By Mike Whitney
Big Brother Bush has finally descended into the hell of public scorn and degradation. The once-mighty George 2, the "War President", who towered over the global landscape after 9-11, has slumped into disrepute with the popularity-meter resting on empty.
Oh dear. Just 29% approval.
Don't believe it? The fury of the masses is silently brewing just below the surface. The specter of violence is quite real.
Bush's popularity is now somewhere below Nixon's and just above venereal disease; the perfect spot for a draft-dodging poseur whose bravado cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
Bush managed to surpass Nixon by claiming a 71% disapproval rating; a triumph that Hitler would have admired. Still, given the 3 years left on his tenure as president, there's room for improvement in that category as well.
As if things couldn't get any worse for "the Decider", Karl Rove has just been indicted on charges of perjury.
How will the bad news affect Bush's fragile psyche?
Will he finally crack and bolt himself inside the Capital bell-tower; grimacing and spitting at the passers by? Or will he simply wear a path in the Oval Office rug pacing back and forth like a caged hyena?
Rove is the one indispensable star in the Bush firmament. It's Rove who stitched together the Bush persona; carefully blending religious zeal with Reagan's rustic chumminess. Rove is the force behind our Betsy-McCall president. He's the guy who dresses him up to lark about in military jumpsuit or to play a working class hero in flannel shirt and chainsaw. It's Rove who perfected the pallid-faced hologram that appears whenever one turns on the TV. He chiseled Bush out of wormwood producing a character that looks to have the full range of human emotions with the exception of compassion. Without Rove, junior would still be snoozing peacefully on a barstool in Abilene rather than raining down hellfire on peaceful Muslim countries.
Now, the "shadow-president" is going down; clapped in leg-irons and frog-marched to the Washington hoosegow. Don't expect Karen Hughes to fill the big shoes Karl Rove leaves behind..
The Bush Reich is steadily slipping towards disaster. Defeat is circling overhead like great birds of prey. As Bush's popularity craters and key players are carted off to prison the empire of corruption, bowed-over by the accumulated weight of its war crimes, draws ever-closer to doomsday. Bush's breathing has grown heavier and more raspy, his delivery more labored and hesitant, his demeanor more tentative and agitated. The ground has been cut out from under Bush and his cadres. In a few months they'll be looking over their shoulders with each step as they pass silently into their bunkers.
The inescapable force of public contempt has fallen on the White House like a darkening storm-cloud. The neocon master-plan is unraveling like a spool of yarn skittering across the kitchen floor.
Bush has insinuated corruption into every molecule of the body politic. The torture and violence have removed any claim of legitimacy or moral authority. The social contract has been hacked into small bits and left to feed the crows. The government is now entirely powered by hubris and brute force, the sustenance of tyranny.
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