The Coda

Final Thoughts on the End of One of America's Unforgettable Chapters

Last night I had an incredible dream in which my partner and I stood in front of a vast marble building in Washington D.C. some years in the future. Above us was a hellish cartoon depiction of former President George W. Bush and below it was inscribed a plaque detailing the horrific damages inflicted on the American people thanks to 8 years of his Administration. Our teenage son, never having lived through these last dire days, questioned us about this man, portrayed only in cartoon above him: "What was it really like? Could he have been that bad?"

I woke up conflicted and relieved.

No doubt, I join countless other bloggers and commentators in writing parting thoughts about the departure of our 43rd President. Slate has posted the greatest cartoons drawn of Bush during the last 8 years and Andrew Sullivan leaves us with these parting thoughts.

There's no telling the track of history and so it's futile to guess at it. If Iraq is ultimately transformed into a functioning democratic state and serves as a buffer against Iran (a scenario looking less likely by the day) and if Afghanistan can help to defuse tensions with Pakistan by becoming a robust and healthy place devoid of poppy crops, who knows what will be written about the long term consequences of what now appears disastrous?

Only time will tell.

All we're left with are the intangible emotions that've wracked our bodies and minds for these long years: the tension felt as America re-elected a man who'd rewrite the Constitution to include discrimination against my family, the fear as he marched an entire nation to war on deceit and manipulation, the awe as he let an entire American city drown without blinking an eye or losing sleep.

A Shakespearean realization has crept up on me the past few weeks: it's the understanding that it's all been dream-like. The ideological warspeak that has dominated so much of our lives and terrified so many of us, the Christian talking points that evoked a frightening cultural holy war; none of it meant anything to these people at the top, who at the waning days of this Presidency seem wholly uninterested in belief and more concerned with not leaving a smoking pothole behind in the annals of history. Would an idealogue have agreed to the largest government take over of private financial institutions in American history? Would an idealogue have begun timid negotiations with the enemy in Iran? Would an idealogue have conceded the grim truth about Iraq and quietly drawn up a timeline for withdrawal?

The answer is clearly no.

Hence the dichotomy of the dream: who is this figure of conflict?

After all of this madness, we are not left with any clear archetype in spite of our eagerness to play him as the villian. He is neither driven by greed nor power nor moral certitude. He's a wholly new creation: a wholly American creation in some ways worse that the models left to us by literature and myth.

Bush is the aloof and spoiled American brat. He cares nothing about the cost of his mistakes and is perhaps tragically incapable of understanding the consequences of the choices he's made. We cannot label this without slight discomfort because we all know that on some level, a part of this is us. A part of this is America.

History may see him differently. We have no way to tell.

All we're left with is the sinking feeling that in order to unmake the America left to us by Bush, we'll have to unmake a part of ourselves; leaving behind the bloodiest century in human history in favor of the unknown.

At the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bottom describes the "bottom-less" dream that words fail to quantify; as we pass from one set of dark days to another, made darker still by the shadow of the last, I'm reminded of those words as I shift in my bed, desperately trying to wake up.


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