Like a ghastly echo that is old enough to vote, the news is once again thrumming with stories of an election recount in Broward County. Eighteen years ago, a similar recount was disrupted by one of the most indefensible Supreme Court decisions ever made, and the world began its inexorable slide toward the abyss that now confronts us. Because gallows humor is how doom is endured, there is (of course) an internet meme to mark the moment: A photo of an older, grayer Al Gore above a caption that reads, “Florida Recount Wraps Up, Al Gore Declared President.”
Good one, internet. It only hurts when I laugh.
Compounding the existential misery that is always present when anything related to George W. Bush comes up, George W. Bush himself has come up once again. Last weekend, the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, a nonpartisan institution dedicated to educating people about the country’s founding documents, awarded Bush its prized Liberty Medal. The medal is given “to recognize leadership in the pursuit of freedom,” and has also been awarded to Nelson Mandela, Rep. John Lewis, Malala Yousafzai, Muhammad Ali and His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.
They gave this one to George.
“I would still invade Iraq even if Iraq never existed.” —George W. Bush to the Long Beach Press-Telegram, 8/21/2006
I remember being told, over and over again, that Iraq possessed 26,000 liters of anthrax; 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin; 500 tons (equal to 1,000,000 pounds) of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent; 30,000 munitions to deliver the aforementioned; aerial drones to spray the aforementioned; mobile biological weapons labs to manufacture the aforementioned; and uranium from Niger for use in Iraq’s “robust” nuclear weapons program. Every last inch of that was a lie, and millions of innocent people are either dead or displaced because of it.