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                 BUFFOONERY OF PRETENDER IS NO JOKE
(Written and posted 19 September 2001)

       The first thirteen years of the seventeenth century were a time of great turmoil in Russia. Tsar Fedor had died, and there was no heir to the throne. Into this void stepped “The Pretenders”, illegitimate claimants to the throne. First there was the pretender Boris Godunov. After he died, his son and an wife were executed to ensure that he would have no heir. When it was discovered that the pretender Psuedo-Dmitri I was an agent for the Polish, he was stuffed into a cannon and shot back towards Poland. Another pretender, Vasily Shuisky, was tonsured and became the monk Varlaam. Psuedo-Dmitri II was murdered by one of his own bodyguards. His son, Ivan, was hanged. Another pretender was impaled on a sharp stake. To top it all off, the Poles had conquered Moscow, and the Swedes had conquered other parts of the nation. Russia, as a nation, almost ceased to exist.
       That time is the present for the United States. Our current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a pretender. The country has been thrown into a period of tumultuousness, violence, and instability. We are being threatened by outside “invaders”. We have become so xenophobic, we trust no one, and will not hesitate to resort to violence. The multi-cultural, diverse American nation that we all love is in danger of extinction.
       When the disaster of September 11, 2001, struck, I was ready and hoping that the pretender would prove me wrong, would show me that he was really up to the job. However, I have been severely disappointed. At a time when this nation needed a true leader the most, we didn’t get it. We were left holding the bag.
       This pretender is clueless as to the meaning of the word, “inspiration”. I have not seen any word or action by “His Fraudulancy” this past week that is even remotely inspirational. I have seen cowardice, carelessness, cluelessness, and smugness, but nothing to inspire. When the nation needed him the most, George II’s first reaction was to save his own sorry hide. Did he go to Washington? No. You know, he might have gotten hurt. It didn’t matter that Air Force One is escorted by a pair of fighters that will shoot down anything that threatens it; that just wasn’t good enough. Instead, this coward hid in Lousiana, and then in Nebraska at one of the safest spots on earth. “Who cares if the common people may get killed; I am just too darned important to risk even a scratch!”
       Of course, James Madison didn’t think that way when the British sacked Washington during the War of 1812. The Madisons stayed in the White House until the very last minute; they only thing they could save besides themselves was a portrait of George Washington. Abraham Lincoln was chastised by a Union soldier who told him “to get his fool head down” while he watched a battle from a Maryland fort – the soldier didn’t want him to be hit by a stray bullet. (The soldier didn’t know it was Lincoln until later.) Churchill didn’t flee England despite periodic German air raids. When the Great Powers met at Potsdam and Yalta, World War II was still raging all around.
       I don’t buy the argument about the Secret Service diverting the plane. The last I checked, the President still had authority over the Treasury Department. Presidents have been know to overrule or ignore the Secret Service. Truman would sneak out of the White House. Clinton liked to mingle with the “commoners”, much to the chagrin of his agents.
      Regardless of the security “risks”, real or delusional, when the Resident does show up, his remarks reveal nothing about what his plan is. Of course, you have to be smart enough to make a plan to be able to have a plan to share. Instead, I hear that it was a bad thing, and then, showing extraordinarily bad taste, quotes a passage from the Bible. To heck with separation of church and state, I say! To heck with all who are not Protestant! (It was from the King James Bible; heathen Catholics like myself have a different bible.) That one act pretty much showed who has been and is still calling the shots—the fundamentalist religious right.
       Don’t think so? Well, while he was publicly shedding tears in National Cathedral, the rescue workers in New York were plugging away at the thankless task of digging through the rubble of what once were the tallest buildings in that Gotham known as Manhattan. (Mere rescue workers don’t get to shed public tears; that is the privilege of the aristocracy!) His friends and ardent supporters, the “Reverends” Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, have said what happened is the result of “the wrath of God” because of liberals, the ACLU, gays and lesbians, and abortionists. (Let’s not forget that New York did elect Hillary Clinton, otherwise known as evil incarnate, to the Senate.) Then, to reinforce that we are indeed a country of right-wing, Christian reactionary zealots the usurper calls any potential response (Response? What response?) a crusade. Of course, anyone who has even a modicum of knowledge of history knows that the Crusades were not a high point of Western history. They were a dismal failure, and the only thing they accomplished was to create hostility between the Western world and the Islamic one, a hostility that still exists.
       I could go on and on. I could mention about how he declared the skies safe for everybody but him. I could mention how his predecessor was in Australia and still got to New York earlier than he did.
       In 1998, before Kenneth Starr broadsided Clinton with his posting of the Whitewater “allegations” on the web, I wrote that for the good of the country, Clinton should resign. My rationale at the time was that the Whitewater mess was destabilizing the country and causing an irreparable schism. Three years later, I make the same request of the current “Leader” – for the good of the country, resign. Your eight months in office have brought nothing but misery upon us. Many outside our borders loathe you, and will not stop until you are gone. For once, rise to the occasion – give back what is not rightfully yours to have, and spare the nation three-and-a-half more years of anguish.