Acts of God Versus Acts of George W. Bush

Commentary by David Rozelle in the Washington Dispatch
January 4, 2005

"All I know is what I see on TV."

          ‑‑ Will Rogers



George W. Bush sleeps like a baby these days. Never much of a thinker, our president's freeze-dried ideology has spared him the task of thinking up and writing down New Year's resolutions. His goals stand as propounded – deep-rooted in his fallow mind by November's shallow election victory.

And so it is that on the eve of 2005, in the highest office of the mightiest nation in human history, there will be no reflection on, no reconsideration, no revision of policy. George W. Bush claims he has been crowned with a "mandate," albeit by barely fifty-percent of his subjects. And that's that, as far as the Great Mandater is concerned.

But what about the "lesser" half of this president's fellow citizens -- those of us who didn't vote for the man's coronation?   It appears that we can either go along with George II or go to hell. There will be no calling Bush to account for his policies. The late Flip Wilson, a popular comedian, used to duck accountability by quipping, "The Devil made me do it." Everyone laughed. George Bush, an Evangelical Christian, declares, "God made me do it," and at least half of us quake.

Not even during the aftermath of devastating tidal waves does George W. break his clueless, dogmatic stride. The media reports, for instance, that the president first had announced he'll set aside a Scroogian 30 million dollars for victims' relief -- this on the heels of an announced 40 million "donated" by corporations to pay for his inaugural balls in January. (Let the good times roll in tie-and-tails D.C., while a tsunami rolls over Asia's poor.) Where's the moral balance in all this? Where's the "compassion," neoconservative or otherwise. Where's the sense of decency?