Perhaps the most astonishing pronouncement of the inarticulate President of the United States is that he doesn’t read. George W. Bush says that his advisers tell him what he needs to know. What an amazing thing for the husband of Laura the librarian and the son of Barbara Bush, campaigner for literacy, to say! But more than that, it is deeply disturbing that the president of the dominant global power, the leader of the free world, the most powerful man in the world, would choose to have his perceptions of the world censored and spoon-fed to him by his underlings. It is simply unfathomable.
However, it does help one to understand how Bush could honestly say, as he did in a recent interview with Larry King on CNN, “I don't have a sense that there's a lot of anger [towards me].” *
If Bush reads nothing and his campaign workers screen all the members of the audiences at his campaign stops and require them to sign a loyalty oath promising to vote for him, how could he perceive anger towards him? If his critics are described to him as the usual pot-smoking, hippie malcontents that he expects them to be, can he know that protestors against the war in Iraq cut across age, race, and class lines?
Bush cannot read substantially sophisticated texts; hell he probably can't read Dr Zeuss. He was never properly retrained for his dyslexia. He allowed himself to be socially promoted with the support of anyone who owed his parents anything. We are led by a man who received C- grades all through life for work he didn't do, but that was done for him. The number two guy flunked out of Yale, flunked out of a local Wyoming college, and required the direct support of his wife to not only get him through U of W w/ a BA but also keep him out of the draft.
we all should be ashamed.. we should feel horrible that decisions are made by a man who literally knows nothing about anything and must be told "stuff" in order to function. no wonder we are living through a mess. Bush learns how to do stuff from FoxNews and conservative talk radio and pundits who have his ear and from the direct common sensical relationship of "you pay me i do this" way of governing. we are in deeper shit than we imagine even. it actually can't get any scarier.
