George W. Bush has been compared to Curious George the monkey for many years, but the comparison didn't quite fit until now. Every Curious George story must include these plot elements:
1. The man with the yellow hat shows George something irresistible, asks him to leave it alone, and then wanders off.
2. George resists everything except temptation and causes all kinds of trouble.
3. Someone makes the bizarre claim that George has done more good than harm, gives him a prize.
So, George tours a chocolate factory, sneaks into the production room, speeds up the machine causing chocolates to land on the floor, catches the chocolates and randomly sticks the ones he doesn't eat in boxes, getting credited with saving the poor chocolates. George is left alone in a dog pound, lets the dogs loose, wreaking havoc, and gets thanked because one of the dogs locates a missing puppy. George feeds all the zoo animals, endangering their lives, but gets credited with saving a parrot that happens to fly near him. George steals a hot air balloon and gets the credit for rescuing a man from Washington's nose on Mount Rushmore because the balloon drifts by him. George breaks into a dump truck and dumps a load of dirt into a pond, but gets credited with creating a lovely island. George knocks over half the stacks of toys in a new toy store on opening day, and gets an award for entertaining one of the customers. And so forth. I'll grant you there are a few CG stories that don't fit the pattern perfectly, but I could tell you lots more that do if my son weren't sleeping in the same room his books are in.
The third crucial element in a Curious George story has been missing from the tale of George W. Bush for all of these years, but has now been provided. That being the case, I humbly offer for your bedtime reading pleasure, the story of
"George and the Water Board"
This is George.
He was a good little monkey and always very curious.
He lived with his friend, the man with the yellow hat.
One day, the man with the yellow hat took George on a tour of Washington, D.C., and showed him all the sights, including the ones most people don't have access to.
The man with the yellow hat gave George a pass that provided him the highest level of national security clearance, and then remembered that he needed to pick up some other papers at Kinko's.
"Tour the national security apparatus carefully while I'm gone," the man with the yellow hat told George, "and don't get into any trouble."
Well, George explored the Pentagon, the NSA, the CIA, the lobbyists' offices, the weapons makers, AIPAC, the Washington Post, and the White House. In the White House he found a war room. George remembered what the man in the yellow hat had said, but sometimes it's hard for a little monkey to behave. When a monkey sees a war room, he just has to start a war.
George put on a military uniform and pranced around a big table, and under and over it, and pretty soon he forgot all about being good. He began ordering major wars. He ordered people brutally tortured until they agreed to made up reasons for his wars.
George found a drawer containing absolute imperial power. He tried it on for size. It hung down over George's eyes so that he couldn't see straight, but George was having too much fun to care. He invented news stories, spied on everyone's phones and Emails and letters, hired and fired people based on whether or not they would play with him, and generally bounced about the only way a little monkey can when he's gotten the sadistic scent of blood into his little nostrils.
George didn't realize it, but before long an election happened, and all of his absolute power was taken away from him and handed to a man named Obama.
At first Obama was upset with George and at first George wanted to run and hide, but before George could stash his torture implements out of sight, Obama bent down and handed George a bag of Iraqi ears and fingers.
"You may have been a little blunt and offensive, George," Obama said, "but without you I wouldn’t have acquired these humanitarian wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the power to detain people indefinitely without charge, or the power of rendition, the illegal spying operations that you set up, the standard of secrecy you established, the wonderfully expanded powers of state secrets, executive privilege, executive orders, signing statements, secret laws, military commissions, treaties made without Congress, the power to raise and spend money without Congress, or for that matter the complete disempowerment of Congress which used to be a branch of our government. And I can abuse all these powers but still look good compared to you. Thank you, George!"
George was a hero.
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David Swanson is the author of the upcoming book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can pre-order it for a discount price at http://tinyurl.com/daybreakbook
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