I am the first one to admit I didn't have a deep knowledge or love of politics for most of my life.  I have a high school education, plus a year of community college under my belt . I'm 35 years old, and didn't pay that much attention to the news until George W. Bush stole the election in 2000 and our Country started to do things I never thought we'd even consider.  And when George "won" again in 2004, and started to flex his imaginary political muscles, When I actually started to pay attention, I was very sickened by what I observed.

This email is about things like the rendition and torture we authorized and performed.  It's about the criminal and disgusting response to Hurricane Katrina.  It's especially about the war we were lied into that has killed hundreds of thousands of human beings. Let me repeat that.  As a result of LIES and a desire to impose our will on the World, we (that's you and me, since we didn't stop the psychopath in the oval office) snuffed the life out of roughly 700,000 people.  Imagine them lined up in a receiving line, where we have to look them in the eye as they drift off into oblivion.  Most of their faces and bodies charred by the scars of war.  As they limp past us, moaning and groaning in pain on their way to rot in an unmarked grave, do you wish you had done more to stop this senseless act?  As an atheist, I believe this loss of life is even more sad because there is no magical afterlife where the dead can go and live out eternity in luxury.  Chances are, the people who died had extremely hard lives, and struggled just to make life better for their family. But don't think we did them any favors.  These people were proud to live and to make life better for their children.  Unfortunately, America and it's "leader" needed to give them the "gift" of democracy more than they needed to live.  They were human beings.  Sure, they weren't white, so of course we don't count them on the same level as the uber superior Anglo American, but they were human nevertheless. They didn't deserve to have their Country invaded by a psychotic President hell bent on finishing the job his father didn't.  George craved his Daddy's approval so much he was willing to commit genocide in order to get it.  What does that say of the Bush crime family?  What do you expect from a family who's fortune was made in Nazi Germany by siding with Hitler?   But George Sr. has a bit of good in him, and I believe he has even more contempt for his son than most of America does.  The one good thing George did was ensure a Bush will never again occupy the White House.  He even said when questioned about the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction (Once he finally admitted it) "Hey, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad".   Sure asshole, you go ahead and kill almost a million people because some dictator wanted your dad dead.  Many Americans  (and most people in the middle east he helped to destabilize) would like to see him, Dick and Don hanging from the gallows after their WAR CRIMES tribunal.  I personally don't believe in the death penalty, even for these criminals - but for a man who denied every clemency request without so much as reading them while the Governor of Texas (including one from a severely mentally retarded man) I guess my position on the death penalty can be temporarily modified for these three piles of human waste.  I know - it can't happen, but I can dare to dream.

I personally believe that all life is worth protecting (my exception above notwithstanding).  I believe life is precious, and that you only get one chance to make your mark on the World. George made his mark and the stain of blood and shame will be with us for a long time.   We Americans would never have  tolerate it if we had attacked a Country of White people with the flimsy evidence we used to invade Iraq.   Can you imagine attacking those bastards in the Netherlands?  It wouldn't have happened.  White people just enjoy a higher status in our minds and therefore those deaths are much more tragic. If you doubt what I'm saying, just watch the news coverage of the pretty white pregnant woman who has been abducted vs. the black woman from Detroit or Chicago or Atlanta in the same situation.  All life should be respected, but because George Bush and America gets to use the excuse that there is a "better place" for people who have died, we can absolve our consciences when in fact we deserve no such absolution.  Through our leader we have personally been responsible for murdering over a million people since he took office.  Was a military response needed after 9/11?  I believe we should have looked at those attacks as a crime like the rest of the civilized World looks at similar acts.  We could have used special forces to bring those responsible to justice, and showed the World how great our system of justice is by giving the accused fair open trials.  Who knows what kind of change we could have inspired in the Islamic World.   But instead we created a "Global War on Terror", as if you could really declare war on Terror (how's that war on Drugs going).  A war on a terror is unwinnable. But we knew that.  It allowed Bush's policies of an unregulated free market to go totally unnoticed by an unsuspecting public.  Unfortunately, even he would soon find out that this philosophy is dead wrong.  He would hang his head in shame, grit his teeth, and announce the largest socialist programs our Country has ever known. And now we ask what has happened to the $700 Billion we gave to the banks?  His administration has refused to answer.  A fitting end to the most disgraceful chapter in our Country's history.  He has left us in a position of weakness in the World, and left his successor with a near impossible job of rebuilding the economy, the infrastructure, ending the War, and defending America against the new enemies he's created, both in the middle East, and perhaps more frightening, the former Soviet Union.  Russia is flexing its military might and doing it right in our backyard.   But can you blame them?  We directly challenged them with our missile defense system in Poland.  And the World no longer thinks of us as the good guys, who's intentions can just be trusted as being honorable.  The only thing separating us from the imperialistic powers of the 20^th Century is a change of leadership.  And as long as Bush actually steps down, we should be able to start to repair the damage.

So, as we (hopefully) say goodbye to George W, and he desperately tries to convince historians that he really should be seen as a great President, not the man who ruined our economy, our faith in the banking system, our standing in the World, and so on and so on.  But one aspect that is not often talked about, but should be is that we have a generation of schoolchildren who have had to grow up thinking this is the norm. They were robbed of the vision of America I got, where we were the good guys who stood as a beacon of light for the rest of the World to look up to.  The proverbial "City on a Hill".  Today's kids see a bumbling fool who is not to be respected, but to be pitied.  I have no love for Ronald Reagan, but when I was a kid he was someone I thought I could be proud of.  Even George's own daughters think he's an idiot. In the America of my childhood, we would not ever even consider torturing someone, or rendering them to a foreign Country in order to torture them even harder.  Then when we find out we were wrong, we drop the man we just spent years doing unspeakable things to onto a desert road in the middle of nowhere.  And our Supreme Court, when presented with the evidence we actually did this, and our only defense is "It's a national security issue", pays back George for his nominations by refusing to hear the case. Way to show the World how Democracy and justice really work you donkeys. 

So George, I give you a giant hearty FUCK YOU, and hope that the White's only Country Club you're moving into in Texas gives you time to reflect on how bad you fucked up.  Perhaps we'll just hear one day that you've taken too many sleeping pills in an attempt to get the dark thoughts out of your head.  And when you drift off and look to find Jesus, but instead find oblivion, in that split second I hope that you realize just how much better off the World would have been had your mom aborted you

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