ThinkingBlue: How come Bush, NEVER FEELS ANY PAIN?

Every time I see Bush's face and hear his phoney drawl, I get sick to my stomach. No kidding, but that's nothing new, even when he was Governor of Texas and was known as the Texecutioner, I couldn't stand him but at that time he was easier to toss down because anyone not living in Texas didn't have his puss smushed in their collective face all the time.

Now, for almost six years we've been bombarded with his silliness almost daily. It's getting so, I cannot let my remote down for a second... just in case his buffoon mug should appear and I need to QUICK TURN THE CHANNEL (I realize, I could go over to the set and turn the channel but you see, there's this gnawing vision lingering in my brain, of lunging for the TV, trip over something, break a bone, and then have to lie in pain, listening FOREVER to his blather...).

I've had this Bush nausea since he was first infamously inaugurated but recently, something worse is happening to me when I see THE BUSH IMAGE... I groan, scream obscenities and mournfully sob, all at the same time. This is a condition, not known to me but once I heard or read, that if someone lives in your head, someone who makes you feel revulsion to an enormous degree... You should sit down and write a little note to that person, explaining your feelings towards them (you don't have to send this message to the party of scorn, just writing it would be healing)... SO THAT IS WHAT I AM GOING TO DO...

NOTE TO BUSH: You, Mr. Bush, represent to me, thousands upon thousands of brutal deaths and millions upon millions of heart-rending suffering and still you wear that SMIRK. Even when you try to put on an expression of sadness or concern your self satisfaction air, works its way through the muscles on your face until THE SMIRK pops out again. SO STOP FAKING IT, YOU'RE NOT FOOLING ANYONE!

What I would like to see is your facial features limp with pain and anguish... the baneful awareness of knowing YOU ARE DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR MUCH OF THE CHAOS THAT'S HAPPENING IN IRAQ. Would you please Mr. Bush, answer several perplexing questions for me?

Was it because you wanted to play with your soldiers so you waged an unnecessary war?

Was it because it made you feel pumped?

Or, was it simply because you were bored?

And now that your war of imaginary honor has plunged into MELTDOWN.

Why do you, still smile, smirk and sputter as if you are not liable?

HOW DO YOU DO IT?

HOW CAN YOU STILL SMIRK?

Is there a magic potion you take that washes away guilt or are you just plain stupid or worse AN IMBECILIC MEGALOMANIAC?

Well, nevermind, I would bet on the latter for this reason ... I think you are MAD!

I came across an article written by a person who has a different slant on the reason you feel no culpability. I wish you would read it but I know YOU DON'T READ...

But others do!

Please read the the short essay below giving one reason why Bush may feel no pain. Thanks thinkingblue.

What's Eating George Bush?

READ MORE: Dick Cheney, Laura Bush, Hurricane, Hurricane Katrina, George W. Bush

I'm sorry to have to return to what continues to be, for me, the Rosebud event
of the second Bush term, but since I live in New York and am free from the kind
of facts and "inside information" that burden most people who write about
politics, I keep thinking about the day the plane flew into the airspace while
the President rode his bicycle.
As you may recall, on May 11, 2005, a small plane made an unauthorized detour into the air space over the nation's Capitol, setting off a red alert. The Secret Service evacuated Dick Cheney and rushed Laura Bush to a bunker in the White House. The President was not there. He was off riding his bicycle in Beltsville, Maryland, and the Secret Service didn't notify him about the
incident until it was over. At the time they claimed they didn't want to disturb his bicycle ride. It's my theory that this incident was one of the reasons for the rift between Bush and Cheney -- a rift, I'm proud to say, that I was one of the first to point out (on the Huffington Post), on the basis of no information whatsoever, and which now turns out (according to this week's Newsweek) to be absolutely true.

Emboldened by the success of this deduction, I would like to ask another question that I've been wondering about for some time: What's wrong with the president? Is he fighting depression? Is he being medicated in some way that isn't quite working? What's up? I even bought a copy of one of the supermarket tabloids that alleged he'd started drinking again, but the article (like all articles in supermarket tabloids) was extremely disappointing; even the over-exciting picture of the President on the front page, holding a glass of wine, turned out to be an old irrelevant photograph of him making a toast at some banquet; there was no real evidence in the article that he was back on the sauce.

But I've been wondering about what's going on with W ever since he emerged from his bizarre groundhog-like vacation and responded to Hurricane Katrina as if he were under water. He had no affect at all. He was almost robotic. His meager vocabulary seemed to have shrunk even further. He conveyed no feeling for the victims -- and this was early on, way before anyone realized how many poor people were involved. It was strange. What's so hard about cranking yourself up for hurricane victims, especially when you think they're mostly white people who
have lost their second homes on the Gulf Coast?

At the time I wondered if Bush was on Paxil or Lexapro, drugs that several of my friends are taking and that seem to have turned them into strangely muted versions of themselves. I asked my friend Rita, who's a shrink, but Rita is very careful about committing on subjects of this sort. She did point out, though, that sometimes, when the President talks, his mouth has a strange sideways twitch, which is apparently common in people who are on antidepressants. Actually it might have been my husband who said this, I can't remember.

But I started thinking about all this again on Sunday. On the Chris Matthews Show, there was some old footage of the president from last year's presidential campaign. He was outdoors, talking to a group of people in hard hats; he was energetic, focused, confident, on top of the world. Now you could easily counter: of course he was, it was a lovely day, he was surrounded by supporters, things were going well. But the President we're seeing these days is a completely different man.

He has, of course, a lot of reasons to be depressed -- no point in enumerating them, you know what they are. But most of all, I think he's depressed because the job has turned out to be so much more onerous than he expected -- he said as much to a friend of mine in September. "You have no idea," he said, "how hard these five years have been." This is a fairly breathtaking remark given the number of people who, thanks to this president, are now dead as a result of his five years in the Oval Office, but never mind.

The point is that it seems possible to me that when George Bush gave up alcohol in 1986, he dealt with the depression that often accompanies sobriety by becoming an obsessive exerciser. And that's what he's essentially done ever since. He's never held anything that could be confused with a job. Owning a baseball team is not a job. Even being governor of Texas takes only a couple of months a year, it turns out. So he was free to exercise.

But at some point this year, something happened and the exercise regimen stopped working. Bush started becoming depressed. My theory is that a certain amount of panic ensued, and more exercise was prescribed: hence, the afternoon on the bicycle in Maryland, and the reluctance to disturb an already disturbed, irritable man. (Interestingly, the incident happened just after the President returned from a four-day trip to Europe, which had not only required him to work several hours each day but undoubtedly interrupted his exercise routine.) Then came the vacation in August, the odd, sequestered vacation, a perfect time for the President's doctor to try medication, or change medication, or adjust medication. Then Katrina and the emergence in the fall of an unenergetic, irritable, muted, unfocussed President, the man you see today.

Look it up: depression + symptoms. You'll read it for yourself: loss of energy, irritability, feeling "slowed down," inability to concentrate.

Not that I'm an expert on any of this, of course. But it's possible, isn't it? Just asking.

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