A Prayer For George Dubbya

A Prayer For George Dubbya
What might the uni­verse have to say to Shrub right now? Hint: It ain’t exact­ly fan mail
By Mark Morford

George. Hey, uni­verse here. Great eter­nal karmic engine of all that ever was and is and will be every­where for all time, yad­da yad­da yad­da. We have to talk.

Weird­est thing. I’ve been fight­ing this nasty rash, you see, this itchy painful scab­by thing, very unusu­al, uncom­fort­able and annoy­ing as all hell, as you might imag­ine. Not sleep­ing well. Tea tastes fun­ny. Divine time­less lumi­nous glow is flick­er­ing like a bad bulb. Haven’t seen any­thing like this since, oh, the Cru­sades, or the Salem witch tri­als, or ‘Nam. So weird.

But I think I’ve fig­ured out the cause, GW. Turns out it’s a per­son. Human. Pale and smirky and not all that artic­u­late. You feel me?

Let’s get to the point. All sources are telling me that you are more than a lit­tle out­ta con­trol. Way out of line. Off-leash and lost and drunk on dreams of glob­al suprema­cy and in deep need of major karmic spank­ing, a
divine colonic. The var­i­ous world deities are shoot­ing me urgent e‑mails left and right. We got­ta have some words, broth­er. Are you sit­ting down? Think­ing cap on? Pret­zels out of reach? Excellent.

Word is you’re reborn Chris­t­ian. Great. Did­n’t quite get it right the first time, is what they say, what with all the ine­bri­ants and dad­dy’s sil­ver spoon and dodg­ing Viet­nam and, hey, noth­ing snags those God-fearin’-fundamentalist votes more than claim­ing you redis­cov­ered Jesus while recov­er­ing from anoth­er gin ben­der on Dad’s yacht, am I right? Fine and good. What­ev­er works, I always say.

Prob­lem is, Jesus is a lit­tle piqued. He’s right here with me, right now, and he’s drum­ming his fin­gers on the table, eyes aflame. He has a ques­tion: “Just what in the heck do you think you’re doing in my dad’s name? Did you miss the part about ‘Thou shalt not kill?’ You dare invoke me and my father and call your­self a for­giv­ing Chris­t­ian and yet you stomp around the globe like you own it?” Christ, he is not happy.

He also wants to know what’s with those hard­core evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies march­ing into Iraq. Sure, the food and aid they bring in is won­der­ful and need­ed, but the Bibles? The con­ver­sion­ary preach­ing? Bil­ly Gra­ham spawn Franklin Gra­ham’s bil­ious Islam-bash­ing ide­ol­o­gy? What’s up with that? Who you try­ing to kid?

Which leads us right to prayer cards. What the hell is this? Some sort of sanc­ti­mo­nious pam­phlet being hand­ed out to U.S. sol­diers in the bat­tle­field, which they’re sup­posed to tear off and send to you to let you know they’re pray­ing for you? Oh dear. Are you serious?

Let me get this straight: Sol­diers who are right now in the line of fire — basi­cal­ly thou­sands and thou­sands of poor, under­e­d­u­cat­ed young kids, baf­fled, stunned, patri­ot­i­cal­ly mis­led — pray­ing for you and the suc­cess of
your cor­po­rate regime? And not the oth­er way around? Jesus has two words for you, Dubya: Step off.

Well of course Bud­dha’s here too, BTW. Always the chuck­ling one, always laugh­ing at the divine absur­di­ty of it all, the deli­cious tragi­com­ic pageant. He’s still laugh­ing, but it’s this sort of dry, resigned laugh of
cheer­less exhaus­tion. You know what I’m say­ing, George?

See, lots of peo­ple believe Bud­dha is the one who taught Jesus many of those lessons about sur­ren­der­ing the ego, about com­pas­sion and non­vi­o­lence and inner peace. All about how des­per­ate attach­ment to greed and pow­er and oil only leads to suf­fer­ing. About how every­thing is con­nect­ed, and if you irrev­o­ca­bly despoil one thing, you despoil every­thing. Sim­ple truths, Geo. Always the most pro­found, you know?

Thing is, Bud­dha takes it a lit­tle per­son­al­ly when one of his great­est stu­dents is slight­ed and mis­treat­ed and delib­er­ate­ly mis­in­ter­pret­ed in the name of vio­lence and pow­er expan­sion and empire. But then he just laughs. Damn, he’s so good at see­ing the big pic­ture. He knows, in the grand scheme, you are pret­ty irrel­e­vant. Aren’t we all? Well, except me.

Whoa. You hear that? That singing? That gor­geous, over­whelm­ing sound, like an ocean roar? Like vol­ca­noes erupt­ing? God­dess­es. Fiery ancient ones, they are, most exist­ing long before the guys. They’re eter­nal moth­ers and life givers and major destroyers.

Oh, man, they think you are so full of it. You have aggres­sive­ly dissed wom­en’s rights, slammed choice, shown nox­ious­ly lit­tle respect for women in gen­er­al and for the divine fem­i­nine cause over­all. Wow. These are some of the most pow­er­ful and divine forces around here, Geo, rep­re­sent­ing some of the most basic, immutable laws of nature and time, and they are prob­a­bly the most sad­dened by you, the most appalled and sick­ened. Isn’t that inter­est­ing? Think about it.

There’s Mohammed. Allah. Oh, man. He has such the headache right now. He looks ter­ri­ble. Keeps bang­ing his head against my walls, over and over, repeat­ing, “This is so not what I meant, this is so not what I meant, this is so not what I meant.” He’s talk­ing about the fun­da­men­tal­ist ter­ror­ists, slaugh­ter­ing in the name of some mar­tyr­dom. But he also means you, George.

He thinks you need an inner hajj. That’s a pil­grim­age, George (we all real­ize that, until you bought the pres­i­den­cy, you’d nev­er real­ly been any­where out­side the U.S., so you don’t know much of that “fur­riner” lingo).
It’s a jour­ney, to find the self. See what you’re real­ly made of, divine­ly speak­ing. Because there are lots of doubts right now around these parts about what you might — or might not — find.

That skin­ny guy sit­ting qui­et­ly over in the cor­ner sip­ping herbal tea and read­ing and sigh­ing heav­i­ly? Gand­hi. Non­vi­o­lence works too, bucko, he wants to remind you. True, it’s far more dif­fi­cult and requires far more inter­nal for­ti­tude and intel­li­gence and calm. Not real­ly your forte.

Peace is always hard­er than rage, he knows. Smash­ing and killing is always eas­i­er than rea­son­ing and diplo­ma­cy. War is the last refuge of the small-mind­ed and the lost. Pret­ty basic stuff, real­ly. He’s just sad you
don’t seem to get it.

Remem­ber what Gand­hi said when a reporter asked his opin­ion of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, and he said he thought it would be a good idea? I’m think­ing that’s aimed right at you, GW. But now he’s just shrug­ging. I think he knows what awaits you, lat­er, in the next life, if you keep this up. Uh-oh.

So, then, Dubya, here’s my prayer for you: May you be sud­den­ly rein­vig­o­rat­ed with shock­ing amounts of divine sight. May plen­ti­tudes of epiphan­ic illu­mi­na­tion and wet soapy aware­ness scrub your soul clean of the demons of self-right­eous­ness and war and smirky pre­tense. (Trans­la­tion: Go com­mune with Shi­va for a change, and stay the hell away from Cheney.) May you go through a major spir­i­tu­al cri­sis of mean­ing and love, some sort of “Christ­mas Car­ol” thing where angry ghosts show you shock­ing truths that make you shud­der and recoil and whim­per. And may they do it quick.

Word is you were very hard on your­self in prepar­ing for this war, George. Word is you gave up sweets. Gosh. My prayer for you: Go back to the sweets. Suck sweets until you faint. Drench your­self in sweet­ness and ecsta­sy and lush sticky per­spec­tive until you’re eyes roll around in your head and you begin speak­ing in tongues oth­er than sim­ple­mind­ed drawl. Do it, Dubya. Do it now, before it’s too late.

Unless, of course, it already is.