After September 11, we are constantly told, Dubya "came of age." The boy king grew up. And indeed, he has. The problem is that the boy king has grown up into the Queen of Hearts.
You remember the Queen of Hearts. She's the one from Alice in Wonderland. The one who makes Alice play croquet with a flamingo who won't keep his neck straight and hedgehogs who keep unrolling themselves and wandering off. The one who terrifies her lackeys into trying to paint a white rose tree red. The one whose policies appear to be limited to bossing everyone around every chance she gets, and yelling "Off with his head!" whenever someone thwarts her, defies her, or simply fails to carry out her impossible orders. She's the incarnation of irresponsible power, a spoiled brat who has somehow been put in charge of the universe and has no apparent agenda aside from getting her own way, but is nevertheless obeyed by a population of cringing lackeys who may be perfectly well aware that she is a dangerous lunatic, but also don't want their heads cut off.
I had suspected that a transition of this sort was in process for a while; but it wasn't until a couple weeks ago that I finally knew it had been completed. I was listening to my local corporate Pop 40 station-you know, the one that interrupts itself every five minutes to tell you it has "more variety" than anyplace else on the dial, and nevertheless plays the same @#$! Jimmy Eat World song 36 times an hour-and I heard during their "news" segment that Dubya had announced that he "wants Osama Bin Ladin dead by next September 11." This was, of course, a few weeks after he put out a hit on Saddam Hussein, being careful to publicize it in all the major media outlets; and mere days after he had announced to the Palestinians and the rest of the world that it was time to get rid of Yassir Arafat. So, I thought to myself, we've finally moved out of the Wars of the Roses, and are currently living in Wonderland, where nobody seems fazed by the fact that the leader of what is supposed to be the free world has gone ranting around the globe shouting, "Off with his head!"
Even before September 11, living in this country was increasingly starting to feel like life through the looking glass. We were constantly told that Dubya was "the education president" even though he was also quite clearly the dimmest bulb that had ever been installed in the Oval Office. A tax cut that had been proposed as a surplus measure swiftly became exactly what we needed to deal with a deficit situation. After September 11, the disconnect between what we read and hear about the world and what we understood to be the case got more severe and bewildering every day. Like Alice, we find ourselves scrambling to learn the rules of a place that looks like the landscape we grew up in, but is dominated by autocratic, irritable, easily offended creatures who are all, without exception, quite mad. And, like Alice, we develop a disorienting double consciousness as we try to follow the rules and placate these creatures but can never shake our internal conviction that nothing about this place or these people makes any kind of sense.
How does the boy king get to be the Queen of Hearts? No, it's not about sex reassignment. It's about the advisors. At the beginning of this story, we could believe that even if the boy king was clearly overwhelmed by his robes of state and unable to wield a sword, the noblemen propping him up knew what they were doing. Now, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the advisors are just as much at a loss as their puppet is. All they really know how to do is consolidate and protect their own power; when it comes to actually using that power, they have long been betraying a vast and terrifying incompetence. It was, after all, not supposed to be like this. Enron was not supposed to collapse; the economy was not supposed to tank; we were not supposed to sustain the first attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Dubya was supposed to be a chair-warmer, a pleasant and bland front man who would keep everyone comfortable while his advisors plundered the coffers. Now, they have suddenly been thrown into a situation where they actually have to govern; and they have no idea how that works. In all the confusion, Dubya has emerged as the one player in the game who has real power-because he is the one player who has consistent, if patently manufactured, public approval ratings. So Dubya's puerile ravings become real policy, and around the world and across the corporate airwaves we hear the cry ring out loud and clear: "Off with his head!"
As interesting as it can be at times, Wonderland is not a good place to live. Alice realizes that early on; but the exit to Wonderland is not clearly marked. It's interesting, when you think about what has happened to justice in this kingdom under Ashcroft, that Alice's escape comes during her trial, which contains one of Carroll's wonderful little satirical strokes. One of the jurors at Alice's trial is making trouble, and the judge calls for him to be suppressed. "You may wonder how this was done," Carroll says, and then explains that "suppression" involves putting the juror in a sack, and tying the sack up, and shoving the sack upside-down into the jury box, and then sitting on it. The maneuvers against Dubya's opposition-on the part of the official media, as well as the administration itself-have been about that subtle. Perhaps, ultimately, they will be about that effective. All Alice has to do, in the end, to get the hell out of Wonderland is to see through it. As the rules change moment by moment, the Queen of Hearts becomes ever more obstreporous and bloodthirsty, and things reach the fever pitch of absurdity, Alice has the epiphany that finally liberates her: "You're all just a pack of cards!"
The signs are beginning to point to a similar moment of realization on the part of the American public. The phenomenal success of Michael Moore's Stupid White Men, the increasing willingness of Bush's own fellow-party members to question his tactics, and a slow but increasing trickle of pieces in the mainstream media that question-timorously and equivocally, of course, but still-both Dubya's regime and the assumption that all of America is standing united behind him all suggest that some of our fellow-Americans may be beginning to wake up from their post-September 11 catatonia. I'd like to believe it, anyway. Because I would sure like to get back to the other side of the looking glass.
C ya,
The Plaid Adder
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