Torture

This article says it all, much better than I ever could.

All I might add is that I recall a conversation I had with a Republican acquaintance back before the 2000 coup. He's not one of those Limbaugh Republicans, nor is he a fundamentalist Christian Republican. He's more the genetic kind you find all over this part of Kansas. He had a copy of "Atlas Shrugged" as a coffee table book.

At the time he was trying to make a rational case for G.W. Bush, and I said it would be a disaster for Bush to become president. "Why?" the Republican asked as if genuinely curious (he wasn't, he was just practicing his defense). "Because," I replied, "the world is too dangerous a place for somebody that stupid to be president."

Those are my exact words. I still remember the comment perfectly.

I was not quite accurate, though. Bush may be academically stupid, but he is sociopathically clever, and he did everything he wanted to do while in office. He managed to move more of the nation's wealth up to the upper 1%of the überwealthy than even Reagan in the '80s. That's success if you're a Neocon.

What I wish I had said at the time is this: "The world is too dangerous a place for somebody that evil to be president."

Bush liked to use the word "evil" when describing his enemies and nations he wanted to attack. Takes one to know one, I guess.

We are rid of him, but the bad things he and his cohorts did will resonate generations after my lifetime. It's possible the country will never recover what was lost.