October 20, 2004 BLY1020
In reality, the horrible event called the Bush presidency is over
now. It remains only to start the sort of planning that enabled MacArthur to
retrieve what he could from the fall of Manila. Elaborate failures in
high places have happened before. It's a repeating event in American
history, and in the history of every nation.
President Bush has not really registered the failures in his life.
When his early oil venture failed, he was bailed out by the Saudi oil
family or by his father. But when he bets all his money on a lunatic
invasion of Iraq, no one can bail him out. During his debates with John
Kerry, no one could bail him out. When Kerry told him, in front of
millions of people, that the war was wrongly begun, wrongly planned,
wrongly carried out, he had to resort to making faces. There is only so
much the Saudi oil family can do.
It has become clear that the Emperor has no clothes. The Grimm
Brothers fairy story tells us that if the Emperor's people report that
the Emperor is well-dressed, all the people standing around will swear
they see the same thing. But his nakedness became visible during those
amazingly vivid Bush-Kerry debates. The Emperor's lack of clothes is
part of a larger failure.
The invasion of Iraq was a hare-brained act, a colossal mistake. The
dissolving of the Iraq army was another mistake, which Paul Bremer
himself admitted last week. But Bush will not admit his mistakes.
It's hard to believe that the president and the voters cannot see
disaster when it's brought up close to their faces. Our nation -- with
its collapsing schools, its failing factories, its huge increase of
poverty -- is a sight just as vivid. If voters can close their eyes to
this daily disaster, why not to the huge disaster happening to the U.S.
Army?
Hoping for the best is an adolescent characteristic. Closing your eyes
to your own addiction is a childish response. Choosing a self-deceptive
hero in a crisis and thanking him for lying to you about the world
belongs to that Disneyland immaturity for which the theme parks are
famous.
Leaders need an instinct for truth. Not to be able to take in truth
leads to artificial universes, to hundreds of soldiers in the coffin
and millions of demoralized citizens.
During a few months in 2000 and 2001, the New York Times Magazine
was full of essays arguing that the United States was the natural inheritor
of the Roman and British empires. Our production capacity, the military
bases we have all over the world, our elaborate economy, make us a
natural to take over the reins of empire and drive the teams of empire
horses. The argument seemed so logical at the time. But it turns out we
can't control the horses. Given our ruined schools, our devastated
Flint, Michigans, our millions of working people worried over the next
paycheck, how could we possibly create the ingenious, studious,
many-sided intelligences needed to guide an empire?
After a few months of grandiosity and falling statues, the test
results come in. After Rumsfelding our way down the river, the
waterfall suddenly appears. George W. Bush is not exactly a fool; he is
a representative of our enlarged ability to lie to ourselves. SUVs
represent our ability to lie to ourselves about the abundance of oil.
Many Democrats drive SUVs.
We have all participated in the national illusion and self-pleasing
prevarication that a C-student can guide the country in a time of
complicated issues, that a mule can win the Kentucky Derby, that a man
who doesn't read books can guide the fate of nations. Mark Twain in
"Huckleberry Finn" gives a metaphor for all that in his pair the Duke
and the King. They pretend to be secret royalty, but Mark Twain knows
they would eventually be hurried out of town in tar and feathers. In
Iraq, we are the King and the Duke; let's stop lying about it. We'll be
lucky to get out of town alive.
Robert Bly, author, poet and translator, is a founder of Minnesota
Artists for Kerry. He'll appear at a voter mobilization event with
Garrison Keillor, Louise Erdrich and others at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at
the College of St. Catherine's O'Shaughnessy Auditorium. For tickets
call 651-989-5151.
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