Reply #23: well, they aren't mutually exclusive [View All]

Martin, I totally agree with you (and with the author of that piece) that having Bush in there is bad for the US and the whole world. But I was referring more to Bush's own mental state.

If there was any hope for him being a reasonably-sane (though probably still obnoxious) human being -- it's vanished now, probably forever. By the time he's out of office, he's going to be showing all the symptoms of megalomania. He wasn't in great psychological shape before he got into politics, and this will only make it worse (like that "messiah" complex he seems to have acquired, thanks to all his flunkies and court Rasputins). All the natural checks that keep the rest of us from doing foolish things (fear of being disowned by our families, or of getting fired or arrested, or of what people will think, etc.) have been taken away now. Especially since the election -- he doesn't have to make nice anymore.

If Bush were just a failed drunk on a bar stool in Midland, estranged from his family -- not only would he be relatively harmless, but he wouldn't have fallen into all these delusions of grandeur, and he'd still have a toehold in the real world. More to the point, he wouldn't have signed all those death warrants as Governor, or started this war. A teacher of mine once used the phrase "morally compromised", and I like it better than "conscience" or "soul" where Bush is concerned.

The reason I was thinking about this -- a colleague of mine became temporarily famous, and let it go to his head. He began to think he really was more important than everybody else just because his publicist told him so ... and his family and longtime friends became concerned about some rather unpleasant changes in his personality. Even his sister, his greatest admirer, commented: "writing that bestseller was the worst thing that could have happened to him". I don't think Bush will ever realize this (my co-worker didn't, until it was too late). Maybe Bush, too, will be confronted by his own failure eventually.