I love
George W Bush. He is
perfect. Ever since I first became aware of his existence - which was shortly after he won the election in America and became president - I have been fascinated with him, and I realise now that this fascination was more than the curiosity one displays when examining photographs of
gunshot wounds, but something much deeper. I believe a lot of people love Mr Bush without realising it. No so much physically, although he has
vulnerable lips, but as an icon. They say that we get the leaders we deserve, and we deserve Mr Double-You. We should be thankful.
I believe George W Bush will win the next election. Whether you think this is a good thing or not, you probably believe the same yourself. You might not want to believe it, but you do, because it's true; he will win, and with a greater majority (or, indeed 'with a majority'). Furthermore, I believe that the American people will become so enamoured of Mr Bush that they will clamour for the president's term limit to be abolished, so that George can win the next election and the election after that, until he grows old and ascends to Valhalla, there to keep watch over the land forevermore.
It gives me hope that this underdog, this little man, can go from obscurity to being president; that this inarticulate son of a civil servant, blessed neither with charm nor good looks, can become America's representative to the world, beating the beast Gore. He is America's champion; the knight they choose of their own free will to assume the field. We have Tony Blair, a fertile man, and they have George W Bush, a man who has lived a life. It gives me hope that a majority of America's voters share my belief that he is the greatest citizen of the greatest nation on Earth.
I first read 1984 at an early age - I was born in 1976 and I remember the book still being set in what was then the future, so I must have been 6 or 7. I was a precocious child, very much into 'Star Wars' and space technology, and '1984' was a science fiction book and thus fair game for my voracious desire for more of the same. 1984 had a big effect on me; although probably not in the way that George Orwell expected. I understood that it was not Star Wars, it was a serious work for grown-ups.
Although I wondered what the ultimate goal of the book's society was supposed to be, I also wondered why Winston Smith was not happier with his lot, given that he had his own flat, a television and a job. That was more than what my dad had at the time, and more than I have now. Granted, Winston wasn't 'free', but who is free in this world? And what did Winston do with his 'freedom' when he got it? He rented a terrible room in a poor house and had sex with a woman who might have been part of his imagination or not. The torture with rats didn't seem as extreme as the stuff in Alien and the video nasties my cousin used to watch, and the stuff about loving Big Brother and believing in two mutually-incompatible things just didn't make sense to me at all because I was young, an only child, didn't have a brother, and didn't know what love was because kids are entirely selfish and love is a selfless thing.
I have since come to understand 1984, except for the thing about loving your brother because I am still and will remain an only child. That kind of love remains mysterious to me. Many people today believe in mutually-incompatible things; stereotypically right-wing people hate immigrants and minorities because they see them as plague-spreading scum, whilst loving them because they provide cheap labour, whilst stereotypically left-wing people tend to see all non-western cultures in a positive light, although only as a shallow collection of trendy fashions and foodstuffs, because they're more 'primitive' and therefore more 'genuine', whilst simultaneously deploring the attitudes they espouse. Thus we have thinkers getting in a twist whilst trying to mask their own racism (by, for example, talking about 'the zionist entity' instead of saying 'jews') or trying to justify women having to wear veils, by eventually either (a) denying that it happens at all or (b) just ignoring the issue entirely.
In any case, I re-read 1984 recently and checked what Everything2 had to say about it. The reviews here are mostly dismissive, presumably because it makes one feel big and powerful to kick the classics and deface the products of earlier generations, and also because the reviewers are left wing and would rather that the book does not exist because it exposes their devil lies. I distrust the kind of people who call George Orwell 'Eric Arthur Blair'. We know that he used a pen name; you don't need to tell us that you know also. There isn't really anybody to champion 1984 any more; left-wing people obviously don't like it and right-wing people don't like George Orwell, and in any case the book is more than half a century old and people aren't taught it at school any more, people are instead taught non-controversial things about nothing.
Why not teach The Godfather and be done with it? It'll prepare people for the real world more than Maya bloody Angelou. Heck, just give the kids a pistol and a bag of drugs and see how much money they can make, it's better than being on the dole. Society tries to fill us with respect for the rule of law, but without giving us anything solid to respect, because the law is hobbled by regulations and rules, prohibitions designed by jealous, corrupt, evil people, lawbreakers themselves, to prevent the law from working properly. The law should be an iron force, an unbending will, a crushing, unstoppable concrete block with spikes on one side and chains on the other.
And that is one of the reasons why I love George Bush. Many people and organisations tried to bully him into bottling up the ecstacy of war, but he was steadfast; he refused to be dragged down, down to the gutter in which the socialists thrive, like a virus, not quite a living thing, not quite an independent creature, instead forced by their own limitations to parasite on the goodness of others, sucking the blood from their host and replacing it with pus. Instead of this nightmare Bush pressed on, backed with a force of moral will so strong as to persuade Mr Tony Blair, leader of the world's socialists, to join him.
Now Iraq is smashed and turned to chaos; disordered, but no longer a threat to the world, now and in the near future. Long may his crusade continue. There should be more war, but in the southern hemisphere this time. The 20th century was a time of wars in the northern hemisphere, and we eventually got sick of war, but abroad, the people south, they want all the weapons we can sell them or make themselves. Peace will not reign until people have come close to the edge, the drop-off point, and stared into the crushing ocean depths that lie beyond.