The Boy in the Bubble

From 9/13/04 – Only updated with photos and sadly, still relevant

The magical mystery jar of Vietnam history now has four hands grasping for the contents inside, with respective campaign riffraff of both the guilty fiends howling indictments at one another for stealing the classified cookies and exploiting their deliciousness for political gain. In terms of legitimate behavior of powerful men and women in this country, the campaign Mafioso, talking heads and the fiends themselves have managed to inspire dictionary publishers all over the world to engage in heated debate over the need for a completely new word to describe it. Scholars, writers and satirists are in a state of panic as these past few weeks of buffoonery have raised the bar, and many fear that old time favorites such as ‘farce’, ‘mockery’ and ‘ludicrous’ just won’t get the job done anymore.

There is no rioting, mass panic or spontaneous combustion to report from all of this just yet, but experts predict that a few more baseless statements and they may have to raise the nation’s irrationality alert level to red for the first time in nearly four years. State governors were notified of the potential crisis and some immediately instructed public access stations to roll continuous emergency broadcast episodes of ‘Mr. Wizard’ and ‘3-2-1 Contact’ in hopes that the swelling would go down.     
Many of them attempted to even put their National Guard units on alert, unfortunately, of the soldiers within those units that weren’t already deployed, the rest had schedules booked solid already with grand jury testimony by day, and intense drugging sessions administered by Pentagon officials at night. Who, by the way, have ‘gone off the reservation’ in fingering our royal family as well as the CIA to answer as to why so many prisoners were sodomized with night-sticks instead of glow-sticks as the memos instructed. For the past three years it seems that all of our government agencies in the ‘kicking-ass’ business have been desperately trying to out-scoundrel one another for the president’s affection. We’re all riddled with anticipation over which agency he’s going to hand the rose to, and the latest news concerning coverage is that NBC is offering 50 billion to cover the finale.

So is this the end of the world that ‘Ghostbusters’ warned us about? Has the pendulum swung once more to the days when we burned witches because they failed to drown when thrown into a lake? In prisons across the country young men and women are locked up due to various circumstances such as possession of marijuana, wrongful imprisonment, false accusation and lack of representation. Meanwhile a prerequisite in most universities offering political science degrees now require up to 3 additional requisite courses, the names of some include ‘Introduction to Inaccurate Script Writing Theory’, ‘Bamboozle 101’ and ‘Three Card Monty of the Political Mind’. Basically, dishonesty has become interpretive truth, and dumb luck has become crime. If you’re born with the four-leaf clover in your soul and a silver spoon in your mouth, the world is your pincushion. Otherwise, the government would appreciate it if you could protect the country, work hard, turn sixty-five and then die as soon as possible.

This brings me to the subject of the president’s ‘sham initiative’ during the Vietnam War, which has been injected with some powerful steroids in the form of memorandums written by his commanding officer at the time, which clearly show that he was less than willing to do his part. Apparently induction into the country club of military units and a million dollars worth of flight training, amidst a war that mass-produced millions of corpses in its time, was not enough to quell his insatiable addiction to pampered life. Apathetic to the notion that he may have had more than enough handed to him already in his life, the man who’s now running for re-election urged his commanding officer at the time to swallow the million dollars loss, get over it and put aside some time to doctor up the records, so he could swing down and grab a copy on his way to Marti-Gras.

While this untimely development has been poked, prodded, chastised, championed and wildly ignored, something about its alikeness with his performance as president began to eat at my brain. An intriguing dynamic of the memorandums in terms of how it relates to the country today, is that the Bush administration has been noticeably void of accountability during its first term. It’s as if the word itself had been deemed low-brow and counter-productive. In spite of significant failures, which in any other arena of employment would have resulted in mass terminations, he has taken the same approach that the world took towards him back in the 70’s and ever since. His astounding indifference towards failure is now making a disturbing amount of sense.

Adversity shapes each of us as we come up through the years. But what about the person who grows up in a vacuum? Without having to face the consequences of failure in any sort of a realistic way in life, this son of privilege seems to have become convinced that his kind is above it all. This would explain his lack of interest in newspapers, public opinion or the concept of ‘debt’. By ignoring the immorality of his own life pattern of selfishness and indulgence for so long, perhaps his brain evolved over time to the point where now, negativity of any kind exists as nothing more than a figment of his imagination.

His history of success thanks to boundless patronage deriving from peoples’ fear of his father’s wrath has turned the ‘boy in the bubble’ into a true picture of what’s wrong and has been wrong about this country for a long time. At no time was he was never forced to leave the bubble, and as a result the concepts of merit and suffering have never existed to him. His tax cuts for the wealthy exhibit precisely the kind of wildly lopsided perception he has on unwarranted suffering, and who amongst the people of this nation are in need of a helping hand because of it. Could he actually consider it noble to strengthen the grasp of patronage in America, along with its ability to restrict the amount of those who may work hard to become wealthy enough to someday get a piece of it?

If so, would it then be too far of a stretch to hypothesize that a factor in his unwillingness to hold his staff accountable might be a natural sense of duty to protect the sanctity of this web of patronage for the comfort it provided him? Were tax cuts for the wealthy actually a sincere gesture on his part to give something back in appreciation to those who facilitated his care-free, connected stroll through life? Humans are naturally loyal to what they know and love, and in terms of respect for the bubble he was allowed to exist in throughout this life, that may have been his assurance to the web that he was grateful. For any of the Ken Lay-types who did not yet know of him, the tax cuts were a ‘Bat-Signal’ up in the sky, letting each of them know that he was one of them.

Patronage on high levels can intimidate anyone, especially those hoping to ride on the same coattails as the family member dogging it on their watch. This dynamic has been a reality for our president since the day he was born, and in the story of his National Guard experience, there are memos written by commanders who were urged to ‘sugar coat’ his lack of attendance. If this had been you or I, we most likely would have found ourselves in prison. What really kills me about these people of charmed lineage though, is that they’re never able to respect the fact that everyone’s salary in this world is paid by someone else. If the top dog in an organization appears to be unconcerned by consequences, the performance of team members will take shape to emulate that example.

To energize a team towards achieving a high level of performance, expectations must be clearly understood by both leader and subordinate. The leader’s job is to set the standard by the example they portray. It is then up to them to help their people in achieving expectations, while ensuring that failure to meet standards is not tolerated. This aspect of being successful in such a role is absolutely essential, and when it is ignored or not communicated properly, mediocrity is the result. Passive aggressive personalities are often most susceptible towards realizing this the hard way as the selfish goal of avoiding confrontation takes precedent over the job being done right. A fear of being fired residing within the mind a leader is usually what cures them of this addiction. But who ever had the courage or the complete lack of sense to risk their career by firing George W. Bush? The power of patronage creates such monsters, and the odds are always in their favor.

This is true even to the point where someone like our president can get away with promising ANYTHING to get people off of his back, and then never actually have to come through. Brazen words spoken to guarantee something that then fails to transpire, such as the capture of Osama Bin Laden dead or alive, gives us a perfect example of what George W. Bush is missing. It is clearly seen by reviewing such statements made by him, as well as the memorandums recently released, what lessons this man never had to learn in life. Reading a couple of articles a day about his take on the state of the economy, education, health care or the war in Iraq tells me that he’s been learning these lessons on the taxpayers’ dime. That, and he’s not exactly a quick study.

There’s a saying in life, “Don’t let your mouth write a check that your butt can’t cash.” Until he found himself in a position where he was solely responsible for the balance in the account, bounced checks were always someone else’s problem. Perhaps the voters will ensure come November that it won’t be the case with the checks he’s bounced over the past four years. I happen to think that while sitting in a kindergarten class on the morning of September 11th, 2001, he recognized for the first time of his life what the absence of someone to bail him out of trouble really meant. Could it have been that morning when he understood that for the first time in his entire life, he was on his own? Maybe he pondered that reality through each of the seven minutes he sat there.

Connecting the dots is of course a lot easier when the information is available. When it pertains to the current Bush administration, a lawsuit is where you need to start if you want to catch even a whiff of what the country is actually paying for. Thankfully the integrity of the military meant more to Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian than did the importance of George W. Bush’s desire to have fun. Bush’s million dollars worth of training back then didn’t mean a thing to him, similar to the world record amount of debt he’s been able to amass from a surplus in under four years.

It’s been an incredible turn of events in the history of our nation and the world. Our collective sense of purpose has never been more skewed here in America. The fiends and their band of Mafioso, misfits, talking heads and controversial book authors have exchanged colors. Circumstance now determines what they believe and don’t believe, and in turn has determined what we all believe and don’t believe as well. Vote-getting, and the natural divide amongst Americans with our natural desire to win, has allowed the fiends to switch so often that instead of being able to argue over the merits of commonly known principles such as republicans being fiscally responsible and intent on protecting rights, all we can wrap our heads around long enough to form an argument over is whatever showed up on the wire in a given news cycle.

The fiends and their minions have morphed the national election season which used to represent Uncle Sam and somehow turned into a nonsense-jabbering transvestite trying to pick a fight with God, mother earth and anyone else who dares open their mouth in defiance. It fell apart in this way when we were lulled into a peaceful sleep over a decade that ended with investment bonanza, government surplus and home run records to cheer about. Our guard was down in more ways than we’ll ever even realize, and in this state of complacency, we handed the keys to a patronage invented myth, a bubble-boy who had no business even being an option in the first place.