't mean they aren't happening.

Looking for some religious epiphany from this guy is sweet, but deluded: he's evil enough to claim to be a Methodist -- God is not mocked, even when his/her churches are taken over by racist power-freaks -- which puts him in a position of, uh, spiritual betrayal unlikely to be remedied by a couple of choruses of Amazing Grace. (Taken a close look at lovely Laura -- who actually IS, one believes, a Methodist --lately? Do.)

Similarly, JFK -- whose murder by the Texas Republicans, if NOT proven, still looms large in what passes for the psyche of the West, and has cowed the Congress ever since -- seems to have been helped to whatever HIS conversion may have been by Fidel Castro's refusal to back down.

It's nice to have religious convictions (in fact, I personally have never understood, notwithstanding years of discussion with now-dead Communist mentors) how people manage to maintain an anti-fascist perspective without 'em, though clearly it's possible).

But it is a REAL mistake to attribute finer feelings to those who, like Junior -- born into a long-standing deal with the Devil -- choose again and again to STAY blind. Dub will always wear his ear-plugs, and deliver the letters to bring those "belonging to the way" bound to Jerusalem -- or Gitmo, or wherever.//