Column: Has George Lost His Mind?

Fellow WASPs,
We just can't keep up with George any more. He's peddling too fast on the ideological path of"Say what?" For every sweeping declaration of personal conviction he utters, George ushers in a sweeping declaration of contradiction. The habit is becoming too formulaic to be written off as simple muddleheadedness or cheap opportunism--the latter of which, of course, we cherish above all things. Instead, there must be skullduggery afoot. Verily we regret we suspect the commander in chief is a closet leftie who's sneaking in snatches of readings in materialist dialectics, which, as Mao wrote, is"the law of the unity of opposites"; which, as Lenin wrote,"is the study of contradiction"; which, as we're writing, is George to a tee these days. Well, if the subtle infiltration of Marxist dialectics into American government is his little game, Mandrake, then we're on to him.

11Early on, George began dropping clues to what very well might be a dose of Bolshevik thinking. If true, his plan was bold and devious--your classic commie approach. Bit by bit he contradicted campaign pledges on everything from the environment to gun laws to loads of hooey about a faith-based something or other that no one ever quite figured out. But his contradictions of campaign words with administrative deeds were so expected, most people thought, what the hell? Just another ultraconservative politician saying a lot of nice things to a lot of nice working-class people so he could screw the lot of them once in office. Naturally, we were 100 percent behind him. It simply never occurred to us that George's"antitheses"--as collectivist fiends like to call them--could be the result of typically pinko-slavish loyalty to Mao Ze Dong's amusing little 1937 think-piece,"On Contradiction." Yet the evidence was there.

George then became even bolder. First there erupted some rather stupendous confusion--nay, in fact, contradictions--between our ship-of-state captain's talk of fiscal discipline and what he and his merry crew were actually doing in the White House kitchen: cooking the bejesus out of the books. Second, there was that towering contradiction between spending a gazillion dollars on missile defense systems and his own CIA's deduction that"U.S. territory is probably more likely to be attacked with weapons of mass destruction from non-missile delivery means because [they] are less costly and more reliable." Again, we supported George in these tortured contradictions because, quite unmistakably, we're happy-go-lucky autocrats. What's an imploded economy and out-of-control military among friends? We so dearly loved the beltway chaos, it never occurred to us that George might merely be bowing to a sinister Marxist belief in some imaginary unity of opposites. There are none so blind as they that won't see.

Those contradictions in search of perfidious unity, however, were nothing compared to George's whoppers last Thursday night. He said a couple things so profoundly contradictory, only a disciplined mind in the conniving doctrine of dialectics could conceive of them. The New York Times--that socialist tabloid as well schooled in materialist dialectics as any Red Book-toting Maoist--synopsized Bush's overall message as calling"for Americans to trust that their government was up to the task of protecting them and was expanding its legal powers to do just that." The reporter went on to note that"those words contrasted sharply with the ones Mr. Bush used a year ago, when in the last days of his presidential campaign he complained that his opponent, Al Gore, 'trusts government, which stands in stark contrast to our view.'"

There you have it, straight from the mouth of godless communism itself, the New York Times: some pretty weighty evidence that George has embraced that old commie bugaboo about the inherent virtue of contradictions. And what a contradiction this one was. Suddenly we are to"trust" the government, after we've worked so hard in trashing it. His government. George's government. Well, Mr. Secretary, we ain't no politburo and we don't practice no democratic centralism.

And just what about this trinket from Thursday's speech?"Too many have the wrong idea of Americans as shallow, materialistic consumers who care only about getting rich or getting ahead." The wrong idea? As if George hasn't noticed all the TV ads showing supposedly adult men fondling new automobiles like mistresses? That anti-materialism crack was over the line, a real tip-off, and as far as we're concerned, nothing short of a dirty commie lie. Of course! this is a shallow, materialistic nation. That's been the whole damned point since our party's first president directed it's"best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can." Only a rotten Leninist would dare gainsay Abraham Lincoln.

As for that malarkey about Americans not focusing on getting rich and getting ahead? Hello? What in God's name, George, do you think you were doing all those years swindling daddy's deep-pocket buddies on oil and gas deals while they were trying to swindle everybody else? And if going to all the good time and trouble of stealing the presidency of the United States isn't directed at"getting ahead," what is?

Our erstwhile friend is heaping contradictions on heaps of contradictions. We watched and wondered as George became more than a purveyor of cheap political ploys. As we said, those we truly love. But in bad-mouthing shallowness and materialism as the party leader of the most shallow and materialistic bunch on Earth, he's taking on the undeniable appearance of being immersed in achieving some depraved Marxian synthesis. When he can stand before the American people and tout trust in always-corrupted government and slander the righteousness of getting stinking rich--smack on the heels of rightly reviling government and idolizing material wealth--well, that goes far beyond your average unprincipled ploy. We say it smells of a commie plot.

There's only one thing that still puzzles. Even Castro admitted he couldn't manage reading all of Das Kapital. How did George?

P. M. Carpenter is a writer, student of history, and professional artist. His artwork site is: http://www.geocities.com/pmcarpen2000