Mephistopheles Bush has spoken. By the way, the name Mephistopheles is a compound of Heb. mephitz "destroyer" + tophel "liar"—a perfect description of George Bush.
But of course Bush isn’t as smart as Mephistopheles, at least not the Mephistopheles in the great poem by Goethe, who is able to get smarty-pants Faust to sell his soul to the powers of darkness, or Mephistophilis in the famous sixteenth-century English play Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe. I am certain Bush hasn’t even heard of these famous works much less read them. And that is part of the problem with Bush: he is basically an uneducated, stupid man.
It’s true he didn’t compromise his soul because it was probably demonic in the first place. It would be like cancer compromising its soul if it had one. Of course, the statement is typical of Bush’s fuzzy thinking. What in the hell does “compromise my soul” mean? What is the soul? Bush’s unsavory personality? His particular set of grotesque beliefs? A flame flicker of non-material stuff?
Hitler, Hussein, Mao, Stalin, or any other authoritarian personality could also say they “didn’t compromise” their souls. They would have said, “I did what I wanted and told myself to hell with what others thought.” The BIG difference is that President Bush was the president of a democratic society, which means he is obligated to do what the people want him to do, and I would assume that he would want to make decisions that BENEFIT Americans, rather than destroying their economy; eliminating restraints required to protect average Americans from greedy, unscrupulous financial institutions (such as the credit card companies); encouraging the deterioration of their living environments by eliminating safeguards designed to protect the air they breathe, the water they drink, the food they eat, etc.; sullying their reputation abroad; failing to protect their borders from the invading armies of illegal aliens; and avoiding making mockery of the office of the President of the United States.
So Bush didn’t care whether he was a “popular guy.” What does that mean exactly? Well let’s look at what being popular means in the minds of Americans. Why is Obama popular among millions of Americans? Because they believe he will represent them rather than himself, that he will act to improve their lives rather than realizing a twisted personal agenda shared by a handful of anti-American coconspirators (the club of neoconservatism, the monstrous brainchild of Zionist Irving Kristol). The word popular is ambiguous today because there are lots of popular people who really don’t do much for people other than entertain them, such as athletes, movie stars, and musicians. So it is true that being popular doesn’t necessarily indicate being like Drs. Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, the men who saved the children. (In the age of Zionist neoconservatism and that bête noire Israel it’s easy to forget that the Jews were once a remarkable people.)
However, Bush is not a “popular guy,” but a very unpopular guy, and how did he become so unpopular? By doing great harm, not only to America but also to millions of Iraqis and thousands of Afghans. First, let’s review the American casualties of the Iraq War: Total deaths—4209; Wounded—44,000. Documented civilian deaths caused by the Iraq War: 98,000. (A study carried out by the medical journal Lancet estimates the Iraqi civilian death toll at 600,000 during the first four years of the war. The New England Journal of Medicine estimates 151,000 civilian deaths since the beginning of the invasion.) And of course millions of Iraqis were driven from their homes and their villages, towns, and cities have been horrifically damaged if not totally destroyed. In other words, George Bush is a destroyer and mass murder—and who gets lock up in jail and probably tortured? A guy who throws his shoes at Bush, and by doing so has the gratitude of millions of Americans. Let’s mention his name: Muntadhar al-Zeidi. Kudos to a brave David who in his own way stood up to two monstrous Goliaths—America and George Bush, something the American people, especially their self-serving politicians, didn’t have the guts to do.
The truth is that George Bush is a pathological personality. I would argue that he suffers from a deep-seated inferiority complex that has filled him with resentment and anger, which the 9-11 attacks were able to fully release. Even before then, however, Bush’s psyche had transformed his feelings of inferiority into a form of the Messiah Complex, apparently derived from the Bible, believing that fate (defined by Christian eschatology) chose him to serve God and to save America and even the world from the Devil’s minions. (As it turned out he ended up being a pathetic servant of Satan, metaphorically speaking since I don’t believe in Zeus, Thor, Satan or any of the other mythical beings.) This type of thinking is also a form of megalomania, a symptom of mental illness marked by delusions of greatness. Bush also has the ability shown by narcissistic psychopaths to disassociate himself, specifically his soul, from the evil he has committed. Robert Hare says in Without Conscience, “Psychopaths show a stunning lack of concern for the devastating effects their actions have on others.” That’s George Bush to a T.
Three final points. First, it’s amazing that Bush’s is capable of remaining indifferent to the horror that he has brought upon millions of people, especially those innocent civilians who died or suffered from the actions of a man they harm in no way (nor did they harm America, or if they did so during Operation Desert Storm, it was because they had to follow the orders of their own twisted leader, Saddam Hussein). Freud would say that Bush’s excuse (which he might have gotten from Rumsfeld) that the harm done to the Iraqi people is the price they had to pay for freedom (which his administration insisted upon giving them, well not exactly give since they paid a price in death, injury and destruction). At the least the American soldiers who have died or have been wounded chose to join the military and go to Iraq. The Iraqi people never had that choice. In other words, Freud would say by not recognizing the harm he has done, Bush is utilizing a defense mechanism to protect his fragile ego (his egomania simply being a outward show to disguise the fragile ego that has bloomed like a sickly plant from the soil of his humiliating sense of inferiority, and in this way Bush is not very different from that other famous political bully, Adolf Hitler).
Second, Bush’s soul was tarnished, corrupted, and deficient before he became president of the United States, so it is true that he acted in such a way as not to compromise his soul (which would have required ethical improvement), even if doing so might have meant doing some good for Americans and the people of the world. The fact is Bush seems to have an aversion to doing good because what comes natural to him is doing harm.
Third and final point. A couple days ago Bush said he wants credit for keeping the U.S. safe from terrorists. The truth of the matter is the terrorist threat after 9-11 was a political figment of Bush’s ambitious imagination. What was the threat? The guys who pulled off the 9-11 attacks used box cutters to commandeer American aircraft. These were not armies swooping down upon America. The terrorists (and there weren’t so many before Bush came up with his WAR ON TERROR (the product of twisted neocon thinking) were and are a rather ragtag band of killers. Drug cartels and their gangs operating in the U.S. probably do far more harm to Americans than Islamic fanatics, in part because the cartels have millions of associates living in America. And if you don’t want Islamic fanatics putting bombs in your department stores, then keep Muslims out of your country in the first place. (Are you listening, France?)
If you want to know what the terrorist threat really is, look at the terrorist attacks that have occurred during the past few years. Take, for example, the attacks in Bombay (Mumbai), India. These orchestrated attacks were spectacularly successful, in other words, about the best the terrorists are capable of pulling off. What were the consequences? At least 125 people were killed and 327 wounded. Certainly that is an awful loss of life but hardly represents a substantial threat to any nation and certainly cannot be characterized as a war-like aggression. Even the 9-11 attacks had no effect on the nation outside New York City, except for the hysteria whipped up by the Bush administration and the terrific cost of life, limb, and dollars that resulted from Bush’s declaration of war upon terror. WAR is what America declared on Iraq—attacking the country with warships, airplanes, helicopters, missiles, tanks, supply columns miles long, thousands of military personnel, etc. The terrorist threat to America was a political phantom, a boogieman invented by Bush and his neocon conspirators. On the other hand, America became a real source of terror to the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan, but apparently that didn’t matter to Bush, his cohorts, or the American people.
You are a monster Mr. Bush. Live with it!
