Shrub Boy

Molly Ivins had it right. He is Shrub boy. He is an unrepentant addict and plays the role of the clown. He dances, shuffles with affectation when lined up to be photographed, he plays the Saudi princes’ clown and pet. He proclaims the fight for Freedom and Democracy, yet he begs oil from a nation where women are nearly enslaved and cannot vote. And sells them 20 billion dollars of arms.

He is incapable of being a man, incapable of making decisions because of his dearth of knowledge. He needs to be liked, if not loved; but the ones who love him, do so for his cuteness, his boyishness. They love him as we love children. For he is useless as a man. He is not a leader and he got to where he is on the coattails of his narrow, bureaucratic father and his family’s wealth. A father who helped create an anti-American rebel movement in Central America. By giving away guns and money. The same way we helped create the monster middle eastern terrorists. They began with our guns and money. They grow with our guns and money and their hatred for us.
He will always be a shrub because he has never done his work. Crass religion without self knowledge or awareness was his cheap avenue to end his drug abuse. He made no amends. Has never examined anything to its depth; has never admitted being wrong. Has the arrogance and narcissism of the unrecovered addict.

And now he is tired of playing the king. All of our natural disasters have made him weary, and shed light on the fragility of a system, an infrastructure which has not been given even bare maintenance. Despite hundreds of cries for repair. No, the shrub wishes to hide in Texas and cut and hack livings shrubs down to nothing. He’s had enough of this game which he never prepared for, always skipped out, had no history of fortitude and completion; and he never developed the basic curiosity about others, other cultures, other people, to be even a mediocre player.
I’m thinking of shrub as the financial markets unwind from their gorging of greed. Is it no coincidence that these past 8 to 10 years have spawned legions of the super rich, the wealthy and the wealthiest. The pigs have been gorging at the trough of unfettered creation and sale of new “financial instruments”; new things to purchase for investment. Intricate creations whose only value derived from the minds of math wizards; bought and sold, given Moody’s Best Ratings; valued by the hedge funds which made money from air. And the ultimate Ponzi scheme played out; with the boys at the top who were selling in hedge funds getting fattest.
Didn’t we learn our lesson with the Savings & Loan bailout, with Enron, with Tobacco, with Haliburton, with Blackhawk, and now with Bear Stearns and an entire financial industry complicit in destroying people’s lives. But always getting bailed out with our tax payer dollars. Boys who squander our money, making their money on ours. The money business, industry, has its own codes, language, expectations, privileges and discriminations. Oh, we were fooled once again into thinking that they would behave. That they would be happy with the large salaries society bestows upon them in exchange for trusting that they will take care of our money, our future, our children’s future. That they wouldn’t do it again. That they would behave. That their codes and our expectations would keep them honest. But it hasn’t and it never will. And this time it’s huge.

So I’ve been thinking of shrub’s ineptitude all day long. Do we have a Franklin Delano Roosevelt in our midst? Will Apricot (Barack in Magyar means apricot) Man pull it out?