Letters to the Editor
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Cowboy as King
There is something very deep and basic about George Bush's fixation on the old West, and his vision of himself in the saddle.
The day the true extent of this finally sunk in for me was the day he smirked his way haltingly through the famous "wanted dead or alive" speech. "There was a saying in the old West" that he had heard about and seemed to want to educate the rest of us about...as though we were just hearing it for the first time and he had just discovered his own cleverness. Wanted, dead or alive. A simple idea for a simple man.
It's the ultimate power. The sheriff who can declare who lives or dies, without benefit of the courts. Judge Roy Bean being drunk and all. This is the world of Bush's twisted psyche. Where there are no laws, except his. And where he is accountable to no one. And where John Wayne swagger makes you a real man, even if you're hiding under your own bed while your deputies and the mob they whip up do the hanging for you.
The very law was lawlessness in Bush's old West.
And that's just the way George likes it.