Stay the Course

George Bush never heard of the phrase, “stay the course,” except he’s on tape saying it about a million times. This phrase is so old fashioned and goofy that I never EVER used it, and almost laughed when the elder Bush did. It’s like, “by cracky!” It’s like a pack of Lucky’s for a quarter! It’s like Rock and Doris! Say, that’s swell, old man. Maybe they just talk that way at Skull and Bones.

What worries me is Bush’s hearing. Maybe the echo of his speech is too pronounced in his head to clearly hear his own words, but the rest of us hear them okay. And he gets to see them in that teleprompter (yes, people, he can read), so that may have convinced him that the words weren’t his. Can he be as stupid as he seems? I don’t think so, but I’m also not much for conspiracy theories, so maybe it’s a limitation of my imagination.

Or maybe it’s that conservatives, in general, are as stupid as they seem. When Bush claims not to have said something, he’s not trying to convince the opposition. He’s always speaking to his constituency, and maybe they react to him as followers of a charismatic leader. I don’t mean JFK’s or WJC’s sort of lady-killer charisma, but an older, more classical kind that’s expressed by the likes of Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Gandhi, and Hitler. Maybe Bush has that sort of quality and has millions of true believers under his spell. Can’t prove that shit by me because I just don’t see it any more than I see Santa Claus in the same terms as Mother Theresa.

All the same, I’ve gotta admit that the goofiest people I ever met were also the ones who kept that Santa Claus-Tooth Fairy stuff up the longest. Incidentally, they were also conservatives, but not Branch Davidians. The scary ones, as opposed to the goofy ones, are the ones who think that Santa Claus is a heresy--a false god. That’s a serious accusation, by gum, by gosh, by golly. Believing Bush’s doublespeak is at least as bad as the quasi-worship of Santa Claus. After all, they both promise good things to the little boys and girls who were nice, except kids don’t really get very excited about tax breaks for the rich or Attorney General appointments for under-qualified latinos. Iraqi Sunni kids certainly don’t get very excited about no Shi’ah left behind, or democracy through the barrel of a gun, but they like the guns.