Worst President in History? ..Maybe not

With all of the negative anti-Bush rhetoric flying around, it's important to remember the administration's vast accomplishments - many of which are clearly outlined on Bush's reelection website. It's a lengthy read, so I shall summarize. Since that fateful day in September, Bush has successfully completed the liberation of both Iraq and Afghanistan, as evidenced by the big-ass American army shooting all sorts of shit at will in both; he has drastically rearranged the Taliban and become the number one spokesperson for Al Qaeda recruiting in the world; he altruistically freed thousands of Iraqi citizens from the tyranny of being alive, with that compassionately conservative bombing program known as "shock-and-awe" (residents of Baghdad proper have even described the exploding smart-bombs as little shrapnel kisses blown from 25,000 feet above); he deposed President Saddam Hussein, who although cannot by definition technically be a terrorist (note the "President" before his name denoting his status as the leader of a internationally-recognized sovereign nation) was a real asshole; and confiscated his cool little gun to hang on his wall in the Oval Office next to his "100th Mentally-Retarded Inmate Electrocuted" plaque. He also eliminated Saddam's notorious "torture rooms" and "rape chambers" so that they could be replaced by rooms where people can be tortured in a more acceptablly Judeo-Christian manner by properly-trained United States military professionals and more free market-oriented mercenaries (many of whom took valuable time off from gun shows and hate crimes to uphold these admirable American values). Maybe most importantly, he courageously used all of his 17 vacations and 220 golf rounds over the last three and a half years to single handedly prevent all additional terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. It's just too bad he can't give himself the medal of honor, or can he? And all of these impressive accomplishments while still finding the time to drastically roll back our most basic freedoms, cut healthcare and environmental programs, piss off those silly foreigners with their stupid international law and goddamned multilateral treaties, find innovative ways of funnel pesky U.S. national security secrets to both Iran and Bob Novak, and prove to the world's children the educational gratuitousness of literacy. Bravo Bush!!

The Conservative Dichotomy: The World Hates Us, I Mean Loves Us..Wait..Shit!

Woe is the poor Republican party; besmirched, mocked, disdained, stranded on an island of righteousness in a sea of depravity and moral relativism. Waves of prurient, God-taunting degradation crashing upon their be-haloed heads with only the fibrous moral density of their bones to keep them from going under. A vibrant flower in a cesspool of.... well, you get the idea. Oh yes, make nary a mistake it's a bitch being a hard-nosed, kick-ass, stand-up-for-what's-wholesome conservative in today's world. And no one knows this better than that poor bastard George W. Bush, always catching flak from, among others, the lascivious, hateful, liberal media (who, when not drinking herbal tea, counting their silver pence and sodomizing young men, are at all out war with the White House). Everyone shits on poor George, but luckily for America, when God (using the Supreme Court presumably as his hand) appoints us a President, he picks a sturdy "One." And better yet, he goes out and gets himself an old sinner, someone who can comprehend the true debasement of the American left. Who better than a spoiled rich kid who snorted lines of coke off of the taut nipple of a Houston hooker to properly oversee the jailing of millions of disenfranchised blacks for doing their drugs without the benefit of Presidential patriarchism? Who better than a privileged National Guard absentee to send troops to their death under the overstretched banner of a religious mandate? Somehow though, to the Right's amazement, these glorious qualities are lost on the great masses of valueless liberals, who conspire to tear old W. and his fellow heartland heroes down by any means possible.

But how does all of this heroic little guy bullshit square with the oft-repeated notion that the crazy Left is drastically out of touch with real America? How does the well-publicized notion of the "liberal media" square with Fox's subtly immodest slogan of America's News Channel? How can Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity be the biggest stars in political talk radio and still be drowned out by that great liberal echo chamber? Do the Washington Times, New York Post and Wall Street Journal think of themselves as fringe papers? Do Bill O'Rielly and Joe Scarborough really qualify as alternative, even indie, programming? It seems the Right can't make up their collective mind (if it may be called such a thing) whether they are the voice of the people en masse or the place for the special few faithful to find refuge from the rest of us. They are perpetually torn between playing the consummate underdog overachievers, little political Rocky Balboas as it were, and feigning utter shock at the elitist disconnectedness of the Democrats, or worse - actual liberals. How can such cognitive dissonance continue? By living a delusion. By cultural gerrymandering. By imagining that those living in the bulky red states are the real Americans and every heathen living in New York or Los Angeles (don't even get me started on San Francisco) have sadly forgotten what this country is all about. They live in a dream world where bible-belt cowboys are somehow more representative of America than any "Hollywood liberal" could ever be, despite the fact that most Americans don't actually wear cowboys hats, have never rustled cattle, and don't give a flying fuck how many payload tons the latest Ford truck can carry. In this sense, it appears that our cultural imagery is as misrepresentative as our democracy, disproportionately diminishing the relevance of the vast throngs of immorals living in our various Babylonian metropolitans. I can only hope that one day we will all rise up and make these neanderthals as marginalized as they have long clamored to be. Let us make underdogs of them yet.