Sympathy for the Devil?

Yesterday, just for the briefest of moments, I felt sorry for George W. Bush.

I mean, I know he brought it all on himself, and I know he thinks history will absolve him. But imagine what it must be like to sit on the dais in front of hundreds of thousands of people live and in person, plus millions more watching on television, listening on the radio, or viewing live streams on the Internet, while your successor says, very politely, we reject you, Mr. Bush, and everything you stand for. What you have done for the past eight years represents all that is wrong with this country, and today we start to fix that. And the crowd goes wild.

And he slinks back to Crawford with this tail between his legs like the beaten cur that he is, relegated to the dung heap of history -- where, I remind myself, he deserves a particularly gooey, stinky spot -- so alone. I've even heard that his wife has taken a separate home in Dallas.

Let me make this clear: I am not saying that I think Dubya was a person of good will who was honestly doing what he thought was best for the country. I think he was a knuckle-dragging, slack-jawed moron powered by hate, fear, and all that is dark in the human soul. He was being manipulated by kingmakers who wanted to turn the US into a near dictatorship while avoiding all accountability.

And, what's worse, I think he liked it and generally agreed with the goals of fascists like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, who, if given their head, would have instituted policies that would have made Franco's Guardia Civil look like a neighborhood watch program.

But just for a second there, I thought, wow. What must it be like to have so many people dislike you so intensely? To reject what you have done in their names so completely, and to adore a man who is so clearly the anti-you while decorum requires that you stand there and behave yourself?

I guess that's proof positive of my bleeding heart. I can even feel sympathy for the monster as I rejoice in its demise.