I've been pondering the news about Bush personally authorizing the NSA to spy on Americans, and my own reaction to it. A lot of folks are rightfully outraged by this, and normally I would be, too. After all, who wouldn't be pissed off to hear that the President thinks he's above the law and that he sees no problem with spying on American citizens? That's the kind of thing that happened in the Soviet Union, but was only supposed to happen here on "X-Files." By all rights I should be joining in the fury and no doubt prompting concerned emails from my mother about the language on this blog.
So what's going on? It's not like I haven't risen to the occasion before, or that I don't think Bush and his cronies are trying to install themselves as permanent overlords with no oversight on anything from anyone.
Here's a theory. Going to war in Iraq was a shock. Learning that we're locking people up in secret prisons and making Christmas ornaments out of scorched testicles was a shock. When Katrina hit, finding out just how much Bush doesn't care about anything but killing Ay-rabs and stroking his friends was a shock. Watching the media suck up to Bush and talk about how popular he was even while his poll numbers dropped steadily from 9/12/2001 on was a kind of low-grade continual irritation. After all that, finding out that Bush also has his people spying on us is just icing on the cake.
So yeah, he's acting like he's Louis XIV. Yeah, he should be impeached. And yeah, Bush is the worst president in recent memory, if not ever. That's all true, and I can shout about it until I'm blue in the face, but I suspect that most people who come to this blog (all 8 hits a day of you) already know that. I doubt it does a damn bit of good for me to waste my energy on Dubya and his failings, and while it's apparently his job to be an asshole it's not my job to point it out. So for now I have no outrage, just exhaustion and disbelief that this horrible excuse for a human being is still in power.
Posted by Jason at December 19, 2005 01:02 PM