Thorugh the pain of defeat...

...The wise man looks inwards to see what went wrong. The foolish man looks outwards to see who he can blame. But it takes a truly enlightened man to look both inwards and outwards to find a solution to the problem.

I was thinking of that in the shower in an attempt to blog about something that I've been trying to blog about for months now. It started festering during Katrina and it came to a head just this week. 3 words:

George. Walker. Bush.

Yeesh. Where to start with this one? Katrina was screwed up. Iraq's still a warzone that has not been cleaned up and restored to sovereignty. The environment's been ignored on his watch and he's managed to throw a spanner in the works for environmental conservation. He's failed miserably in trying to set up free trade agreements in Argentina, where he was publicly snubbed by his Argentinian counterpart. Dubya's seen a whole lot of support from his landslide victory in 2004 evaporate in the face of scandal, screw-ups and plain incompetence.

And all through this wave after wave of defeats, Dubya constantly takes the foolish road. He looks outward, constantly looking for answers outside when he makes bad decisions while everything that is wrong is working in the white house. He somehow either doesn't get that he's surrounded himself with dangerous morons (more dangerous than he is) or he realises this and the whole thing takes a whole new sinister twist. But in all this time, has he ever looked inwards? Perhaps questioned the practice of surrounding himself with cronies instead of able minded men and women. Nope. In fact, he was so oblivious to insight that after the Fema f***-up, he went ahead and tried to nominate his biggest fan to the supreme court. I believe this calls for an Oy Vey!

One half of the world sees him as a joke, the other sees him as a threat. Americans are finally beginning to view him in a similar light. It's funny how it's taken them about 5 years to see it, but at least more people are coming around to the idea that a stupid president is not a good thing.

Amazingly enough, despite his shortcomings, he's going to have his 3 more years. There isn't going to be a firing. There isn't going to be (much of) an inquiry. Heck, he'd probably be thrown an amazing party at the end of his term.

Ondine said that the American people were very forgiving. We saw a whole lot of that when Reagan died last year. The American people whitewashed their own memories of a president who was as cracked up as he was charming. The televisions spewed montages of the man and America lapped it all up. It was morbidly fascinating. And the same thing happens with Dubya. It's amazing. My theory is that America, producer of the 10 second byte has truly become the Mtv nation. It watches with interest until the next good bit comes up whereupon it promptly forgets the immediate past 10 seconds after it's seen it. It's an interesting theory that many have gone very in-depth into but here's the thing...like all things American, it's spreading.

Something to think about.