W the Movie

Here’s a link to the trailer of the new Oliver Stone joint, “W.” which apparently gives George W. Bush the biopic treatment he deserves --- contemptuous and mocking.

www.wthefilm.com

I heard Oliver Stone talking on Bill Maher's show about this movie. Crazed, loony liberal that he is, Stone said that he did not make shit up for this movie. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, but that he didn't need to. The information and quotes on the public record about Bush were more dramatic and theatrical than he could have fabricated himself.

I believe that.

Stone also alluded to the fact that GWB is a mystery. I really believe that, too. Here we are, 8 years later and as much as we --- or at least, I --- like to belittle the man, I don't know anyone who has a real sense of what he's made out of or what makes him tick. I certainly don't.

It's easy to dismiss him with pejoratives that capture an element of his persona --- chimp, frat-boy, asshole, bully, etc... --- but he's more than just that one (or even all) of those things.

I just can't figure the guy out at all.

For instance... I don't even know if he's smart or dumb. Honestly.

I know it's easy to call him a moron for all the obvious, visible reasons he gives us. But, hold on, this is a guy who got to do pretty much every thing he ever wanted to do in his life by his 60th birthday. Without even starting to try until after he was 40. And who has manipulated supposedly brilliant guys like Tony Blair and Colin Powell and then flushed them away like used toilet paper afterwards. There's something sharp and pointed in there someplace, but I don't know what it is exactly.

In a similar manner, I can't really fathom what pleasure he has gotten out of the Presidency. Clinton clearly reveled in the pomp and attention and chance to be the biggest mover in the world's most powerful country. I don't sense that in W, though. It's like he's kind of going through the motions so much of the time... cramped and sulky and reluctant. And other times --- usually inappropriate --- he's loosey-goosey and near manic with high-spirited nicknames and jigs and personal teasing pokes at reporters and foreign dignitaries.

Also, is he a dickhead or not? Yeah, he mocked a woman about to get lethally injected. But he seems to be a genuinely loving and decent dad to his daughters.

Some other things I don't know for certain:

Is he really all that religious? Is he really not drinking? What happened with that “pretzel” passing out incident? Is he really so intellectually incurious as he appears? Does he really not follow events at all? What really motivated him to shoot for the highest office in the land? Of all the things he did the last 8 years, which did he really want and which were thrust on us by the scum-circle around him?

In short, just who is this guy that's been running the show since January of 2000?

I've read the books, I've watched the news, I've combed the blogs. And he's still a mystery to me even, as he's getting ready to pack his bags.

I think that's bizarre. This last eight years has been tumultuous and wrenching and exhilarating beyond any eight years I've ever lived through in my life. 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Katrina, the Bush Boom, the Financial Meltdown. The Bailout.

In other words, W and I have been been through some shit together.

Whether I agree or disagree with the decisions he's made. I should have a sense of some kind of understanding --- at least knowing at an emotional level --- why he's made the decisions he's made. Like some die-hard 1930's Republican might hate the New Deal, but at least understand why FDR was pushing it out there.

Or --- here’s a better analogy --- how some hippy might not like Nixon, but at least understand why a paranoid, fascist, rotten-hearted creep like him would do the things he did.

I honestly don’t have that with Bush.

Bush's intellectual and emotional core has been hidden behind multiple, light-proof, airtight seals and chambers --- the Republican Party aristocracy, the emotionally deformed Bush Family, the ultra-secretive White House lockdown, and his own impermeable smirking facade --- for so long, I've given up on ever glimpsing his psyche. What's more, I haven't read any credible accounts from people who have. For all his folksy informality, he's one of those sphinxes --- like the iconic Reagan --- who leave even their closest associates (never friends, these people never have real friends) scratching their heads about what's really behind the affable shell.

Maybe this film will help illuminate this psyche.

I kind of doubt it. This biographical information has been out there long enough and hasn't really shed any usable light yet. For whatever mysterious reasons, George W. Bush has been a complete, unalloyed, toxic, flaming, radioactive, crashing disaster of a Chief Executive. He's combined awful ideas with even worse executions. He's weakened or destroyed everyone who supported him and strengthened everyone who opposed him. Everything that he has touched has turned into liquid, poisonous shit. Everything that he has ignored has festered into oozing, gangrenous sores.

Clearly, as a President, he is the Very Worst Ever.

Frankly --- at this point --- I've kind of lost interest in finding out exactly why.

I guess there is a sort of taxonomic value to understanding the nature of the GWB beast. If we can identify what kind of creature it is, then we can better build defenses against future incarnations of it. Or better yet, learn to crush potential Georgies in their immature stage --- while they are running redneck states, crappy baseball teams and failing companies.

Other than that, what's the use of putting that proven loser under a microscope?

Focusing on his personal failings is beside the point.

As tempting as it is to pin everything that happens on his incompetent and deserving back, we are all to blame really.

George W Bush was a mistake that all of America made.

Some of us made it bigger and more passionately than others, but we all made it.

We all thought that America was inherently awesome enough that we could put someone who was clearly substandard in charge of it --- and then let him freely and obviously fuck things up --- without any serious consequences. That nation-wide mistake is the only explanation for why Bush didn't receive the kind of real resistance that would have made it impossible to continue doing his visible and blatant fucking up of this country, without pause or slowdown, to this very day.

I'm not just talking to the dumbasses who have ever applied a "W" bumper sticker to the back of their bloated and shoddily-constructed SUV. Though those people make a satisfying herd of scapegoats, they are so emotionally and mentally subnormal that we really couldn't expect anything more than jingoistic, moronic hate-echoes from them anyway.

I'm talking to the rest of us. “Oh well,” we shrugged, watching an election stolen, a stupid war started, the budget balanced wrecked, a city drowned, the Constitution shredded, and the economy metastasize into a giant Ponzi scheme ready to collape, “there’s always 2004-slash-2008.”

With that kind of stupidity, apathy, arrogance, entitlement and laziness so ingrained and widespread through this nation --- and yes, this writer --- clearly we were headed for some sort of disaster no matter who had been in charge all this time.

Bush just sped it up and made it more painful than it otherwise would have been. So while this movie all-so-deservedly kicks Bush while he is down, I hope it has the honesty to aim a few boots at the rest of us as well.

We've earned them.