Poor George Bush. It can't be easy to have millions, no billions, of people around the world hating you. For a man who thinks himself so personable, it's gotta hurt to know that most persons would throw the beer mug at him rather than have a beer with him.
I have to admit, I have sent more than one unspeakable invective his way, and I can't see an image of the man without shivering with revulsion, but I've recently started taking pain killers for an injury, and for the last two days, I have experienced sympathy? compassion? pity? for the man. These feelings are fleeting, because the pills aren't THAT strong, and reality crashes my party with a baseball bat and kicks their asses out the door.
But those brief moments have helped me think outside the box. There isn’t much that gets through to George, but who does he listen to? God. What’s his most useful tool? Fear. How can we liberals use God and Fear to save our country and get through to George, to help him see the error of his ways?
With Dante! Following is a letter I've written to Bush that takes our unpopular leader on a tour through Dante's hell in the hopes that his possible torment in the life hereafter may convince him to make our lives in the here and now less of a torment.
Dear President Bush,
I am worried about your soul. You see, I just read Dante Alighieri’s The Inferno, which describes the kinds of sins that send people to Hell and the torments associated with each sin. Mr. Bush, I’m afraid that many of your actions as President will send you straight to Hell where you’ll suffer torments that even the CIA wouldn’t inflict. So, as a patriotic American, I feel it is my duty to guide my President through Dante’s Hell in the hopes that it isn’t too late for you to lead an honest, Christian life that would benefit both your country and your soul.
Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here
These words mark the entrance to Hell (is it true that they also mark the entrance to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp?), and Hell's first level, which is reserved for opportunists, people who are motivated by personal gain rather than good or evil. Quite honestly Sir, this reminds me of the Republican Party in general, but your particular use of the tragedy of 9/11 in speeches and television ads for political gain is the ultimate example of opportunism. One could argue that your 9/11 opportunism is exceeded only by your attempt to curry political favor with fundamentalist Christians when you raced across the country to sign legislation to prevent the removal of life-support from brain-dead Terry Schiavo at the exact same time that hospital administrators in Texas were using a law that you signed as Governor of Texas to remove a 6-month old baby from life-support because the mother was too poor to pay for healthcare.
Hell’s opportunists are forever stung by wasps and hornets, and the resulting open, raw wounds ooze pus and blood, a vile mixture that drips down the sinners’ bodies to be eaten by worms and maggots in which the opportunists stand. It’s hard to believe, Mr. President, but this is the least offensive punishment in Hell!
Next come the hoarders and wasters. Since you are best known for cutting taxes while waging war, you certainly won’t be sent to Hell for hoarding. No, Sir, you would be there for your rampant waste of public money; $9 billion of missing cash in Iraq is just one of your financial abuses that has helped transform a $284 billion budget surplus into four consecutive, record-breaking deficits (the latest expected to be a mere $296 billion compared to your all-time high of $413 billion in 2004). I would be impressed if it weren’t for the fact that you might have to pay for it with your soul, while my children, grandchildren and I will have to literally pay for it as you and your friends enjoy your temporal tax-haven lifestyles.
Punishment at this level sounds innocuous; the wasters and hoarders heave enormous weights at each other while screaming furiously, “Why do you waste?” and “Why do you hoard?” It almost sounds like fun, doesn’t it, like Scottish games? But the torturous part is the fact that, through all of eternity, neither side is victorious. You would never win, Mr. Bush, and we all know that you hate losing so much, you would lie, cheat, steal and send other people into battle just to get your way. Well, that kind of behavior will only get you deeper into Hell.
And deeper in Hell is where things start to get ugly. The next level is for murderers, arsonists, and, I’m sorry to have to tell you this President Bush, the war makers. Sir, it looks like your decision to invade Iraq preemptively may have cost you more than just the American treasury and the goodwill of people around the world.
Here, sinners are immersed in boiling blood that represents the carnage they caused. According to Dante, the degree of the crime determines how deeply a soul is placed in Hell’s seething, boiling, raging bloodbath. Well, we know that nearly 4000 American soldiers have already been killed in this war, and up to 650,000 Iraqis. That’s a lot of carnage, Sir, so you would likely be as deep in blood as a Texan oilman is in petro dollars.
Ironically, this level is also reserved for cruel tyrants, and as you rightly pointed out in so many speeches, Saddam Hussein was a cruel tyrant who ruthlessly killed his own people. You and Saddam could be keeping each other company through all eternity. Imagine that.
Mr. President, since you are a religious man, surely you know of Cai’aphas, the man who argued in favor of crucifying Christ by saying, “it is expedient that one man should die for the people and that the whole nation perish not” (John, XI, 50). Well, in Dante’s Hell, Cai’aphas is crucified on the ground and trampled upon, over and over and over again, by the world’s hypocrites, whose punishment is to wear leaden clothes that outweigh even the gear carried by the soldiers that you sent into combat.
Each time you told the American people, “We fight them there, so we don’t have to fight them here,” you committed the same sin as Cai’aphas, and I fear that you will lay beside him for all eternity to be trod upon by every leaden-cloaked hypocrite that has ever entered or will enter hell.
And since your Presidential term began in 2001, that number has increased dramatically: those who devote themselves to saving an embryo’s life but who allow children to perish from lack of health care will be there; those who called the invasion of Iraq a worthwhile cause, but who refuse to send their own children to fight will be there; they’ll be joined by those who screamed like banshees to impeach Clinton for a minor sex act, but who are actively blind to the sexual relationship Senator Vitter had with a prostitute or the long-time harrassment of Congressional aides by Mark Foley;; those who... Quite honestly, Sir, there isn’t enough room to outline the outbreak of hypocrisy that has infested the nation since you became President.
I’d like to offer some words of encouragement here, but there are still some serious offenses to address.
For example, your policies that stole from the poor (like Head Start, Pell Grants, the school lunch program and food stamps) to give to the rich oil companies in the form of subsidies, profitable hand-picked corporations in the form of no-bid contracts, and the super wealthy in the form of tax breaks, are likely to land you in the pit reserved for thieves. In Hell, thieves are first roasted “alive” by bursting into blistering flames, then ironically “born again,” in order to undergo the same torture for eternity.
And lying. I wouldn’t have thought that liars are worse then murderers, but according to Dante, God considers breaking a trust to be one of the worst sins, and that’s why liars are punished by torments of every sense—absolute darkness stench, thirst, filth, loathsome disease, fever, tearing each other to pieces, constant loud noise and being forced to stay in the same position for all eternity. Of course, most of these torments are remarkably similar to the interrogation techniques that you approved for Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and our secret prison network. So, I guess if you were sent to this level of Hell, maybe you would suffer only slight more than you did when, say…you were serving in the National Guard during the Vietnam War.
President Bush, if you are sent to Hell for the lies you told during your campaign and throughout your Presidency (“I’m a uniter, not a divider,” your promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, the ever-changing reasons for invading Iraq, the Clean Skies Initiative that makes our air more dangerous to breathe, the tax breaks for the middle class that increased the divide between rich and poor, etc), you will definitely recognize some of the other voices screaming in terror and agony alongside you. All those who lied in your service will be there: Karl Rove, Tom DeLay, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Bill Frist, John McCain, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Ari Fleischer, Tony Snow and Scott McClellan to name a few.
Finally, we reach the level for the treacherous. Treachery is the worst sin according to Dante’s God, and the final level of Hell is reserved for those who were treacherous to their country and masters. This is the level of Judas Iscariot.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
”We the People…” are your masters, Mr. President, and you swore on your sacred Bible to “…preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of The United States.” Instead, you have denied justice to many, divided the country and promoted hatred among the citizenry, increased poverty, spied on Americans, suppressed information that served the general welfare, negated sections of the Constitution to increase your own power, and placed yourself above the law with over 1000 signing statements on bills that outline your intention not to follow the laws passed by Congress.
In short, Mr. President, you have been treacherous to your masters and your country, and for your treachery, your torment will be like none other. According to Dante, you will be literally thrown into the deepest depths of Hell, where your body will be flash-frozen in whatever agonizing position it lands. Unlike the other levels of hell, your pain will not be exclusively physical. You will gain knowledge of your treachery and the inestimable suffering that resulted from your decisions. You will hang your head in self-loathing, disgrace and shame, you will scream in agony at your own infamy, and you will weep with shame. But Hell’s irony is that a fierce, bitter wind will freeze those tears in your eyes, causing more physical pain and denying you even the small emotional comfort found in tears.
You may have decided that you are not answerable to Congress, the Constitution or the American people, Mr. President, but you are answerable to the God you so revere. Perhaps you think my list of your sins is unfounded, but can you take the risk that God is watching you and that He considers even one of them to have been trespassed. You cannot hide your actions from God. It is not too late for your salvation, Sir. Atone for your sins. Live the life that Christ wanted you to live.
Or God will have no mercy on your soul.