Another Year

Dear George,

Here it is, another 9/11, the seventh anniversary of your coronation. My, how time flies. Most emperors claw their way onto a golden throne; you clawed you way to the top of a pile of rubble for your bullhorn moment.

Talk about drawing to an inside straight, 9/11 was a godsend for you and your minions. And it came just in time. The public had already caught on to the fact that you were a loser and your approval ratings were starting to tank. As soon as the planes hit, your handlers drgged you away from “My Pet Goat” and repositioned you as our steely-eyed commander-in-chief, while the Big Dick started spinning his fantasies about the unitary power of the executive in wartime.

Your neocons, in their Plan for the New American Century (PNAC) said the nation needed another Pearl Harbor to awaken its martial spirit. We sure as hell got our Pearl Harbor, but it didn’t do much to awaken America’s martial spirit. That might have had something to do with your telling the public to get their asses down to Walt Disney World and spend like there was no tomorrow, which according to you there might not have been unless the Patriot Act was passed.

I will be the first to admit that things didn’t quite turn out like you’d hope they would. We started kicking butt like the world was unipolar and we were the pole. Okay, so we sort of overlooked a key dynamic of international relations: when one nation gets too powerful, smaller nations band together to neutralize it. Now we are faced not only with Russia and China, but with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with Russia, China, India and a bunch of little countries and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) made up of Russia and a bunch of Stans.

We also ended up accidentally handing Iraq to Iran. (We all know it wasn’t your surge that calmed things down; it was Tehran’s negotiation of a ceasefire between the militias that did it.)
Incidentally, Iran is eligible to join both the SCO and the CSTO.

But, do you know what? None of this makes a damn bit of difference, because it’s not about America, it’s about capital and its exponential growth. Capital doesn’t give a shit about God, mom, apple pie, lapel pins or victory. All it cares about is a robust return on investment.

Your legacy will be that you ruined America but saved capital. And that is something to be truly proud of.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones