Bush, the stranger

Posted August 25, 2006

As schoolchildren head back to class over the next several weeks, it’s important to remind them of one of our nation’s time-tested truisms: In this great democracy, anybody can grow up to president.

There is no better example of this than the current occupant of the White House. George W. Bush, by his own admission, was not a stellar scholar (he was a C student at Yale, where he gained entry by blood rather than brains). But through hard work and tenacity … check that, through his daddy’s contacts, Bush somehow made his way not once, but twice, into the top job in these great United States and perhaps the world.

But now, six years into his presidency, Bush is finally pushing back at the notion that he’s not smart. According to U.S. News and World Report, Bush and his brainy sidekick, Karl Rove, are having a book-reading competition. Aides say the president has read 60 books so far this year, while Rove — who presumably has less time on his hands as he micromanages Oz from behind that curtain — has read only 50. In August alone, Bush plowed through two tomes on Abraham Lincoln and Albert Camus’ The Stranger.

For those who have forgotten their high school lit classes, The Stranger is the story of a young, aimless Algerian, Meursault, who ends up killing a man. At his trial, which is not so much about the murder as it is Meursault’s deficient character, it comes out that the protagonist was unmoved by his own mother’s death and went to a funny movie after her funeral. The eventual sentence issued by Camus’ jury is at once ridiculous and inevitable.

It is no wonder that Bush has chosen to cut his intellectual teeth on Camus. All right-wing religious fervor aside, our president is the embodiment of the existentialist values of meaning through existence and individual subjectivity over objectivity.

According to Wikipedia’s definition, existentialism emphasizes “action, freedom, and decision as fundamental to human existence, arguing against definitions of human beings either as primarily rational, knowing beings who relate to reality primarily as an object of knowledge, or for whom action can or ought to be regulated by rational principles, or as beings who can be defined in terms of their behavior as it looks to or is studied by others.”

Indeed, if anyone’s behavior defies definition, it is Bush’s.

We have been lampooning this man for all these years, when we have in the White House a living testament to philosophical thought — which is yet another oxymoron, since philosophy is a discipline that has long been abandoned in our own public schools, where action, freedom, and decision have fallen by the wayside in the pursuit of higher test scores.

So, yes, children, you too, can be president — provided you’re a well-connected white, male, Protestant, Johnny-come-lately.

Now get back to those standardized tests.

Energizing candidates

In a recent editorial, the state’s largest newspaper, The Burlington Free Press, called for opponents and supporters of windfarms to cool the debate and come to “consensus.”

Consensus, that is, as long as it means not building on a few select mountaintops.

Maybe the paper’s editorial board should make a point of sticking to its own advice. For years, the Free Press has taken a narrow-minded view of wind power, and has lambasted supporters for not caring about Vermont’s “aesthetic.”

They do this in the name of protecting the state’s ridgelines, which they claim serve as a beacon for our tourism industry — an industry that barely pays above minimum wage — while many wind-power related companies in Vermont offer jobs that are clean and well-paying.

And, global warming, fueled by our current fossil fuel oriented energy culture, is likely to decimate many of our mountaintops and with it our tourism industry.

If we care about making Vermont more “affordable” and providing more opportunities for young people to stay here, we must support an industry with roots here that can help us achieve greater energy independence.

In this year’s Town Meeting Day poll conducted by Sen. Bill Doyle, R-Washington, 63 percent of 9,200 Vermonters surveyed answered yes to this statement: “Should commercial windmills be built on Vermont’s ridgelines?” Only 19 percent disagreed, and 18 percent were undecided.

As this poll shows, most Vermonters have already had the debate and have come to consensus. Now they’re waiting for the leaders to follow.