Why Does George Bush Hate Children?

Sorry. That's a completely unfair and reactionary title for a blog post. I'm sure George Bush doesn't really hate children. George Bush only hates middle-class children. OH! I did it again. I'm sorry. I really have to stop writing things like that, because they aren't true in the least. George Bush doesn't hate middle class kids. He just wants them to die.

CRAP! Why do my hands keep typing things like that? They're horrible things to say, and they obviously can't be true. I mean, who hates kids? Aside from one of my last internet dates, who said, "I hate kids. They're dirty and loud and they have no manners." Yeah, she's getting another date.

Now I'm sure that George W. Bush doesn't really hate children. He'd have no one who was on his reading level if he alienated them, so I can't really see it. But the reason my hands keep writing those words is because I can't help but hear similar words echoing as I read this.

BBC article on the bills passed by the U.S. Senate and House to give more money to a plan that offers free health care to children by taxing cigarettes and Dubya doesn't like it because it goes beyond helping poor kids and gets into helping middle-class kids too...you should read it instead of looking at a stupid synopsis that's obviously a bit biased.

I kept hearing someone saying things like, "The terrorists hate our freedom." "They all hate freedom." It struck me, not for the first time, what an asinine argument that is, but how it is used to create a knee jerk reaction and solidify an emotion. You tell the public that the people you want them to hate are beyond all reason. You plant the idea that they are crazy enough to hate something that no one in their right mind could possibly hate. How could the terrorists hate freedom? They must be nothing like me. They must be inhuman. And I'm sure that some liberal somewhere, perhaps Susan Sarandon, is going to fire that little gem ("he hates kids") off at Dubya. Because that's what the reactionary game is. I'm purposely using it here in a comic way to show what an asshole move it is. I absolutely don't want you to walk away thinking that Dubya hates kids. I'm sure he loves kids. I'm also sure he's a complete Santorum-felching grizzly-yiffer in a thousand other ways.

My point isn't to come down on people who may believe that universal health care is a bad idea. I tend to think it's a good one. But my point is not that. My point is, how have you been manipulated lately? I'm sure there are fifty ways that I personally don't even know I've been led to believe something by the media that flat out isn't true. But in the case of, "The terrorists hate our freedom," I'm reminded of the Steve Martin movie, The Jerk. Martin's character is an idiot who's pumping gas. Unknown to him, a sniper has picked his name out of the phonebook and is shooting at him from a far off hilltop. But he's a horrible shot, so he keeps hitting the oil cans stacked behind Martin. Being a jerk, Martin's character makes the Eureka-like exclamation, "He hates these cans!!" and then runs around trying to find a can-less place to hide in a place inherently full of cans.

That's what I hear when I hear statements like Dubya's. They're funny, and a bit sad in their simplicity, in their complete absence of real thought or connection to the reality of the situation. But they sure do get a public motivated to do something. Break out the torches and the pick axes! There's a mob to be joined. There's an enemy to be fought. Keep us afraid. Keep our soundbytes simple. We don't want to think. We just need to know who it is we're supposed to hate today.

*sigh* Okay. George Bush...might hate children. Go. Be simple. Don't think about the flipside to the coin. Go find this hater of little babies. Protect your country. Haters of children are haters of democracy. They shouldn't be allowed to stay in the country. Or vote. We should, in fact, eliminate anyone who doesn't think like we do. Infidels, all of them. I think that the ghost of Thomas Jefferson would grant you fifty virgins and a bottomless Diet Coke if you got rid of all the people who don't think like us. If you maybe hurled yourself forward in an SUV full of home-made explosives and just got rid of them for us.

What? Don't look at me like that. Everyone's doing it.

More Haiti to come. Hopefully I'll post something this afternoon.