Caligula Strained Through a Sheet

THE CALIGULA IN THE WHITE HOUSE

When youthfully I first read some Roman history, I snorted with glee about Roman decadence when I chanced upon the story of Emperor Caligula’s effort to make his horse Incitatus a priest and consul, consul being the highest honorific and therefore most eagerly sought office below the rank of emperor.

Those who reported the tale, all members of the upper classes that Caligula cuckolded, robbed and murdered, also hinted Caligula was insane.

The Romans at least had the excuse that emperors forced themselves upon them and to oppose an emperor and his minions and hangers-on openly meant you had committed yourself to rebellion and, likely, immediate acquaintance with the lions in the Coliseum.

We Americans, on the other hand, thanks to the propagandistic and legal powers of the industrial-conservative establishment, have no such excuse. We elected G.W. Bush twice to our land’s highest office and, by extension of our imperial powers, to the world’s highest office.

Yes, it’s true that the first time around it took some wicked hokey-pokey by conservative Supreme Court justices to jigger a way unknown in American history or law to anoint Bush as president. But he had enough votes in Florida, the disputed state, to let the salivating right-wing Supremes be able to excuse their coup later over sherry, cakes and caviar.

The second time around the majority of U.S. voters elected Bush without knavery. Never abandon a president who started a war in order to stay in office: That still plucks an old instinct that pickles voters’ brains.

This Bush would not have succeeded even as a used-car salesman had he not been born into a rich, powerful political clan. Money has Vaselined over his characteristics and habits : Small intelligence, eschewal of learning, ignorance of books, distaste for the arts, eagerness to lie and believe his own lies, lust to force the nation and its institutions to bow to the president as emperor, as someone above the laws both of the country and of ordinary decency, someone who without blush drones that waterboarding a captive is not the same as torturing him.

Anyone paying close attention to the Bush regime cannot help but notice what distinguishes his from other presidencies: His drive to get Congress and the courts to kneel to the notion that the president has an inherent power as commander-in-chief to do anything he wants in the name of saving the nation from its enemies:That he can cause underlings to kidnap and torture those he or they accuse of terrorism; that he can jail anyone so accused forever, without right to consult a lawyer or a consul; that despite the Constitution, he can order our military into battle without a declaration of war from Congress; that he doesn’t have to rely on money from Congress to fund his overseas adventures, so long as the Treasury can create dollars by selling bonds; that spook agencies can wiretap U.S. citizens without a warrant and without warrant subpoena their personal records, including mail.

Unlike Caligula G.W. Bush does not claim to a be a god, nor has he so far put his horse forward, not even the asses in his cabinet, to neigh our prayers.

But Bush does claim to receive advice directly from God, who apparently has not yet told Bush about the commandment not to lie. Looking at Bush’s record so far as the biggest and potentially most dangerous fool so far embraced by our democracy, one can only observe that God’s record in politics leaves much to be desired, that God seems to be telling his lackey in the Oval Office that dictatorship is swell.