Life on Planet George

I invite you to watch the latest George Bush campaign ad with utter fascination. This is one weird piece of work. It's obviously a mood piece, designed to ratchet up your anxiety then produce the calming antidote in the person of George Bush who is, um, the source of your fear.

The script identifies Kerry's "coalition of the wild-eyed" then shows Gore, Hitler, Dean, Michael Moore, Gephardt, Hitler, Gore, Kerry. In there somewhere are Bush's words: "God told me to strike at Al Qaeda, and I struck them. And then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did," superimposed over another picture of Hitler.

I think this thing has to backfire. Wouldn't any normal, red-blooded American find it creepy as hell to have a president that says God told him to invade a country? When killers start talking about voices in their heads in relation to their victims, we usually call the crazy wagon.

And what's with the images of Hitler? I know the GOP is saying that John Kerry and the Dems compared Bush to Hitler. Of course nobody formally associated with the Kerry campaign or the democratic party ever did. The scenes are taken from submissions to the the MoveOn.org anti-bush ad contest. MoveOn immediately removed them because they were in poor taste.

Despite the expected GOP dishonesty, I am almost grateful they kept the footage in. The end result of this ad, at least for me, is that I think I am viewing a little mini-film of exactly why I shouldn't vote for Shrub. It's as if Nixon made a tape of his accusers calling him a thief and a liar in order to draw attention to the unfair treatment he was receiving. Denial aint just a river in Egypt, ya know.

The GOP doesn't get it. They keep putting out these ads and talking points that criticize people for being angry, like it is just so unbelievable that anybody could actually be pissed off at the international insanity, corruption and full out assualt on our constitution this administration has managed to put together. In the face of, as Molly Ivins put it so admirably, "amazing arrogance wedded to such awesome incompetence" one normal emotional response is anger. What do they expect? Gratitude? Maybe the same candy and flowers they were expecting in Iraq? Sorry Georgie, I want my country back too badly.