The Most Hated Person in the World

As a kid I was fascinated by the Guinness Book of World Records, particularly the TV show hosted by David Frost. I was forever curious about who was the strongest person in the world, the tallest person in the world, the oldest living person in the world. But I was even more interested in learning about the more abstract "greatest"s -- smartest person in the world, bravest person, most evil person.

Seeing Argentina explode into riots over the Americas summit reminds me of how every city in the world explodes with unrest when George W. Bush visits. He's like the "Jessica Fletcher" (Angela Landsbury's character on the TV show Murder, She Wrote) of world politics -- wherever Jessica went, murdered people turned up; wherever George W. Bush goes, riots and protests erupt.

Sure, I know that protests follow most politicians. But not on the scale, and not with the ferocity and consistent charges of fascism, terrorism, and imperialism, as when George W. Bush lands in a new land. W. claims his participation in the summit is an 'opportunity to positively affirm our belief in democracy and human rights and human dignity'" but that's a complete and utter lie. It's an insultingly transparent lie, as well.

George W. Bush commands a country that believes in secret detentions, in torture (sometimes torturing people to death), in detention-without-end, with no charges, on secret evidence. No wonder so few people have been released from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- seeing the frail old men and stunned young boys who have been released reveals the arbitrary, ridiculous, ill-planned nature of these detentions. None of the people released from that U.S. concentration camp have faced any charges when they returned home.

Now we're hearing about the ever-benevolent CIA operating "Soviet-styled" secret prisons in eastern Europe.

Hey, I'm all for getting the "bad guys." No kidding, I am. I've posted here before my belief in the importance of getting the actual bad guys. Once we have them, I'm all for leaning the full weight of justice against them. America hides behind that old, thinning saw of "national security," but I think in order to have any credibility, the U.S. must do none of this in secret. I'm not saying they should post the results of current investigations on the Internet, but they should most definitely stop designating certain people as "enemy combatants." This from the people whose tempers and morality went nuclear when President Bill Clinton quibbled about the meaning "intercourse" when being questions about his tryst with an intern in the White House.

If the '50's rock singer, Dion, is still living, he should write a song for W. called "The Squanderer," because George W. Bush is the legendary squanderer of the global goodwill that shone on the U.S. following the 9/11 attacks. And now he has squandered the "political capital" he felt he'd gained after his last rigged election (blackbox voting in the Land of the Free?). What comes out of W.'s mouth, and the mouthpieces of his White House, is so easily, consistently, and speedily proven false that W. lost all credibility with most of the world before the 9/11 attacks. He doesn't seem to understand that people now have access to something called "the Internet," and this "digital world-hive-brain" makes information more readily available than it has been in previous decades.

From the universally debunked reasons for the U.S. going to war with Iraq, to the staged photo-op on that aircraft carrier in which W. had the gall to appear in military uniform, the thinning, increasing fictions of his administration have rendered it as a sterling symbol of subterfuge, deceit, double-dealing, and corruption.

George W. Bush is arguably the most hated person in the world because of his seamless record of corruption. Words like "freedom" and "democracy" are curses coming from his mouth.

I submit that George W. Bush is the face of the "Axis of Insanity" that has surfaced in the 21st Century, and his presidency marks the decline and fizzling of everything America once was and once represented.