YEAR END RANT

History is very interesting to read and study. You can read accounts of the same events written from different viewpoints and find convenient omissions and radically varying interpretations, but usually, it is impossible to change the past.
I have read a lot of late medieval European history with an emphasis on The 100 Year War between England and France. If you read the basic history, it would seem that the events were predestined, but it's the wild cards that always determine the events.
The English War against France, viewed from our lenses, centuries in the future, seems obvious as a doomed venture. How could a little island kingdom that depended on a very specific trade ever expect to conquer and keep France?

We look at the Kings of England during this period and see the upheaval of dynasties as the fuedal system collapsed under its own weight. There were strong leaders who had the vision and management skills to inspire and lead during their lifetime, but then there were the tragic figures, Richard II, who ended up smothered while imprisoned after one ridiculous, insane conciet after another led to his downfall.
The Lancastrians seemed destined to suceed, Henry IV began to put it together until dying early and his son, Henry V is still regarded as the greatest English King who almost succeeded in his lifetime in suduing France, but at the apex of his victories, he died.
He was succeded by his infant son, Henry VI. Henry VI makes a pretty good case to be the worst English king ever, in a modern sense. The events of the Hundred Years War took place over the course of generations, but they took their toll on the concept of Royalty. The kings power was eroded constantly as he had to make concessions to his magnates to raise ever more money to govern and wage war. The concept of royalty changed as it became more of who could sieze power and hold it rather than the undeniable right of blood.

The Hundred Years War bankrupted England. It in effect ended the Middle Ages and the Feudal State. It had the opposite effect of uniting the French as a people in a way they had never experienced before. We see the roots of modern capitalism arise as merchants become upwardly mobile and break class barriers with created wealth.
Henry V in his success laid the traps that his weak son fell into and plunged England into the next brutal shock of emerging modern times, The War Of The Roses.

600 or so years later, America's once vital democracy was manipulated to choose a weak president, the son of another weak president, George Bush Jr. After his election, it seemed as if he would become a one term president, a footnote to the end of the 20th century. We all laughed at the affable idiot who claimed to have graduated from Yale on the grace of his family name.

Then the wild card...Osama Ben Laden and 9/11...again, this changed everything and suddenly America was in the hands of a group of men labled Neo Cons who were able to manipulate us into believing we were fighting a War On Terror, which history will show could never be won. The War On Terror mutated into the Iraqi Occupation which to many who supported it, was an attempt to establish American domination for control of petrochemical energy reserves.

The NeoCons, of course were really playing another game. They involved us in Iraq for the regional domination for the sake of Israel and when things didn't pan out they way it was sold to the American people, they walked away, leaving a world enmeshed in a snare that became an economic whirlpool, virtually destroying the American economy.
On the home front, this had its toll as a preoccupied, incompetent administration sat on its hands as Katrina hit, the infra structure of the country crumbled. The cronies of Bush, though, were able to use their connections to reap huge profits.
We have seen nothing more than the collapse of the so called deregulated market system. Capitalism as it evolved and mutated since the days of Reagan and the insanity of the "Trickle Down" theory imploded in an orgy of greed. The financial markets became an unregulated swamp of Ponzi schemes with as far as we know, Bernie Madoff as the ugly tip of the iceberg.
We are watching changes that once took generations occur in a matter of years and accelerate at a sickening rate, like the effects of global warming. This weak venal president allowed his cronies to fleece the planet while stalling research on all environmental issues.
He set us up all right for events should never have happened and a future that shouldn't be.

Now Karl Rove is hitting the airwaves claiming that history will be kind ot George Bush Jr. He claims we don't have the proper perspective to judge the wisdom of his judgement and acts.
George Bush leaves office with a country that has lost its moral and ethical compass, leaving behind a nation in ruin with little to show for at home and big loss over seas. No administration ever engaged in systematic destruction of our constitional rights and liberties like George Bush. His administration engaged in torture, illegal detentions, invasion of privacy and wiretaps without due process or constitutional restrictions, engaged in racial profiling not seen since slavery. I am certain he will not be missed by this nation or the world. he has done so much to damage America and the world that he should be tried for his failings, alone! His legacy is economic ruin, a middle class all but wiped out, failing wars on two fronts and the largest economic heist in history and over a million needless deaths!

This was a grandiously epic failure on all fronts, domestic and international. If anyone can think of anything that we should put in the history books that could negate the label "WORST FUCKING PRESIDENT EVER!" please, let me know.