last month of the year

Hard to believe we’ve arrived at the last month of the year. One more notch on the belt of the twenty first century. We’ll be into double digits before we know it. But first, the final year of single digits: 2009. I still find it hard to believe. I’m sort of getting used to writing 200… as the year. Checks (although who, besides me, still uses checks?) now have that as their prefix on the date line, most spaces where you are required to fill in dates have that prefix, we’re getting used to saying it. But we still don’t have a name for this low, dishonest decade (Auden was never so appropriate). The best thing about 2009 – getting rid of the criminal in the White House and restoring dignity and respect to America’s name around the world. I don’t quite understand why they become unprosecutable when they leave office. People like Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzalez, Donald Rumsfeld, and the head idiot (I don’t even want to write his name) should be held accountable for their wrongdoing. Or as that guy would say, evil-doing.

I don’t believe I’ve ever detested a president quite so much. My first memory of an awful president was Richard Nixon. I remember telling my mother (who was significantly younger than I am now at the time) on the day after he was elected that we’d just have to “live with it.” She snapped back “we cannot live with it.” We know now she was right, of course – we couldn’t live with him. But he was not a political hack. He managed a few important things (opening relations with China, creating the EPA and OSHA, yeah yeah yeah…). He was the only president to resign in disgrace, he kept a war going so he could be reelected, through his health care policy he created the behemoths of the insurance industry, and countless other bad things. So we thought it was bad under Nixon and then came Ronald Reagan, the man who thought he was at the liberation of a concentration camp because he’d seen a movie about it. He wouldn’t utter the word AIDS during his entire presidency, effectively marginalizing an entire segment of the population at a time when they most desperately needed to be attended to. His inane focus on feeling good distracted the nation from his lunatic policies that favored the religious right. His Supreme Court appointment of Clarence Thomas reflected his total commitment to ideology over judgment. George H.W. Bush continued Reagan’s approach but in a subdued just-following-this-guy sort of way. But I do remember feeling that someone had been beating me with a large stick for twelve years and had finally stopped the day after Clinton was elected. He wasn’t my first choice, but finally “family values” as code for straight/christian/married-with-children/religious-fundamentalist values was going away.

All these guys were bad. Awful. But none as bad as this George W. Bush. Not even close. Our president is a criminal, an idiot, an ideologue, a true believer in the worst way. He should be prosecuted for war crimes, his vice president should be imprisoned in a bricked up room, his cabinet secretaries (many of them at least) should be held accountable in court for all their crimes. I respect the office of president. I do. But I don’t think I could behave civilly were I to find myself in the same room with this man. I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to stand at the playing of Hail to the Chief, I wouldn’t be able to shake his hand, I wouldn’t even be able to speak to him without boiling over with rage.

So this is my favorite thing about the upcoming year change. We will finally be rid of Bush. I can’t believe they get to do what they’ve done and get off scott free. It’s like the country’s been run by a bunch of thugs for eight years and all we’re going to do is send them off to the country homes they’ve built on the backs of the people whose lives they’ve ruined. But I suppose we will have to be satisfied with simply having done with them. Done. Finally.