Simple Math

Hundreds of king's ransoms' worth of capital was invested in the Republican takeover of the three branches of the United States government, especially the restoration of the executive after Bill the Imposter wrenched eight years that should have been Republican but for the tax fecklessness of Bush the Elder (and that class traitor Perot). And seemingly worth every penny: capital moves relatively unfettered across national frontiers in a unipolar world vanquished of any competitive economic ideology, where gross consumer self-indulgence is celebrated as a sign of advanced civilization, and in the world's most powerful country, with the world's most influential and powerful national economy, a pro-business party runs the executive, legislative and, most importantly, the judiciary. Greed has been re-branded as quotidian ambition, poverty as personal weakness, economic Darwinism as an equal playing field. All that was left to do was to install a benign doofus, one who believed, shallowly if devoutly, in the self-rewarding cliches of the open market, who could be manipulated gently, behind the scenes, by playing to his cowboy vanity, while capital invested steadily in controlling the media, advancing the agenda, sponsoring gay-baiters and liberal-baiters and pay-for-play corporate preachers and disgruntled Vietnam vets who never got past Jane Fonda.

You think we hate George Bush?

The irony that global capital was as incompetent in its vetting of George Bush as George Bush is incompetent as President will be lost on the global poobahs (who can point to their palaces with gold bathtub fixtures for self-reassurance). Equally lost on the poobahs will be that their greed to exploit 911 to further their economic goals mirrors George Bush's greed to exploit 911 to further his historic legacy. You handpick a nepotistic mediocrity as caretaker/figurehead, and KA-BOOM! in the aftermath of an attack against global capitalism the doofus goes and develops a Churchill complex. George Bush was anointed for his stringability, not his stringency, and his puppeteers have to be pissed. All he had to do was not fuck it up.

Global capital will still win, but it will not win on its terms in this turn of the game, and once you have almost everything all that counts is getting what's left, not for what's left's sake but for getting it your way when you want it. And they wanted it now. Somewhere, someone's throwing a tureen of Galapagos turtle bisque at a servant, imagining that the servant is George Bush. The servant better not duck. George Bush better.