PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

What If George Was One Of Us?
by AntiChimp Saturday, Jun. 25, 2005 at 6:02 PM
antichimp2005@yahoo.com

How would George Bush fare in today's public schools?

I am lucky enough to live in an extremely family-friendly community, one that was built largely through the intelligence and discipline of its hard-working citizens. We have an excellent school district that provides a dizzying array of programs and curriculums to meet the needs of each of our children, many of whom live lives of glorious excess, unencumbered by discipline or consequence.

While trimming my emerald-green lawn this morning, I watched a caravan of desperate housewives in sparkling-clean SUVs trundle past, all still displaying little round “W” stickers and made-in-China “Support Our Troops” ribbons, and I started wondering: what would it be like if George W. Bush was a student here? What would his and his parents’ lives be like?

First, he would likely be flagged as an academically challenged child, and put into a special service program for underachievers. School staff would be made aware of his tendency to bully other children, and he would be counseled, ever so gently, in a program for aggressive children. He would receive ongoing psychological evaluation, and would almost certainly be on medication. He would meet regularly with speech and occupational therapists. When he got home at night, his haggard parents, already exhausted from lawyering all damn day, would watch him through a mild alcoholic haze as he mastered the intricacies of Grand Theft Auto, while the deeply troubling yet neutrally-phrased reports from school remained unread, tucked in his cute little backpack with the picture of Napoleon on it.

Speaking from experience, I’m pretty certain that’s how it would be, and looking back in the general direction of what passes for reality, that’s pretty much how it is. The President is like a child, gone wild with excess and without any constraints of discipline or social contract. We, as the people to whom he is rightly to answer, have abdicated responsibility for our problem boy, especially those on the right and those in the mainstream media who consistently apologize and reinforce his increasingly dictatorial and fatuous tendencies.

Like a parent who’s lost control of a child’s better nature, it may be too late to reverse all the damage done, but that does not obviate the parent’s obligation to try. Likewise, it is up to us, the citizens of a once respected country, to try to rein in our little Napoleon, before he destroys everything we’ve worked for. That is why it is essentially our duty to fully investigate the appearance of misconduct in the Bush Administrations’ rush to war. We owe that much, at least, to our children.

www.antichimp.com

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