Bush Beats the Devil

George Bush is not Satan.

That was the final word on the subject from Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals, the day after Hugo Chavez claimed otherwise. Haggard was very clear about it: "NAE theologians and scholars have conducted a thorough exegetical study of the biblical texts concerning the person, disposition, and earthy manifestations of Satan (Beelzebub, Lucifer, Prince of Darkness). They have incontrovertibly concluded that, contrary to the assertion of Hugo Chavez, President Bush is not the Devil."

I totally agree. I have done my own extensive research using alternate tools, and have determined that, without question, President George W. Bush is not Beelzebub. Without going too far afield, I would like to add that he is also not Alfred E Neuman, a chimpanzee, or the latest reincarnation of the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus.

For one thing, if he were Beelzebub, he would not have said this: “I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like a comma because there is -- my point is, there's a strong will for democracy.” Beelzebub would have had far better sense than to speak like that to Wolf Blitzer on national TV. However much you may dislike Beelzebub, you have to admit he is one shrewd personification of Evil. A chimp would have just flung his feces at Wolf. I don’t know exactly what Paleologus or Alfred would have said, but I’m sure they would have committed offenses on entirely different levels.

As usual, no one in the world really knows what George Bush meant to say. Did he mean that historians are such bad people that they would reduce to a comma the sacrifices of all the US soldiers who have fought in Iraq, including the now nearly 3000 who have died? Did he mean that he’s with these imaginary bad historians on that point? Or did he just mean to remind us that he doesn’t like to read, so if he were handed a history of the Iraq War in say, twenty years, he’d only read to the first comma?

Or maybe he has a deeper meaning in mind. What’s a comma anyway? It’s a hesitation and an interruption. Maybe he is using the word comma accurately as a metaphor for the way he has used the Iraq War and the so-called war on terror to interrupt America’s history of freedom, for the sake of creating and buttressing a sham democracy on the other side of the planet.

Maybe the comma is meant to indicate what he and Congress have together made of us.

The United States as we have known it is now hanging by a thread, with the passage last week of S. 3930. Congress was told by the Supreme Court to fix our policies on detaining and trying terror suspects, to bring them into line with the US Constitution. Congress has basically spit back in the face of the Supreme Court and said to hell with habeas corpus, to hell with the 5th Amendment, to hell with the 14th Amendment. Beelzebub can have all of them; we’ll take Bush and fear.

The thread I mean is the Supreme Court again. If the Supreme Court lets S. 3930 stand, there will be no branch of government left to preserve the constitution. Without a functioning constitution respected by any fraction of our government the United States will have essentially been comma-ed out of existence.

George Bush calls the Geneva Convention vague. I have to wonder if he has ever encountered any of his own pronouncements in print. Does he not even read himself? Not only does he not have the political acumen of Satan, he lacks the vanity, and in his case that’s not a good thing.

Satan would have a lot to teach Bush. He could show him how to google himself, teach him to take pride in his language, and how to reach new levels of competence, so he can screw us all even better than he’s doing now.

Old Fart Wises Off

Good news! Thanks to the Democratic Convention occupying the media, there has been no actual news lately.

This gives us here at Adventures in Poetry – meaning by us, me, Copyright Dr. Wes Browning – a chance to take stock of our life. A chance to sniff the winds of our change and dip our toes into the pools of our stagnation. To audit the account books of the psycho-social-biological records of our historic being. To see to whence we have arrived, and from whence we have departed. And to see who or what is all that in the cargo hold, and why is there a woman in our bed wanting something.

Well, first of all, we are old. We just did the dreaded calculation and discovered that our current incarnation has been breathing air for 20,000 days and a little more than an extra hundred. As a mathematician, let us put that number in perspective. That's one more than 19,999. If he saw 20,000 Republicans laid end to end, Rush Limbaugh wouldn't raise any moral objections. Jules Verne talked about 20,000 leagues, but we don't know what a league is, we're a mathematician, not a damn encyclopedia. If you saw 20,000 pigeons flying toward you, you'd wish you had an umbrella, etc.

We once saw a guy walk on the moon live on television. We saw the assassination of an assassin live on television. We saw several wars live on television, so many that we lost count, sometime around about Panama. Most of them we're unnecessary and a huge waste of lives, health, and money.

History used to happen in black and white, but now it's always in color. Conversely Red Square isn't red anymore. There's nothing left for conservatives to be better dead than, which must be disorienting for them.

We have lived to see the amazing Wolf Blitzer ask Jesse Jackson, in Jesse's capacity as a black spokesperson, why did Barack Obama, a black African immigrant running for the Senate, not speak before the Democratic Convention in Boston using the same kind of rhetoric as did Al Sharpton, a black African-American reverend who had been running for president. Why oh why, Jesse?

Just yesterday, after living a thought-filled and examined life for over 5 decades, we arrived for the first time ever at an adequate working philosophy. This was facilitated by the able conversation and intellectual assistance of our regular companion, the afore-mentioned wanting-something woman and person on whose kitchen floor we have sometimes slept, Anitra Freeman. With her help we came up with this: "Good things now, bad things later." When in doubt always refer to that formula. It's a plan of action that can't go wrong. For example, by using it, you will never force yourself to save dessert for after the asparagus again. You will know all the times that it would be better to be home in bed than. You will learn to appreciate the paper plates of life, and the other disposables. You will shower for the fun of it, not because you have to. There is the way of wisdom.

We have been homeless four times in our life. We mention this in part to fulfill our unwritten contract with Real Change and the Real Change Editorial Committee. Every column we write is required to make at least one mention of homelessness, directly or indirectly, or one local politician must be made fun of, or two national politicians, or we must directly advocate for at least two of the following: minority rights, free pizza for Real Change volunteers writers and "editors", free/more/better treatment for recovering [insert addiction here], cats.

Duck licking. Speaking of speaking of duck licking, every column should contain at least one non sequitur, and one abuse of logical accuracy, which may be the same. But that has nothing to do with the unwritten contract. We have digressed.

We have lived in the same subsidized housing for almost 7 years now, the same housing funded by the Housing Agency Formerly Known As Seattle Housing Authority, the housing that was granted after 14 months on a waiting list, the housing that was promised to me as being permanent, the housing that is now threatened by Bush Administration cuts in Section 8 funding, the housing that we will never move from until they haul my cold lifeless never-to-be-homeless-again body out of it. Or until they come up with something better. Like that'll happen.