{"id":7615,"date":"2008-12-13T13:00:33","date_gmt":"2008-12-13T18:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=7615"},"modified":"2011-05-17T06:06:06","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T11:06:06","slug":"im-really-gonna-miss-systematically-destroying-this-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/politics\/im-really-gonna-miss-systematically-destroying-this-place\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m Really Gonna Miss Systematically Destroying This Place"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Editor&#8217;s Note<\/strong>: The following article, written by a George Bush imitator, was originally written for The Onion. It can be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theonion.com\/content\/opinion\/im_really_gonna_miss\" target=\"_blank\">viewed here<\/a> in its original form. &#8211;RA<\/em><\/p>\n<p>BY GEORGE W. BUSH<\/p>\n<p>Oh, America. Eight years went by so fast, didn&#8217;t they? I feel like I hardly got to know you and methodically undermine everything you once stood for. But I guess all good things must come to an end, and even though you know I would love to stick around for another year or four\u0432\u0402\u201dmaybe privatize Social Security or get us into Iran\u0432\u0402\u201dI&#8217;m afraid it&#8217;s time to go. But before I leave, let me say, from the bottom of my heart: I can&#8217;t think of another country I would&#8217;ve rather led to the brink of collapse.<\/p>\n<p>Boy, oh boy, if these Oval Office walls could talk. Seems like it was only yesterday that I started my first term despite having actually lost to Al Gore by more than a half million votes. Hmm. We were all so young and peaceful then. Gosh, gas was still under $2 a gallon! On my watch it peaked at more than twice that. Never getting it up to $6 or ideally $7.50 will be one of my few regrets when I leave office.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s just gonna be so hard packing up my things and heading off into the sunset come January. I wish I could go on forever giving massive and disastrous tax cuts to the wealthy, taking the country from a surplus to a deficit\u0432\u0402\u201dnearly $500 billion this year, likely to pass $1 trillion next year, fingers crossed\u0432\u0402\u201dand just generally doing irreparable damage to the very underpinnings of our economy, but, well, I&#8217;m afraid the Constitution says I can&#8217;t. And not even I can overrule the Constitution. Though Lord knows I tried! Initiating blanket wiretaps without warrants, suspending habeas corpus for prisoners in Guantanamo, infiltrating an unknown number of nonviolent civilian antiwar groups without permission\u0432\u0402\u00a6 such wonderful memories. I&#8217;m going to cherish them forever.<\/p>\n<p>My fellow Americans, I only hope that every time you have your civil liberties encroached upon by the Patriot Act, you&#8217;ll think of me.<\/p>\n<p>Everywhere I look brings back memories. The Blue Room is where Laura and I put up our first White House Christmas tree. Down the hall, in the East Room, is where I concocted my favorite signing statement to circumvent the anti-torture guidelines of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, and\u0432\u0402\u201dooh!\u0432\u0402\u201dright across the way is where Cheney and I decided to use the death of 3,000 Americans on 9\/11 and the nation&#8217;s subsequent fear of another attack as an excuse to carry out our long-standing plan to invade Iraq. I should really get a picture before I leave.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of pictures, whenever I look at the dusty old newspaper photos of those tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib or the crumpled ruins of that bridge in Minnesota, I can hold my head up high knowing that I truly fucked this nation\u0432\u0402\u201dphysically and symbolically\u0432\u0402\u201dbeyond repair. I only wish I had the time to destroy a couple more major American cities.<\/p>\n<p>And Cheney, I almost forgot about Cheney. What a guy, huh? I can&#8217;t believe that in a few short weeks he&#8217;s never going to talk to me again. The stories I could tell you about what went on in some of those back rooms\u0432\u0402\u201dwell, you wouldn&#8217;t believe me if I declassified the memos. I don&#8217;t know, maybe in 20 years, when the economy has rebounded and the people displaced by Katrina have rebuilt their lives from scratch with almost no federal assistance, Cheney and I can meet up again in the Rose Garden and reminisce over the good old days, when it seemed like there was no part of this great country we couldn&#8217;t ruin forever.<\/p>\n<p>What am I going to do once I&#8217;m no longer president? I&#8217;ve gotten so used to waking up every day, playing fetch with the dogs on the White House lawn, and then spending a lazy afternoon shredding every last bit of our good will abroad in a mind-boggling display of diplomatic incompetence.<\/p>\n<p>The worst part about leaving is knowing I can never screw up anything this big again. Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I&#8217;m only 62. I could still bankrupt an oil company, or become the next MLB commissioner and ruin baseball. But I&#8217;ll never get the opportunity to fuck up on this massive of a scale again. Even if you put me back in charge for another term, I could only take the U.S. from a rapidly declining world power to not a world power at all. I don&#8217;t mean to gloat, but I think it&#8217;s safe to say that no one can ever unseat the American empire like I unseated the American empire.<\/p>\n<p>Still, I have to admit, sometimes I think I could&#8217;ve dismantled so much more. The very fact that the environment still exists, that a mere 4,000 troops have died in Iraq, that there is still the slightest glimmer of hope for the future left in this nation\u0432\u0402\u201dit&#8217;s easy to feel like maybe I didn&#8217;t do my job. But no, no, there&#8217;s no use having any regret. I fucked everything up the best I could and that&#8217;s good enough for me.<\/p>\n<p>You know, I&#8217;ve got a few weeks left. I could still illegally fire some U.S. attorneys for political reasons, or finally get rid of that pesky separation between church and state. Or maybe I could just bomb a place. Like Russia. But this time, I would really savor it.<\/p>\n<p>As long as I live, America, I&#8217;ll never forget irreparably ruining you. Unless we all die in a nuclear war or calamitous environmental disaster brought on by my neglect. Either way, I&#8217;ll see you all in heaven!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Editor&#8217;s Note: The following article, written by a George Bush imitator, was originally written for The Onion. It can be viewed here in its original form. &#8211;RA BY GEORGE W. BUSH Oh, America. Eight years went by so fast, didn&#8217;t they? I feel like I hardly got to know you and methodically undermine everything you &#8230; <a title=\"I&#8217;m Really Gonna Miss Systematically Destroying This Place\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/politics\/im-really-gonna-miss-systematically-destroying-this-place\/\" aria-label=\"More on I&#8217;m Really Gonna Miss Systematically Destroying This Place\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[762],"tags":[36,52,530,117,1790],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7615"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}