The End of Days, Part One: Mother's Day

Look carefully at the girl in this photograph.

Consider her features… her distant, guarded expression and that weird, cold fire in her eyes. Is it a trick of the camera, the lighting, the moment? Look carefully, it’s important. Ask yourself what it might have been like to be her child, to see in those eyes all the love and light the world had to offer. Look into those eyes and try to find yourself a little warmth.

When Helen Thomas asked George Bush “Why did you want this war?”, something in the bluntness and simplicity of both her question and her voice rang true for me, and I found myself pondering the same thing as if for the first time: “Why did he want this war?”

All my assumptions about Bush’s motivations – a veritable spicerack of cynicism, politics, vanity and greed – suddenly seemed beside the point: too much Machiavelli, not enough Freud. Look at the girl in this photograph and ask yourself, “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?”

If nothing else, I believe we can all agree that George W. Bush entered the Presidency as a virtual unknown. Apart from sobriety he had no accomplishments to speak of besides his name. The rest was a mystery.

I believe the rich are different from the rest of us: both beyond and because of the fact that they have more money. The rest of us can live our lives thinking if we only had a whole lot of money, everything would be perfect. This is one of the few luxuries the rich don’t have. Theirs is a set of aspirations, motivations and frustrations we can only guess at, but from what I can tell, those with money crave power, those with power crave glory.

This Mother’s Day I’d like us all to say a little prayer for Barbara Bush and hope that she can find room in that “beautiful mind” of hers to show a little love and affection for her son George Jr., the ne’er do well who became President. Tell him that you love him Babs. Hold him tightly to your breast and whisper that he was always, always your favorite. And please, please do it soon. The fate of the world may depend on it.