For the past five years, I've watched as the Bush administration and the Republican-led Congress have turned our nation into a bullying, marauding, dysfunctional and mean-spirited oligarchy.
I've watched the rich not just get richer, but obscenely richer.
I've watched the rolls of American citizens without medical insurance rise by millions.
I've watched thousands of jobs move overseas, even as our government tries to reduce unemployment benefits.
I've watched the evening news count the American dead in an ill-conceived, and possibly illegal, invasion of Iraq, even as the Bush administration reduces benefits to our veterans.
I've watched the Republicans push the Patriot Act through Congress, an act that dismantles many of the protections that have defined the separation between our democracy and the totalitarian governments we so often purport to oppose.
And now we hear rumors of CIA-sponsored prisons around the world, where we may be holding, and possibly torturing, prisoners who have yet to be charged with a crime. There's a prison in Cuba where the United States has been holding hundreds of people we've labeled as "enemy combatants," again without charges, legal representation or having gone to trial. We simply hold them against their will, apparently for as long as George Bush, Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld deem necessary.
And we call Fidel a tyrant.
The latest flap suggests that Tony Blair had to talk George Bush out of bombing Al Jezeera, the Arab news operation headquartered in Qatar. If this turns out to be true, what could this president possibly be thinking? That act would be fitting of Joseph Stalin.
And then there's the Valerie Plame affair, in which a CIA agent was outed, apparently by someone high up in the administration who was ticked that Plame's husband - who investigated for the United States rumors of uranium sales to Iraq in Africa, which proved unfounded - opposed the Iraq invasion.
Whether President Bush was directly involved in the leak we may never know, but the one thing I do know is that his leadership style, including his attitude and his vindictive personality, created an atmosphere in the White House where people like Lewis Libby felt empowered to take actions that to the layperson appear treasonous at the least.
Throughout these five years, as this president has fumbled and stumbled his way to international ignominy, I've sputtered, fumed, cursed and written letters and articles for publication. I worked hard to get this man defeated in 2004, sharing the disbelief and agony of his re-election with millions around the world.
What I have found most frustrating as a writer has been my inability to characterize this presidency with a single adjective - something that captures the bombastic, imperialistic and malevolent bearing of the administration.
Like many writers, my mind churned in pursuit of the right adjective, and then it came to me: treacherous. As in, dangerously unstable and unpredictable; tending to betray; especially having a treacherous character, like "the perfidious Judas."
My thesaurus goes on to add: deceitful, base, dishonest, lying and low.
Finally, I've been semantically satiated.
This is a White House that, once angered, has no conscience, no morality and no regard for human life or dignity. They consider themselves above not only the laws of our country, but also the laws of humanity. They seem to feel they've been appointed by a higher power to carry out their mission of intrigue, oppression and self-aggrandizement, and that they are entitled to do so with impunity.
A senior manager I knew, and whom I never particularly liked, once said: "The facts will make themselves evident," and that seems to be happening at last as the details of how this president and his henchmen have twisted the facts, obliterated the truth and steamrolled anyone in opposition have finally seen the light of public scrutiny.
Now all we can do is try to prevent further damage until we can clean house in the Congress, and then elect a new president. After that, we face the long, painful and expensive task of repairing the damage this administration has done to our democracy, and to our relations around the world.
Years ago, in a pre-management training course I attended, we went through an exercise that can be applied to choosing a president. We were asked to take a piece of paper and draw a vertical line down the center. On the left side, we were to write down all the attributes of the best manager we'd ever worked for; on the other side, we jotted down those traits of the worst manager we had encountered. We then were to decide what kind of manager we wanted to be.
I now have the right side of the paper, the negative side, ready for the next presidential election, and all I have to do is look for the antonyms of all the adjectives in the list to find a president who will lead this country back to freedom, pride, fairness and morality.
Mike Davis is a freelance writer living in Magnolia.[[In-content Ad]]
