Bushisms

"The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. I am that person. I wrote this book [Slaughterhouse Five], which earned a lot of money for me and made my reputation, such as it is.  One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed. Some business I'm in."
  - Kurt Vonnegut

In the spirit of the late, great Kurt Vonnegut, can we not apply this logic to the Bush administration?  Can we not calculate how many people died for every gift of unintended humor President Bush gave us? 
It's a fair calculation:  several hundred thousand dead Iraqis, several thousand dead soldiers and contractors, and almost 3,000 dead Americans on 9-11.  That is the cost of his administration in human lives. 
There was a benefit, however, a gift that keeps on a giving, a consolation prize of sorts.  All these bizarre word manglings that would make us almost pity the man were he some bumbling, mid-level manager rather than a War President, the Decider, who oversaw the killing of all those people on his watch. 
Let's settle on a round million dead.  Let's also assume there are 100 really juicy Bushisms out there floating around for our eternal amusement.   Let's further assume that the average Bush statement is 30 words.  Then Bush's enjoyment to death ratio works out to 3 words for every thousand corpses, or 333 dead, mostly dead Iraqis and Pakistanis and Afghans, for every funny Bush word. 
Some business we are all in.  Mission Accomplished.  Since so many paid so much for those malapropisms let's at least enjoy them:

"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."

"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."

You teach your child to read and he or her will pass a literacy test.
  George W. Bush

We look forward to hearing your vision so we can more better do our job.
   George W. Bush 9/21/05

Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until we did an objective analysis.
  George W. Bush Meet the Press, NBC, 4/15/2000

My education message will resignate among all parents.
  George W. Bush   New York Post, 1/19/2000

I do not believe we've put a guilty - I mean, innocent person to death in the state of Texas.
  George W. Bush  All Things Considered, NPR, June 16, 2000 [Miller, 243] Note that Bush was never known to have spent more than half an hour on any matter, death penalty appeals included.

Well, it seems like to me "Thou shalt not kill" is pretty universal.
  George W. Bush GOP Debate, Johnston, Iowa, 1/15/00; Really?

Please… don't kill me!
  George W. Bush mocking what Karla Faye Tucker said, when asked, just before her execution, "What would you say to Governor Bush?", Talk, 9/99

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
 - George W. Bush 8/6/04

Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.
- George W. Bush to FEMA Director Michael Brown

The next time you use paper, numbers, algebra, or read Plato, please thank an Arab

Another day, another right wing proposal to pull up the drawbridge of Fortress America and hide from the rest of the world.




 Unfortunately, the idea of a Christian European wanting to bar a Muslim import is sadly a very old one. 
The Hindu-ARABIC numbering system was a revolutionary introduction into Europe from the Arab world, although it didn't start to penetrate Europe until 500 to 700 years after it had been developed (all those Christians were might distrustful of what must have seemed like squiggles of the devil - as late as 1299, the bankers of Florence were forbidden to use the Hindu-Arabic numbering system! (source:  Queens Hall of Science)).  Imagine where we would be with all those cumbersome XXCLLVIII or whatever with no sense of digits "holding" values (so they could be lined up and added) and no ZERO!  (Arabs borrowed and refined zero and numerals with base 10 from the Hindu mathematicians of India.) Or negative numbers, which were not introduced into Europe until the 1500s!
Algebra is another gift of the Arab world.  The word algebra comes from the Arabic word الجبر = al-jabr = "restoration".  In the 9th century, Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī wrote The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, establishing and algebra as a distinct mathematical discipline.  Think about that:  no algebra, no modern engineering, no space program, no satellites, no GPS. 
Paper, perhaps one of the greatest technologies of all (far more important even than the computer in the preservation and transmission of knowledge) was invented by the Chinese around 200 but adopted in the 8th Century by Arabs who carried the technology into North Africa, Spain, and Sicily.  It took another 500 years for paper-making technology to enter Europe (Italy first, then France, Germany, and Switzerland by the 15th century).   Next time you use paper, thank the Arab world.   (Source:  Basel Paper Museum, Basel, Switzerland)
While Christian Europe was burning books, including those of "pagan" philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, the Arab world was carefully preserving them - and thank god because without the Arab preservation, we would have no works from ancient Greece (some books were unfortunately lost forever thanks to this Taliban-like outburst of godliness). 
The good news is that although conservative Christian Europeans (and America is simply a derivative of European culture) tried to hold back progress seen as Other, they ultimately failed. They could delay but not prevent, and we are all vastly richer thanks to the failure of their xenophobia.