Judgments

One thing I’ve learned about judgments, Bush: when I catch myself making them—as I do all the time in these diaries, I admit it—I can readily understand that they’re just as much about myself as about the person or people I’m judging. (And that applies equally to all my judgments about you. Agreed.) When I find myself complaining that so-and-so is a lazy bum and full of shit, for example, if I manage to awaken myself from that all-too-familiar unconscious, blaming mode into conscious thought, I generally realize that the one who’s really the lazy bum and full of shit is actually none other than myself.

It’s a healthy—and sobering—exercise. You might try it sometime. Here’s one for you to cut your teeth on: I saw you quoted in the New York Times (I think it was Saturday’s edition; maybe Friday's. No matter,) in answer to a question about those pictures of Saddam Hussein in his underwear, apparently smuggled out by a guard and published first in one of the British scandal sheets. The questioner must have asked if you thought that their publication might further inflame the insurgents, or trigger another round of violent protest in the Middle East. Your answer? “I don’t think a photo inspires murderers. They’re inspired by an ideology that is so barbaric and backwards that it’s hard for many in the Western world to comprehend how they think.”

So here’s where the game gets interesting. Go along with me for one moment. Let’s just suppose that your judgment in this instance, as is so frequently the case, could serve you as a mirror to your own good self, what might there be to learn? I mean, in all honesty? Think Abu Ghraib. Think torture. This inprisonment without the possibility of legal representation, let alone trial. Think death penalty (back in Texas, Bush.) Think Shock and Awe, and the bombing of civilians. Think creationism, the denial of science, the rejection of research with the potential to save the lives of millions. Think abstinence sex education, and the denial of information on birth control or the distribution of condoms, world-wide, with devastating results to more millions of human beings...

I mean, it does seem to me that these and other egregious examples of your policies at work are rooted in that America-first, supposedly Christian ideology you embrace. An ideology—if you’ll forgive me—so barbaric and backwards that it’s hard for many in the Western world to comprehend how you think.