President Bush Comes To Town

So today, in the world of East Grand Rapids, we are locked down and held captive to our relative places. No, no threat of mass school shooting...

President Bush is speaking today at East Grand Rapids High School, approximately one mile from were I will lay my head tonight, from where I have eaten my breakfast, from where I am writing to you.

Several thoughts run through my head. The first is that had I moved slower through my education program, I might be at East Grand Rapids High today. I was this time last year, doing my student teaching internship. As it is, I did not ever bother trying to get in to hear the President - fat chance, in other words.

But that's not all. I have, for the first time in my life, been having recurring dreams. Not really exactly recurring dreams, but a recurring theme.

Spiders.

I have been dreaming incessantly of spiders - big, small, hairy, whatever - they're gross. Last night, I could barely get to sleep because I kept imagining a massive gray spider hiding under my bed.

Yes, I know I'm 33 years old!

But I WONDER...if possibly...in some small way, I have been picking up on all the creepy, crawling security stuff that has been underway for at least a month now. You know - the "them" and the "they". Those who make sure everything is secure months before the President arrives.

I'm going to think that anyway, cause it's kinda cool!

But I can't see any of those silent helicopters Mel Gibson talked about in the Conspiracy Theory - every breeze though, and I run and look!

Another thing I saw - besides the obvious and the, hmmm, isn't it weird that we've had all these people walking around, driving around checking all the telephone wires and electrical wires - besides that, I noticed my neighbors - two of which are students at EGRHS - have been coming and going and constantly on the phone. The kids who should be in school - but they're not. Instead, they just pulled up to the house and unloaded three identical bottles of laundry detergent. Three - and nothing else. Suspicious, isn't it?

I'm trying to determine if you can bombs from laundry detergent...I mean, after all, they're clearly Democrats.

Which leads me to my next thought - I couldn't help thinking, as a writer you see, of all the possible Tom Clancy moments that could happen right now - and I'd be here in the thick of it! I've been imagining myself as that "Innocent Bystander" character, who gets thrown into the thick of the things purely by proximety. There's a basement in my apartment that opens, like a storm cellar, on the outside. I've often thought of glamourous scenarios involving runaway - and wrongly convicted - criminals hiding in my basement while I sleep in comfort two stories above. I also imagined this same scenario last fall when a felony suspect actually escaped from the city jail, which is...oh...maybe 5 miles away? Not far, anyway... During that manhunt, I was actually stopped while driving and was intergated and made to pop my trunk, in case I was transporting the poor fellow.

Anyway, I've been imagining scenes in which I, clutching my cat in one arm, sliding along the interior hallway towards the inside basement door, whisper dramatically in my cell phone:

"I think...there's someone...in my basement..."

At which point, men in black bust down my door while some would-be assassin tries to escape. The next scene is of course, me - still holding my cat for some reason - accepting some metal of honor from President Bush for bravery and for saving his life.

There are a lot more details to this story, but I won't bore you...

(By the way - it's 11:49 - and the streets are all silent, no buses running anymore...hmm....)

Finally though, my last thought will have some air time.

I like President Bush. I voted for him, not once, not twice, but three times. No, this is not Chicago...

I voted for then Governor Bush while I lived in Texas, which makes three.

Now, I know it's not popular to like Mr. Bush, and I know that my value as an intelligent person goes down in the public market as I write this. But, I will say it again. I like him and I trust him.

Jeremy Benson and the utilitarians thought that the best way to behave ethically was to ask what is best for the largest number of people. This, of course, is a version of our American Democracy. The caveat of course, is that we have all sorts of protections for those who don't belong to "the largest number of people", which is good. But the real problem with utilitarianism is that it begs the question of what is good. See, if ethics is essentially the study of "How shall I/we be/behave good?" then utilitarianism doesn't answer the question. Nor sadly does popular opinion have anything to do with what is good. I'd like to believe otherwise, but in general, I do not see it is the case.

Politicians typically are all about what is popular, because that is what keeps them in power. But, if there's one thing you can say about President Bush, he clearly doesn't buy that. He hasn't behaved in the ways acceptable for those who wish to please the crowd, and sometimes I wonder if that's why "the crowd" hates him so much. Perhaps the crowd likes the power it has, and hates when politicians don't dance?

We have played you a wedding march and you did not rejoice;
We have played you a funeral dirge and you did not morn.

So what can we say about an American politician who doesn't care about popular opinion? Either he is tyrant, driven by his own lust for power, or he is a man who forcefully bends himself to a truer good that what is popular.

Why do we think - or why would we want - the President to tell us, explain to us, all that he knows? He cannot. For the good of people everywhere, he must not. So all we can do is trust or not trust his character.

I trust him.

posted by Headless-in-GR @ 4/20/2007 11:28:00 AM

 

Comments:

HELICOPTERS! YES I'M FOR REAL!!!

# by:  Headless-in-GR : 12:16 PM

 

How exactly are any of his actions for the truer good?

And paying attention to 70% of the population and your Congress, and pretty much every scientist and war expert we've got, that's not "dancing". That's fulfilling the role that an American president was intended to have. We were built on democracy, on the idea of a weak executive branch with checks and balances.

It's one thing to be assertive, but when your approval ratings are as low as Nixon's, it might be the time to start listening.

I see nothing in his attitude but hubris, and nothing in his speeches but repetition.

# by:  S. Grace : 2:24 PM

 

Oh yeah, bought my ticket today. 6pm in Detroit on May 14th, aight?

# by:  S. Grace : 3:15 PM

 

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