Apr 29 2008
Lessons learned in my absence…or the hubris of George W. Bush
You may have noticed that I’ve been a little bit more absent than usual in the past several days. I was out of town for a family function in Virginia. I didn’t have a whole lot in the way of spare time, but with the few moments I had, I did manage to squeak away to our nation’s capital for little patriotic reverence. The day I flew home I stopped by the National mall to visit the World War II memorial as it was not there on my last visit. It was here that I saw something that infuriated me greatly.
The memorial itself is beautiful. It’s majestic and expansive and solemn. But there’s this one little element that I came upon right when I was entering that made me want to take a belt sander to the rock it was carved into. At the opening (my back to the Washington memorial) and on the right, there is a slab that has what are essentially the credits of the memorial, the name of the designer, the people that engraved. But at the top, in big large letters is carved the name “George W. Bush”. I was fuming. I went to the other war memorials, as well, and I saw no names of presidents stamped into those stones. It especially made me angry because I remember seeing advertisements calling for funds for the memorial before Bush was even in office.
Forever the name of the president with the worst disapproval ratings in history will be stamped into the same stones that recognize the sacrifices of one of our greatest generations for no reason except that they happened to reach their funding and complete construction while he was in office. Me = ANGRY!!!!
