Preznit's day, 2008
A little bit of trivia I never knew...
Chimpy apparently refers to Washington as "the first George W."
Thank you, filkertom for that tater-tot of information. I just threw up a little in my mouth, and it had nothing to do with having the flu.
I don't care if it's Hillary Rodham Clinton or it's Barack Obama. We need a Democratic President. We actually need the impeachment of Cheney and Dubya and a temporary interregnum with President Nancy Pelosi, but that will obviously never happen.
That said: the next President, no matter how good they turn out to be, are going to be absolutely HATED because of the grim task of having to clean up all the damage left over from the Dubya Administrations. In a lot of respects we are in a worse state of affairs now than we were after the Hoover Administration, because at least back then we were well-liked in the world. We are now the HATED AMERICANS, the evil empire that tortures, rapes and murders in the name of expediency. Since Godwin's Law was suspended by the actions of the current administration, it is safe to say that only Nazi Germany and the USSR under Stalin come to mind when thinking of recent historical parallels. If you want to go back through history I would say we come pretty damn close to the Roman Empire.
There will be a lot of apologies and grovelling to do by the next president. We are going to have to accept the diminished role we will have on the world stage. Of course, we can react to it one of two ways: the way West Germany did as it gradually built back up (partially with American funds and help) into a democracy; or the way the Former Soviet Union went after it finally fell: a period of vacuum at the top where organized crime and the unscrupulous managed to hoard what remained of the economy and make themselves into a kleptocrat ruling class, until a KGB-trained strongman took over and basically turned himself into the next Stalin, this time without the perks the Communists distributed to the common Soviet citizen, like free education up to and including grad school and free health care for all.
We are going to be humiliated after Dubya and Cheney leave office and retire to all that property they bought in Paraguay, a nation without an extradition treaty with the United States. Without Dubya and Cheney to drag to Den Haag to answer for their crimes against humanity, the onus will collectively fall on the average American, particularly those who supported the current administration. You'd better learn to recite the alphabet from A to Zed, hide your US passport and wear a Canadian flag pin in your lapel when you visit other more civilized nations, because if they know you're a Yank (and thanks to the RFID chip in the current passport any schmuck with an RFID reader will be able to tell unless you buy one of those fancy Faraday Cage passport cases) you will have to account for every dumb and fucked up move the current administration has made, particularly those in Iraq, the rest of the Middle East, and at Gitmo. Remember the days of "The Ugly American?" You ain't seen nothing yet.
Eventually the right-wing nut jobs, after 4 or 8 years of the rest of the world throwing brickbats at this country, will raise up another right wing nut job president. He will declare that it's "morning in America" again. He will undo whatever good has been done by the prior Democratic administration. He will find a suitable scapegoat group to persecute, probably the Latinos. He will invoke Protestant Christian values as he shreds what's left of the Constitution. Perhaps the second coming of Huckabee, this time without the friendly facades? It could happen. Look at what happened to Reagan in 1976, then in 1980.
Then again, Dubya and Cheney might not leave office January 20th, 2009. They might be able to get the Air Force and friendly elements within the Army and Marines to support them in remaining in office by Coup d'Etat. The remaining facades will be dropped. Dick Cheney would then be President For Life.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the dystopia has only begun. Imagine a cowboy boot stomping on a human face, forever.
If George Washington is in some afterlife, watching us, I suspect he's already turned away in disgust.
Chimpy apparently refers to Washington as "the first George W."
Thank you, filkertom for that tater-tot of information. I just threw up a little in my mouth, and it had nothing to do with having the flu.
I don't care if it's Hillary Rodham Clinton or it's Barack Obama. We need a Democratic President. We actually need the impeachment of Cheney and Dubya and a temporary interregnum with President Nancy Pelosi, but that will obviously never happen.
That said: the next President, no matter how good they turn out to be, are going to be absolutely HATED because of the grim task of having to clean up all the damage left over from the Dubya Administrations. In a lot of respects we are in a worse state of affairs now than we were after the Hoover Administration, because at least back then we were well-liked in the world. We are now the HATED AMERICANS, the evil empire that tortures, rapes and murders in the name of expediency. Since Godwin's Law was suspended by the actions of the current administration, it is safe to say that only Nazi Germany and the USSR under Stalin come to mind when thinking of recent historical parallels. If you want to go back through history I would say we come pretty damn close to the Roman Empire.
There will be a lot of apologies and grovelling to do by the next president. We are going to have to accept the diminished role we will have on the world stage. Of course, we can react to it one of two ways: the way West Germany did as it gradually built back up (partially with American funds and help) into a democracy; or the way the Former Soviet Union went after it finally fell: a period of vacuum at the top where organized crime and the unscrupulous managed to hoard what remained of the economy and make themselves into a kleptocrat ruling class, until a KGB-trained strongman took over and basically turned himself into the next Stalin, this time without the perks the Communists distributed to the common Soviet citizen, like free education up to and including grad school and free health care for all.
We are going to be humiliated after Dubya and Cheney leave office and retire to all that property they bought in Paraguay, a nation without an extradition treaty with the United States. Without Dubya and Cheney to drag to Den Haag to answer for their crimes against humanity, the onus will collectively fall on the average American, particularly those who supported the current administration. You'd better learn to recite the alphabet from A to Zed, hide your US passport and wear a Canadian flag pin in your lapel when you visit other more civilized nations, because if they know you're a Yank (and thanks to the RFID chip in the current passport any schmuck with an RFID reader will be able to tell unless you buy one of those fancy Faraday Cage passport cases) you will have to account for every dumb and fucked up move the current administration has made, particularly those in Iraq, the rest of the Middle East, and at Gitmo. Remember the days of "The Ugly American?" You ain't seen nothing yet.
Eventually the right-wing nut jobs, after 4 or 8 years of the rest of the world throwing brickbats at this country, will raise up another right wing nut job president. He will declare that it's "morning in America" again. He will undo whatever good has been done by the prior Democratic administration. He will find a suitable scapegoat group to persecute, probably the Latinos. He will invoke Protestant Christian values as he shreds what's left of the Constitution. Perhaps the second coming of Huckabee, this time without the friendly facades? It could happen. Look at what happened to Reagan in 1976, then in 1980.
Then again, Dubya and Cheney might not leave office January 20th, 2009. They might be able to get the Air Force and friendly elements within the Army and Marines to support them in remaining in office by Coup d'Etat. The remaining facades will be dropped. Dick Cheney would then be President For Life.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the dystopia has only begun. Imagine a cowboy boot stomping on a human face, forever.
If George Washington is in some afterlife, watching us, I suspect he's already turned away in disgust.