The easy pleasure of Bush-bashing

I've been thinking about why I spend so much of my time excoriating Bush. What is it about us Bush-bashers that we have to keep bashing him? I guess it's really the chasm between him and the best of what America stands for.

Before 9/11 we were held in the highest regard by most of the world, and I myself held us in the highest regard. But something happened, what with the Iraq War, etc. We lost our moral authority. The world doesn't envy us anymore. Our version of democracy isn't the best anymore. Our version of capitalism (Enron crookery, overpaid CEOs, terrible health system, horrible public schools in inner cities) is assailed on all sides.

Somehow something happened that brought us down from a huge peak, and I blame Bush and his cronies for that. In some way he IS representative of us, or enough Americans think he is. If he didn't seem to be representative of us, i.e. our dark side or something, I wouldn't get so upset. But I think he does represent us -- our hubris, arrogance and so-called exceptionalism (we're very French this way); our boorish anti-intellectualism (we're very non-French this way); our greedy elite (we must have the greediest, most selfish elite outside Africa -- and I think our Ivy League universities need to take major blame for that); our insufferable piety and self-righteousness (sometimes we seem as fundamentalist as the Taliban). Bush's America and my America are so poles apart, but the fact that it's so easy to conjoin Bush and America drives me crazy, because then America becomes so much less than I want it to be.

So too often I end up just mouthing off, like in this piece, with not much substance. It's an emotional thing. I guess I care for my idea of America, maybe too much. Easy as it is to bash Bush, I'll just keep on doing it until someone else more representative of my America -- John McCain, Hillary Clinton -- is our President.