MacBush

Many people who haven't ever read "MacBeth" or seen the play still know the story. However, few people understand the intricacies of the "MacBeth problem" as delineated by the subtle mind of Mr. Shakespeare.

Having met three witches who tell him he's destined to rule the land, the baffled nobleman can't get the idea out of his head. He resolves to assassinate the king and usurp the crown, but when he reflects on the enormity of the crime and begins to weaken, his beautiful, ambitious, and somewhat shallow wife uses sexual blackmail to shore up his resolve. And once his hands are bloodied, he finds that to maintain his illegitimate position, he is forced to follow a path of serial murder. Once he has made that fateful first error, he relinquishes all power over his own behavior, and his own fate.

The question is, did the witches "make" MacBeth commit these crimes, or did he choose? Some see the witches as Satan's representatives on earth, capable of forcing people to do that which they would not otherwise do. But personally, I think MacBeth chose his fate. You can't fault the witches for knowing in advance what he would choose to do. They saw into his heart, marked his weaknesses, and knew his fate was self-destruction through bad choices.

So it is with George W. Bush. Born of privilege and raised like a domestic aristocrat, the young Bush early on exhibited character defects that have now brought him to grief, especially the combined traits of limited intelligence and unlimited ambition. In his youth he showed a marked capacity for both extreme frivolity and extreme arrogance, but eventually he had a change of heart and acquired a more serious purpose, unfortunately without acquiring a corresponding helping of humility.

It was his bad fortune to fall into the hands of ideologues who convinced him, before he was even elected president, that he could establish an unrivaled American hegemony in the middle east, and at the same time control the flow of oil from that part of the world, without which nothing in modern society functions. All we had to do was launch an illegal and immoral war, but hey, who's going to stop us?

Now his presidency lies in ruins, impaled on the twin horns of the Iraq insurgency and two-and-a-half dollar gasoline. As Jim Kunstler has pointed out, the "Hooverization" of George W. Bush has already begun.

Did he choose this disaster? Yes, of course, but at the same time, when you look at his character defects, you understand why he could not have possibly chosen any other way.

I'm sure GWB regrets ever having heard the name of Iraq, but that's not good enough. When he regrets the day he was born, that will serve as partial payment for his crimes.

And yes, I know the "MacBeth" analogy has been used before. In the 1960's, Barbara Garson wrote a play about the Lyndon Johnson presidency called "MacBird."