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aborting a president
Friday, January 27 2006
[REDACTED]
The defiance of George W. Bush in the face of all that has come to pass: the revelations of his administration's many shenanigans, his repeatedly-exposed incompetence, and his tanking poll numbers, these might bewilder you or me, but that defiance gives comfort to the wedge of the American populace that would be happy (or imagine they would be happy) in an America completely unlike the one we live in.
"Despotic regimes do a lot of the same things that liberal democracies do, but it's the differences that matter."
-anonymous (something I read online a few weeks ago)
The human capacity to accept totalitarianism pervades our species like veins of fat through cheap beef. One of the many existentially-sad things about the presidency of George W. Bush is the proof it provides that there is no American exceptionalism when it comes to that.
Today I found myself entertaining the idea of a teeshirt or bumpersticker design reading simply, "Abort Bush." This got me to wondering whether or not such a teeshirt would run me afoul of the Secret Service. After all, if you're a member of the religious right, "abort" is a synonym for "murder," in the same way that "execute" is a synonym for "exact justice." But "abort" is a nuanced term that really means "stop," as in "stop the merry go round I want to get off!" If you're poor and pregnant and living in Mississippi, an abortion, unattainable though it may be, is potentially your way of escaping the fate that is befalling your friends (and befell many or all of your ancestors), a fate that robbed your dynasty of its ability to accumulate wealth, education, and status. Similarly, an abortion of a president is the way our country could avoid the fate that has befallen many other great nations that succumbed to nepotistic rot and the rise of superstitious kookery. Unlike many countries, ours actually provides a mechanism for aborting a president that doesn't result in his death (recall that Nixon died in 1994, in the same month as Kurt Cobain, 20 years after his presidency was aborted - something that happened in same month that Charles Lindbergh died).
Soon after we bought it, Gretchen put an "IMPEACH BUSH" bumpersticker on our new '97 Honda, and though it's a welcomed relief from all the brain-dead ribbons one normally sees on vehicles, the prospect of a President Cheney doesn't exactly gladden my heart. It would serve our democracy better if the constitution had a provision allowing for the abortion of an entire regime if it should prove itself to be as crooked and unAmerican as the current administration.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?060127 feedback
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