Listening to the spin police at the White House the past few days, and especially today with the "things in Iraq are not going well" business, I am reminded of Dr. Morbius in "Forbidden Planet".
For years he and his daughter had been isolated on Altair IV after the ship that he and his wife came in was vaporized by a "Planetary Force". He didn't realize until the end that the destructive force was his own mind.
"- I won't hear you!
- You've got to listen!"
Bush is talking to one of his generals in the White House, deep in a bunker.
...And if you don't do something about it soon... it's going to be coming right through that door. - General
Solid American steel, twenty-six inches thick! - Bush
Look at your gauges. Look! The American and Israeli war machine is going to supply the monster you created with whatever amount of power it requires to reach us.
Look now! Red-hot. Soon it'll be white-hot, then it'll soften and melt. More deaths, Bush! More murder! - G
And now this too? Harm my own country? - B
But now the Country is defying you, Bush... and even in you, the loving President, there still exists the mindless primitive - more enraged and more inflamed with each new frustration. - G
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I think that the Bush White House is scared and angry and desperate. Their legacy is in ruins, their actions or inactions have the same result - more deaths and destruction. They have to be incredibly frustrated. The question is, will Bush realize that he and his are the center of this firestorm and find a way out in time, or is the monster that they created going to tear them apart?
Unlike Morbius, Bush's mind hasn't been artificially enhanced, so I don't have much hope that he'll figure it out.
The fool!
The meddling idiot!
As though his ape's brain could contain the secrets of the making a real democracy work...