Star Dust and Sequels

If Bush Sr. and Jr. were movies.

The cineplex flop called Bush One: the Reagan Afterbirth was a film most of us wanted to forget. Not funny. Grim. Gray. Fumbling. We did not see a thousand points of light – as promised. The stars did not shine more brightly. It seemed that they grew dimmer, in fact. Despite his protests to the contrary, Bush One took us down a lonely road into the negation of the transcendent.

Bush Two began strangely: boosted by Baptists who believed, voting-system fraud, and a clearly corrupt decision by America’s highest court, the son of Bush One was shoehorned into the White House and in front of the cameras, producing a staggeringly strange sequel akin to, say, the flopperoo Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 in which Dennis Hopper, at a career nadir, ‘starred” and then tried to have his name removed, changed, excised—get me out of that film! (Many critics consider it the worst-ever sequel. Anything this bad, however, will inevitably develop a cult following – and it has its fans, as does Bush Two.)

What happens with film sequels is that they degenerate as they go along. Often the first film has a certain integrity and something distinctive and interesting enough to cause filmmakers to want to make a sequel. The sequels are often campy imitations – even parodies (this is the claim fans make for Texas Chainsaw 2 – it’s a clever parody) – of the original. In the case of Bush One and Bush Two, this is frighteningly true. The sequel could fairly be described as a parody of the original.

Bush One was a genuine war veteran and combat pilot – Bush Two avoided active duty in Vietnam by getting his family to pull strings to get in the reserves, then – unlike his fellow pilots in the reserves – never once volunteered for active duty flying missions in Nam. Had this indicated a reluctance to bomb innocent people, it would’ve been a good sign – but such is clearly not the case. When he’s not at the controls and in danger, it’s “bombs away” from Bush Two. Ask him to actually fly the mission and put himself in harms way and it’s “I’ll get back to you on that.” In some sense, this is a parody of his own father’s genuine courage in WWII (which, however, was a war that many felt was a righteous war and thus evoked much courage).

The list goes on. Bush One pulled together an international coalition to cripple Iraq after they invaded Kuwait. It was a set-up: James Baker suggested in a letter to the Iraq government that the U.S. didn’t care if they invaded Kuwait. The invasion gave Bush One a chance to punish Saddam, formerly backed by the U.S., for straying from the U.S. power nexus. But Bush One knew, and wrote in a book later, that actually occupying the country would be a horrible mistake and create a costly and unwinable situation.

As we know, Bush the Second the film gave us a rehash of the Bush One’s Gulf War without the international coalition, without the wisdom to stay out of Baghdad, etc. etc. It was and is a mess, far worse than, say, the semi-campy Godfather 3 that featured Al Pacino shouting in anguish, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

Bush the First and Bush the Second keep repeating themselves with devastating consequences. Both invaded Iraq, both have blundered in their attempts to shape the world in ways favorable to the United States (oil interests), both have instead made themselves and their cronies richer on oil money while weakening the U.S. and the whole planet. And both have actively worked against alternative energy development and Bush the Second had P.R. people from the oil industry editing government scientific reports to excise all research indicating that global warming was a problem.

In short, these two presidents with their ties to the oil industry have done more to accelerate global warming than just about any other politicians in recent history (of course Reagan, as one of his first acts as president, cancelled funding for alternative energy research). Many people have died, many are maimed or crippled, and now radical Islamic resistance to the American worldwide economic/political empire has become far stronger. These are fairly obvious consequences of the policies these men have promoted.

Greed-driven policies are killing the planet. Can anyone look at the massive tax cuts to the super rich, intentional ignorance of global warming, and vast spending on discretionary wars over oil and say, “These men were selfless in their efforts for the common good of all people in the U.S. and around the world”?

Bush One armed Bin Laden to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan, and found out later that fueling radical Islamics to defeat one enemy starts a fire that burns against ALL superpowers. Did he think that the freedom fighters would ONLY dislike the Soviet occupation and not the U.S. as a power in the region?

How about if we arm up Saddam? Bush One backed Saddam in the battle with Iran. Later Saddam hated him for pushing him around.

Why is it that the friends Bush One made later turned to enemies? Bad choices?

How about the idea promoted by Bush Two that the Iraqi people would welcome Americans with open arms and shower troops with flowers upon U.S. liberation (occupation, in fact) of their nation? Why do the people that Bush One and Bush Two think of as friends end up turning against them and the U.S.? Could it be that sense that they are pawns in someone else’s game and resent this?

So too soldiers sent to fight there. So too U.S. citizens in New Orleans, where levee repair was repeatedly vetoed by Bush Two in favor of war spending. And instead of having a sense that global warming is a problem being confronted, we have this sense of betrayal as the storms get worse and the ice caps melt. All of us are pawns in their games.

And yet, is it their game? Do we hate the men or the movies they starred in? How much power do any of us think that George W. Bush actually has – that is, relative to the power of those around him, those getting him jobs throughout his life, those propping him up, coaching him on lines to say to the cameras, guiding him, pushing their weight around when their interests are at stake? In some sense, he too is a pawn. In some sense he is an actor playing a part written by others.

Here’s an excerpt from a short poem that Borges wrote called To Whoever Is Reading Me:

“Other men too are only dreams of time,

not indestructible bronze or burnished gold;

the universe is, like you, a Proteus.”

I love that line:

“El universo es, como tu, Proteo.”

(The universe is, like you, a Proteus.)

We constantly change. The world changes. You and I are Proteus, the god of many forms. We are both of those Bush fellows, too. Over time the killer will be the saint, the lion will be the lamb, the flower will be the spider, the wolf will be the dove, the man will be the woman, the hero will be the lowliest most lost and forlorn soul…

Meteors travel thousands of years through space only to burn in the Earth’s atmosphere and turn to dust containing amino acids that settle slowly down in our skies until they land on the tortilla filled with beans, cheese, salsa, and avocado that you are holding in your fingers. You eat it and that star dust will become part of you. It happens every second of every day. We breath star dust, eat it. It’s GOOD – for life forms relying on amino acids, as most do.

It will join the protein in the formation of a new strand of your hair. And that strand of hair will be pulled out by a lover in bed and travel to sea and all around the earth.

Ah, Proteus… Finally as souls traveling through myriad forms, we burn off the karma until any given recycling pattern loses its compelling quality. The gem of the soul is polished until light passes through unobstructed.

Everything dissolves and is reformed. The dream of a mountain becomes the dream of a valley. Bush One and Bush Two, the movies, dance in light, sound, and time. They can only do as well as they can do within the parameters of their knowledge and awareness and understanding and conditioning. We who watch the films wait for something better. We know that big hunks of stage scenery will be only that in time. The junk of drama.

They strut on the stage, full of sound and fury, their words and actions all too often signifying nothing much – as far as compassion for the downtrodden, the poor, and the dispossessed of the Earth. In terror, some of those poor and defenseless men, women, and children in far-off lands will die. Some will be hurt.

It didn’t have to be this way. But remember that in this life full of star dust and movies flickering on the silver screen or in pixels in plasma, we are all Proteus – and at some point each of us will be them – and at some point each of us will be the opposite of them. Had they known this and felt it deeply, the bombing and wars might not have happened at all.