George Bush is ridiculous. I tend to think of George Bush as a boxer with arthritis. He simply wasn’t made for the job. His public speaking is marginal. His background is checkered. He represents a demographic of America most Americans can not identify with (white, male, rich, educated), and yet, somehow, Americans love him. I no longer think of the shortcomings of our President, they are easy to identify and easily explainable. I tend to think of the shortcomings of Americans in place of the shortcomings of George Bush. What does it say about a nation of people when they sit idly by and wave flags while their President tells them about how he is seriously considering reviving nuclear research in order to produce small yield nuclear warheads that would serve to penetrated “bunkers” we are currently unable to breach? What kind of people are we? What is it that we value? It is safe to say today, that Americans are hated more than they are love. They are despised more than they are revered. They are sheltered more than they are exposed. American values are not written in the Constitution; what is written in the constitution were the values of the men that wrote the Constitution, or at least what they claim to have valued. American values are written in American History books, and American History books have the most horrific stories of all. Although I find many problems with America and Americans, I find little solace in discussing them or writing about them, because nothing changes in America. The way we live today and the decisions we make are the same decisions our grandfathers made. They stole a continent, murdered its inhabitants and patted themselves on the back. We made no attempt to make concessions of any kind for those people we murdered and displaced, because we were building a nation. Early American history is always the most romanticized, with characters that appear larger than life and are always right in action, thought, and, speech. They were the best and bravest. Little wonder Native Americans tried to fight back, all be it unsuccessfully. Unfortunately, we are engaged in the same behavior and thinking as our forefathers. Yet we somehow have enormous difficulty recognizing the parallels between the past and present. Of course it’s not the same, it is our behavior that is the same. So the next time you curse Osama or Hamas and their behavior, think about what we as Americans are doing today and ask yourself if we think and behave narrowly, although it will be of no consequence, because if you are an anglophone and reading this, you are probably American.
