(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)
Jeb Bush dropped out of the 2016 presidential race not long ago, and you could hear the earth itself heave a sigh of relief. When he announced he was suspending his campaign, head down with a pathetic shrug between his ears, a political dynasty that has looted and ravaged this nation and the world for going on 80 years was snuffed like a guttering candle in a forgotten church. In that darkness is the light, because the planet doesn’t have to worry about the Bush family any more. They’ll lurk, sure, like a purse snatcher skulking in the shadows next to an ATM, but the next time you see a Bush on television will be when they are getting lowered into their grave.
Prescott Bush, the wellspring of the Bush dynasty, sounds like a good man on paper. He served in World War I, was on the ground floor of the formation of Planned Parenthood and was a chairman for the United Negro College Fund. Scratch the brass, however, and you find old blood. According to a variety of reports and investigations, a number of the companies Prescott Bush was involved with, companies where he made his fortune, financed and supported the Nazi regime in Germany. That dirty money served his sons and grandsons well.
George H. W. Bush became the 41st president of the United States in 1988. His path to power was long and winding. While a member of the House of Representatives, he was a big fan of the Vietnam War. Nixon made him UN Ambassador, and Bush repaid him while chairman of the Republican National Committee by absorbing as much flak as he could manage during the Watergate catastrophe. He became Director of the CIA after the Church Committee hearings, and who the hell knows what happened there. He ran for president in 1980 and got his ass handed to him in a small paper sack by an actor from California named Ronald Reagan.
A year later, he was vice president, and that’s when things got funky. See, there were these Contras down in Nicaragua who needed cash to facilitate…