Ozymandias

The excellent HBO miniseries John Adams concluded Sunday night with some ruminations by our second President about how the gritty history of the American revolution had, after only 50 years, been lost to the mythologizing processes of patriots and painters and poets. I'm not sure that he ever read Shelly's ironic poem of 1818, although he lived long enough. I'm sure however, seeing his classical education, that he knew that such things are eternal and ineluctable. Indeed, anyone with any kind of memory at all can see that the words and deeds of our current administration are lost to reinterpretation, redaction, braggadocio and denial in a far shorter period than a half century and eventually are reduced to ridiculousness.

If I still had a sense of humor about such things I would laugh at Flim-flam George's latest attempt to blame the effects of his fiscal irresponsibility on the failure of Congress to solve our problems. They failed by looking the other way at Corporate swashbuckling, by bitching excessively about no-bid contracts to companies that pay no taxes and will not be investigated when billions disappear, by not taking the burden of inheritance taxes off the very, very rich and by ignoring a host of other really brilliant ideas like unrestrained spending and profligate borrowing, but of course I don't. I lost it some time ago and all I could wish for is to miraculously to survive the explosion of our sun just long enough to see the man vaporize into a wisp of plasma to be born by the solar wind into the infinite emptiness of the universe.

But I digress. The Bush Nebula is still Earthbound and the Occupation still awaits a definition of "victory."

"I've repeatedly submitted proposals to help address these problems, yet time after time Congress chose to block them,"

said the Sultan of Smirk today. Too bad they didn't block the "warpresident" entirely by impeaching him or at least keeping him from starting the war, but what we're seeing here, I fear, is the beginning of a tendentious falsification of history on a level not seen since the great Redactor put together the Bible.

Canonical History will be kind to George Bush, since it isn't really possible to be unkind in degree adequate to his stupidities, his iniquities and his weakness. Indeed, knowing this country and its love for self-ennoblement, he may be sneering down at us from Rushmore or gleaming at us from the face of a highly devalued Dollar before my grandchildren are old enough to be cynics. Some Parson Weems will emerge to write stories about his early honesty and there will be paintings of George the Brush Clearer and heroic marbles of the Commander Guy in his flight suit poking up through the desolate sands of post-apocalyptic America. Who will be there to laugh?