A Tale of Two George Ws

It's Presidents' Day ... the day when we (theoretically) celebrate American presidents. (When I was a kid, there was no such thing; rather, we celebrated Lincoln's birthday on the 12th of February and Washington's on the 22nd ... but I digress.)

George W. Bush went to Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, to celebrate the occasion. It was the first time since originally stealing the office that W had been to Mount Vernon, and according to the article at msnbc.com, he traveled by helicopter and made some remarks that led to laughter (among these being that "the first George W" didn't look "a day over 275" - which is not funny for a minute in light of the fact that Thursday would actually be Washington's 275th birthday). He also declared that "the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for Americans alone."

Bollocks, says I. The current George W (and for the sake of differentiation, let's call him CW - and the C stands for Current, although you may have a somewhat different word in mind) is no more a student of history - American or any other - than the keyboard upon which I'm typing. The Founding Fathers wouldn't have dreamed of interfering with the government of another nation by any means, nor would they have been sufficiently arrogant to deem it right and just and proper and (dare I say it?) holy to export American-style democracy as though it were a consumer product. Rather, can't you just imagine John Hancock surmising over a nice snifter of brandy that we'd fought and bled and died to be separate from England, and if some other country wanted to wrestle itself free from the tyrannical bonds of the entity currently in charge, they'd have to do the same? Come on, CW, these guys pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to each other and to the new nation. You would never pledge your life (you were too valuable to go anywhere near VietNam, weren't you?) or your fortune (because it isn't really yours, is it - you've squirreled your life away puttering about at one failed venture after another, and those nickels you value so highly are handed down to you from antecedents who got them by hook or by crook or by trading with the enemy during WWII) or your sacred honor (you can't pledge what you haven't got, after all, and there's nary a shred of you that's either sacred or honorable).

It's worth noting here (again) that CW traveled by helicopter to Mount Vernon from the White House. That's BY HELICOPTER, folks. CW needed Marine One to go the grand distance of sixteen miles. So much for his State of the Union plea to all of us to reduce our fuel consumption in order to diminish our dependence on foreign oil. If you're going to lead, George, then lead by example. (What am I saying? Of course you're not going to lead by example. You're not going to lead at all, are you? No, you're here to pillage and plunder and make history. Fret not, though - we'll all be laughing when the history books quite rightly describe you as the worst president of the modern era, with every possibility of being remembered forever as the worst in American history.)

I am offended at my very core that this transplanted Texan, this conspirator-in-chief, this common thug who seizes first and asks questions later (because Dallas needed a new stadium, eh, George, and those people who rightfully owned that land that you seized by eminent domain were just squatters on YOUR property, weren't they - kinda the same way that all those Iraqi people have been living for thousands of years on top of YOUR oil), this smirking chimp whose second utterance of the presidential oath of office was even scarier than the first (because let's face it, there is no need to preserve, protect, or defend the Constitution - that "goddamned piece of paper" - from anyone but the very man making the pledge), this George W of the 21st Century would even remotely consider putting himself in the same league as George Washington.

My 42nd birthday is the day after the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States. The inauguration itself will be a gift that can't come soon enough.