The events of this week made me think of that deluge of frogs at the end of Paul Anderson's film Magnolia. It had something to do with the wind and rain lashing the hardbitten Gulf Coast, breaching (not again!) the levees in New Orleans. But it also had to do with that Sumo-sized Rita, how she really did embody all the characteristics of a brutish, bullying alcoholic on a three-day bender, how she took her sweet-assed time squatting atop Louisiana, knocking back gallons of Mogen David before licking her chops, taking a massive dump, then waltzing drunkenly across Texas. How many days in a row did we see the headline: "Rita Takes Aim at Texas Coast"? Three? Four?
And then, there were those shots of the fleeing yuppies in SUVs and vans, the pork-built eight-lane highways packed as tightly as highways can be packed, like cattle cars, really, nobody moving, vehicles abandoned for lack of gas, one bus transformed into a funeral pyre for two dozen helpless senior citizens. If I were one of the gazillion folks who embrace the possibility of the "Rapture" or the Book of Revelations' "endtimes," I would be thinking, hey, this is it, this is the final chapter of the "Left Behind" series, and I would be wondering why everyone was panicking and fleeing. Hey, I thought this is what you wanted! The Apocalypse, the final chapter, the moment when all you righteous ones are vacuumed into Heaven to hang out for eternity with Oral Roberts and Pat Robertson while the rest of us are left to broil in our own terrible sin-filled juices!
It also had something to do with reports in the National Enquirer that George W. Bush is drinking again. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't (and, think what you will about the Enquirer, you know a team of lawyers went over every comma and period of those stories prior to publication), but if he does have that predilection — and he has confessed as much, in one of his rare moments of self-inventory — maybe he SHOULD be drinking. Because, almost simultaneously, I thought of Cindy Sheehan, Hurricane Cindy descending on Washington, D.C., sober and certain and unbullshit-able, wanting to know what that noble cause was that took her son away. And here she is accompanied by hundreds of thousands of fellow Americans wanting to know why their nation has been taken away from them. And I think this must be George W. Bush's worst nightmare, an accountability moment the likes of which he's never faced.
And I hear Aimee Mann singing to the entire nation, quietly, plaintively, in the only way that can enter that portcullis of denial and pain and delusion: "It's not what you thought when you began it/ You got what you want, now you can hardly stand it."
Yes, two hurricanes hit the White House this week, one named Rita, packing 165-mile-per-hour winds and headed straight for the family jewels in Houston. This time, of course, 50,000 National Guardsmen were scared up to protect the gated communities of the oil elite. Meanwhile, Karl Rove, who's allegedly in charge of running the New Orleans reconstruction effort, was found at a fund-raiser in North Dakota, proving once again how little these people care about governing, how they really don't give two shits about "the American people" — that catchphrase that slides off their tongues like the alcoholic's promise to stop drinking, stop beating his spouse and kids.
Yes, Bush and his inner circles are abusers. Or hadn't you noticed until now?
Even in the wake of Katrina, they weren't getting down to the business of governing. Rather, they were making it look like they were doing something while rewarding their cronies with contracts and flogging the war on terror. Rather than turning off the spin machine for one measly week, the increasingly pathetic Bush was heard rambling, "You know, something we — I've been thinking a lot about how America has responded, and it's clear to me that Americans value human life, and value every person as important. And that stands in stark contrast, by the way, to the terrorists we have to deal with. You see, we look at the destruction caused by Katrina, and our hearts break. They're the kind of people who look at Katrina and wish they had caused it. We're in a war against these people. It's a war on terror. These are evil men who target the suffering … blah blah blah."
And I hear Aimee Mann's tiny voice, way down low: "It's not going to stop, it's not going to stop, it's not going to stop, 'til you wise up."
