Igor Yopsvoyomatsky
Editor of paranoiaisfact.com
Answers readers’ questions.
Dear Igor,
My grandpa is in the garage cleaning out his combination orgone box/fallout shelter. He says that George W. Bush is planning to use his last gasp of presidential breath to get even with all the liberals, workers, minorities, secularists, environmentalists, journalists, economists, scientists, entertainers, politicians, psychologists, foreigners, veterans, gays, retirees, Muslims–in other words, just about everybody in the world–who opposed, criticized, ridiculed or rejected him. Grandpa says he’s locking himself in his shelter and not coming out until Obama is safely in office. I say he is way paranoid. Bush is an addled, but well-meaning incompetent, who will go quietly to his brush pile in Crawford.
Who is right?
Realist,
Verity, Pa.
Dear Realist,
Grandfather knows best, while you, my way gullible friend, prove the axiom that a realist is someone who thinks everyone is as crudely obvious as he is.
Put yourself in Bush’s place. (If you can accomplish this relatively simple task of empathic imagination.) For the last eight years everything you’ve done has been horribly wrong. You have been exposed and embarrassed time and time again. Your malaprops and misspeaking, your non-grasp of major issues, your pariah status among world leaders, your ritual shunning by John McCain have all been revealed in the harsh glare of the global spotlight. Scholars soberly estimate that you will be considered the worst president in history.
Would you not harbor thoughts of bloody revenge?
But this is nothing compared to the battering you’ve taken from within your own camp. Since the early 20th. Century when the Walker-Bush dynasty joined with the Rockefellers and the Dulles brothers in league with Prussian industrialists, Saudi rulers, and British bankers to control the flow of oil and finance, no leader, including Herbert Hoover, has done as much harm to the cause as you have.
Who will cut you into sweetheart deals? Ignore your mulligans? Eat your three alarm chile?
And it all started so well. Given what you constantly called “political capital” by the 2004 victory you began advancing your domestic agenda under cover of back-door dealing, Rove-like obfuscation and officialese.
Your unfunded No Child Left Behind was an attempt to push voucher schools at the expense of the public educational system which over the years, has produced the major opponents of your class conspiracy.
Your legislation, exempting 6.5 million workers from collecting overtime, was an attack on the trade unions, who are the only defenders of the wealth-producing classes. Its intended effect was to impoverish workers and make them easier to exploit
You passed a law making it prohibitive for an individual to declare bankruptcy. You said too many people were making fraudulent misuse of the existing statutes. But statistics showed that 50% of bankruptcies were caused by inability to pay medical expenses and the 40% by long term unemployment in outsourced industries. Only 3.6% were alleged to be fraudulent.
You bailed out your blood brothers in finance-perhaps hoping for a cushy post-Presidential job- but have refused to allow one penny of the $700 billion to guarantee delinquent mortgages on the grounds that people (not bankers, who are presumably aliens) should have to pay for their mistakes. You’ve given AIG $85 billion fix and just shot them up again for $40 billion more. But not a penny for the auto industry. You say Detroit shouldn’t be rewarded for years of mismanagement, which you define as paying workers too much in salaries, pensions and health care. If Detroit goes bankrupt the union contracts will be inoperative and one of the most cherished dreams of your class—the destruction of the UAW—will be fulfilled.
Now it has all turned to ashes. The popular revulsion against you has led to the election of a man who will overturn every one of your overturnings. Not since FDR has a leader been given such a mandate to attack wealth and privilege. The CEO as hero will cease to be a cultural icon. No more “workaholic tycoons” on the cover of Time Magazine.
Your own class has turned against you. You went, scrapbook in hand, to one university after another, looking for a home for your Presidential Library, which after Cheney has censored it, will consist of a few Christmas cards and Laura’s recipe for Hopping John. You were turned down everywhere until daddy’s arm-twisting in Dallas got you a grudging admission to SMU. But even in the center of Bush power, a committee of professors, rose up to condemn the library.
How does it feel to be on your own?… A complete unknown? You can answer Dylan’s question: Not great!
Now, it’s your turn. “Little Georgie tries so hard,” your dad, the baseball hero said, watching you muff one grounder after another.
Well now Little Georgie, burning with humiliation, is going to smash his tormentors as hard as he can. Look for vindictive lame duck rule changes. For presidential pardons to be granted to the most odious corporate felons. Do not rule out an “inadvertent nuclear accident,” or “sudden, inexplicable eruption” in the watersheds of NY, LA and Chicago of chemicals which cause hair loss and impotence.
We should have a nationwide alert: All infants and elderly people: everyone with a health issue; teachers, union members, aw hell, everybody…
Stay indoors and boil your drinking water until January 21.
