Just Plain Cruel © 2002, John H. Farr
Some of the most depressing reading in weeks is now available through either Smirking Chimp or the Toronto Star. Here is a portion of columnist Murray White's essay:
"When Mark Crispin Miller first set out to write Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder, about the ever-growing catalogue of President George W. Bush's verbal gaffes, he meant it for a laugh. But what he came to realize wasn't entirely amusing.
'I did initially intend it to be a funny book. But that was before I had a chance to read through all the transcripts,' Miller, an American author and a professor of culture and communication at New York University, said recently in Toronto.
'Bush is not an imbecile. He's not a puppet. I think that Bush is a sociopathic personality. I think he's incapable of empathy. He has an inordinate sense of his own entitlement, and he's a very skilled manipulator. And in all the snickering about his alleged idiocy, this is what a lot of people miss.'
Miller's judgment, that the president might suffer from a bona fide personality disorder, almost makes one long for the less menacing notion currently making the rounds: that the White House's current occupant is, in fact, simply an idiot."
The implications are simply staggering, considering the depth and breadth of the problems facing America and the world today. On everything from health care to education to Social Security, we can expect less than zero by way of compassion or mercy. State governments will get no help from the feds, either. Name a problem, it will not be addressed. There is no one at the federal level looking out for people who need help. These are truly the most perilous times I have ever witnessed. It's down to you and your Maker, folks, unless we vote to take back the country and make it what we want it to be.
Robert Reno's equally disturbing Newsday column on the health care crisis, also available at Smirking Chimp, contains this chilling comment: "This is almost like saying there is no hope, no solution, because it would require Bush to do something liberal."
I would edit out the "almost." A friend of mine, aged 57, was diagnosed with cancer last year. In response, his life insurance was cancelled! He already had insurance, but as soon as it was needed it was cancelled, and he has no way to provide for his wife in the event of his death. That is the kind of nation we have become. This is worse than wrong, it is sick: utterly, unalterably, despicably sick.
God bless America (please). [FarrFeed]
12:46:28 PM 
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